So yesterday HCP replied to something I had posted with this:


And I do think we need a separate thread here to discuss it. So here it is the separate thread.
As a rule he is correct in that we as a group do tend to dig in when we feel our position is threatened and our favorite wallet is under attack or a wallet that we think is evil is being recommended without ever getting a full picture of what the person who is asking really needs or has the ability to do.

Hardware wallets are great, and you know what I use them. Now I'm going to pick on my accountant. He is older, his eyesight is going, and has arthritis. Hardware wallets are just about useless for him. The screens are too small, he cant easily get the microUSB plug into them and outside of one or 2 of them he cant put in the pin. But, if he asks we are going to tell him use a hardware wallet. When he says he can't we as a group dig in and explain to him why he must. However, he will never admit on a public forum that he just can't do it. We all know people like that, for whatever reason they will never show weakness [Even if it's to a bunch of people who they will never meet, on an anonymous forum]

You know what, for him we should probably put our heads together and come up with solutions, possibly multiple ones to solve his problem. Yeah, it's going to be a pain but staring a reply with "You really really really should use a hardware wallet, but if you can't then....."  is better then "Fine, if you don't want to be secure then install electrum but it's not as secure." Because people see the "not as secure" and start to wonder. Because we could have said "You will loose some security having funds not secured by a hardware wallet, but electrum will do this thing called multisig let me show you how it works. This was even if your PC gets hacked so long as your laptop is still secure then your funds are safe. And, you can have some small funds on a 2nd electrum wallet on your PC that if it get's hacked no big deal."

I know I have not, up until recently I was in the "what are you being such an ass about, just use a hardware wallet"

I saw it again with people slamming the bitpay wallet and BIP70. Like it / don't like it does not matter. If we didn't stop to find out that all this person is doing is paying merchants that are only generating BIP70 invoices then getting into the argument of BIP70 evil, BitPay evil, really does not help people. Pointing out that BIP70 is going away from core and might not be supported long term is fine, but telling people not to use it or directing someone who might not be that tech savvy to one of the invoice decoders is just wasting time and generating frustration. Giving them the pros and cons of the bitpay wallet vs electrum vs Mycelium is what we should be doing.

Thus ends my rant for today.

-Dave

A very good post.

I am one of the users who would recommend using hardware wallets over any other solution. But I would never condemn someone for not using one. I understand that some people can't afford them or want one in the first place. $10 can be a lot of money in some parts of the world. Why would I suggest a $50-100 hardware wallet to that person?

I use both software and hardware wallets and they all work fine. The biggest concern is that people lack basic knowledge about computer security. They also lack common sense which results in them being phished and hacked. Knowing the basics of what to do and what not to do online is the best prevention.
I will even go as far as saying that a hardware wallet isn't even needed if you are cautious enough. I still use one though.     

I had a look at the Ellipal a while back - correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I could tell it is essentially no different to using an old phone in airplane mode. There's no actual secure element, and your private keys are simply encrypted with the user password, which allows them to be extracted with a simple bruteforce attack without too much difficulty: https://donjon.ledger.com/Ellipal-Security/

Certainly that's the best time, and black Friday as well.

However, if someone holds a significant amount in crypto, I wouldn't wait a few months or weeks (risking my coins) to save 20 bucks.

I think most people resort back to the "buy a hardware wallet" option, because it is a safe bet when it comes to security, but it is not the cheapest option, when you look at the millions of people that are living in countries with a weak currency. So you have to judge every situation, based on the merit of the situation.

A person living in a 3rd world country, might not be able to afford a hardware wallet and the amount of bitcoin being stored on a wallet does not justify the expense to buy one. These people want a good "free" wallet with better than average security. In cases like this, I prefer to recommend a wallet like Electrum, even if it has lower security than a hardware wallet. <You can even recommend a combination between the Electrum wallet and paper wallets, if the person knows what he/she is doing>

So having a rigid rule that hardware wallets must be the default option, is not entirely true for all situations. 

I wouldn't use/trust thermal paper for long term storage. It fades over time.

Hardware wallets get recommended so often because they're less of a hassle for an average person. Without them having to have an extra computer for offline transaction signing (to get comparable level of security) I'd say it gets even more confusing for a newbie. I'll grant that the screens on most hardware wallets are definitely too small for people with poor vision, better have a magnifying glass at hand then.


If any secure way of handling bitcoins is too confusing for a user, then perhaps they're better off just using any modern working wallet app on their phone or computer and that's it to keep it simple. Buy <$1k BTC and play with it until they're more confident and proficient in using the software. After a while they can move on to hardware wallets, offline transaction signing, btcarmory, glacier, etc. or whatever appeals to them the most to learn how to safely handle bigger amounts.

If you implement some encryption method (e.g. using android encryption which is activated by default since android 6.0 i believe), you already got a proper air-gapped wallet setup running.
This is definitely more secure than a hardware wallet but comes with less convenience.

If you are fine with the extra steps it takes to send transactions, there is no good reason to switch to a hardware wallet besides mobility and/or faster access.

As cool as a "one click and it prints a wallet" device would be (and I'd love to have one for that matter!), I don't think it solves any problem. It doesn't help "others", as they'd still need to trust the creator of the device. So it's only useful for yourself, and if that's the case, you don't even need it. Just print a bunch of pages with paper wallets at once, and keep them on a pile for when you need them. Use a cheap dumb laser printer and a cheap laminator and it'll last a very long time.

I know people who just store a paper wallet for long-term holding, and that's all they've ever done with Bitcoin. If they want to actually use it, most wallets will do for small amounts. From my own experience I would recommend either Mycelium or Coinomi for Android, or Electrum for a desktop. I've tried many different wallets and can only recommend to try more than one to see what works best for you.
If someone wants to store a larger amount, I think they'd first have to learn a bit about what they're doing. Just like you don't just create an account at a broker and start buying stocks without doing some research, right? Right? Or maybe that is what's happening when a small car manufacturer has a P/E of 1400. Many people will get burned, just like they got burned on ICOs.

Choose your wallet is a pretty good start.

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This is me responding after a year: I'm switching more to LN for small payments. Some hosting companies accept it directly, but usually it has to go through coupons. I'm okay with Bitcoin transaction fees most of the time, but this way I can evade the additional fee charged by payment processors for using Bitcoin.

I agree that "the most secure" harware wallets aren't suitable for all due to its relatively high price and being not easy in use. That's why I usually recommend newbies non-custodial wallets with beautiful UI like BlueWallet and OWNR. Maybe these wallets aren't the best ones, but they'll be good as your first wallets to begin with.