Trezor or Ledger? And how to get my forks Bitcoin Cash / Gold / SV??

[UnDerDoG81]

Hi,
my bitcoin is on a paper wallet for years now. Finally I want to get BCash, BGold and BSV and also want to move the Bitcoin (and the other forks) to a hardware wallet. I try to learn how to do it and want to minimize the risks. I have following questions:

1.   Wich Hardware Wallet is more safe? I read that there COULD BE a risk that Ledger makers could have a backdoor in the device to access coins? Trezor is open source no? Is it more safe?

2.   Did I understood correctly that if I want to get (claim?) my bitcoin cash from the BTC fork, before I do that, I should move my bitcoin from the paper wallet to a new wallet and claim my bcash after moving my bitcoin to the new wallet? So if the paper wallet is empty, I still can claim my bcash and bgold?

3.   Is Exodus on Mac safe to do this? Or is there a risk of viruses etc.? I dont have installed any weird software on my mac. But for example I have stuff like better touch tool etc. I remember when I created my Paper Wallet, on bitcointalk they told me to use a PC that will never be connected to the internet again. I used a fresh windows install, created my paper wallet and partitionited and formatted the hard disk.

4.   Is exodus.io the real website/source? On this website https://medium.com/@nesterenkoi565/how-to-sweep-for-bitcoin-cash-and-bitcoin-sv-on-exodus-wallet-7021c68d66a they are linking to exodusupdate.com what made me curious.

5.   I just realized, question 3 is not important, if the method in question 2 is correct? So first I would send my Bitcoin from the paper wallet to the Ledger or Trezor. And then claim my Bcash/BGold in Exodus and sent Bcash/Bgold from Exodus to the Ledger or Trezor right?

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[Rath_]

1.   Wich Hardware Wallet is more safe? I read that there COULD BE a risk that Ledger makers could have a backdoor in the device to access coins? Trezor is open source no? Is it more safe?

This is a contentious issue. Trezor is fully open-source while Ledger uses a Secure Element so it is not fully open-source. However, Trezor is vulnerable to a physical attack which can't be fixed in a software update (Trezor T actually mitigates it by storing a secret on an SD-card which along with the PIN encrypts the data stored on the device). I personally own both Ledger and Trezor devices so I can answer specific questions about them.

2.   Did I understood correctly that if I want to get (claim?) my bitcoin cash from the BTC fork, before I do that, I should move my bitcoin from the paper wallet to a new wallet and claim my bcash after moving my bitcoin to the new wallet? So if the paper wallet is empty, I still can claim my bcash and bgold?

Yes, you should move your bitcoins first to protect yourself against replay attacks. You should claim forked coins after moving your bitcoins to a new wallet. Of course, you will have to use the private key of your paper wallet.

4.   Is exodus.io the real website/source? On this website they are linking to exodusupdate.com what made me curious.

I have never used exodus so I can't answer this question. Why don't you use Electrum? Don't forget to verify it. I guess you want to use a single wallet to access all the forked coins. Nevermind.

5.   I just realized, question 3 is not important, if the method in question 2 is correct? So first I would send my Bitcoin from the paper wallet to the Ledger or Trezor. And then claim my Bcash/BGold in Exodus and sent Bcash/Bgold from Exodus to the Ledger or Trezor right?

Correct.

[Csmiami]

I'll go straight to the answers:

1.   Wich Hardware Wallet is more safe? I read that there COULD BE a risk that Ledger makers could have a backdoor in the device to access coins? Trezor is open source no? Is it more safe?

AFAIK, Trezor has a physicall vulnerability, so if someone has access to the device, they could get the seed and steal the funds. I don't use a Ledger wallet, so I don't really know about any backdoors to it. Nevertheless, both HW are secure enough to be the most used around, and you can always protect your funds with a passphrase; that is, to say in very vague terms, an extension of your seed. You can read more about it here

2.   Did I understood correctly that if I want to get (claim?) my bitcoin cash from the BTC fork, before I do that, I should move my bitcoin from the paper wallet to a new wallet and claim my bcash after moving my bitcoin to the new wallet? So if the paper wallet is empty, I still can claim my bcash and bgold?

BCH, BTG, and any other forked coins (BSV for example), are a copy of the Bitcoin blockchain at a certain point. If you had 5 BTC in a wallet before the snapshot, you'll get the equivalent airdropped (not always 1:1) ammount of that Altcoin at that moment in that address. Think of these forks as Altcoins, you can't send a DOGE transaction on the ETH network.

3.--
4.--

I'll skip these, as I lack the knowledge to answer them....

5.   I just realized, question 3 is not important, if the method in question 2 is correct? So first I would send my Bitcoin from the paper wallet to the Ledger or Trezor. And then claim my Bcash/BGold in Exodus and sent Bcash/Bgold from Exodus to the Ledger or Trezor right?

That would be the reccomended order, yes. You first move your BTC, because you are going to be entering your private key into other platforms/wallets, and who knows who's looking... Then, once claimed, sweep them into your HW and you'd be done.

As a matter of fact, I'd say that Coinomi wallet is reccommended to claim forked coins, becuase it offers multi-coin support, so when you enter your private key, it should retrieve the coins on all the available forks at once. LoyceV does also offer a service to claim these coins

Edit: Typos (lol); and I've realized that the thread from Loyce does also offer a table with the wallets in which (some) of the forks can be claimed

[UnDerDoG81]

Thanks a lot Bitcryptex! So I cut the risk to zero when I sent my coin to another adress first. Thats great to know.

You have both HWs, wich one would you recommend as for easiness and for safety? Is it theoretically possible that Ledger has a backdoor for the devs? When I created my paper wallet, people said theoretically the random generated wallet could be saved online, even if you generate it offline etc. I have no technical knowledge about all this. I did it in 2014 and so far nothing happened because I used a password protection as well. Can I protect the Ledger with a password? Or could devs still have a backdoor to the coins? I mean its millions, maybe billions of cash if you count all ledgers in the world. We also trusted MtGox and we all know what happened.

I dont want to read instructions for hours. Just easy management. I only want to store my coin(s) (all forks I can get) and then hodl them again. I want to claim my forks because if there will be a situation I have to sell my Bitcoin quickly, I dont want to fuck around with the forks for days.


Thanks as well Csmiami. Sounds easier than I thought with claiming the forks. I was skipping this for 2 years now. Time to do it.

EDIT: I want my BTC and the forks all on one wallet, yes. Mainly BTC, BCash, Bgold and BSV.

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[blue Snow]

Curious about your Bitcoin in paperwallet. how to send bitcoin from paper?, what kind of wallet do you use?. 

[TryNinja]

Curious about your Bitcoin in paperwallet. how to send bitcoin from paper?, what kind of wallet do you use?.  

To spend the coins in your paper wallet, you simply use any wallet that allows you to import your private key. That could be Electrum, Bitcoin Core, Mycelium, etc...

I prefer Electrum, so I could either create a new Electrum wallet selecting "Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys", which would import the private key and let me spend the coins to any address I wanted, or I could go to an already existent wallet (or another one I just created) and use the "Sweep" option to send the coins from the paper wallet address to one of my new wallet addresses. The latter would obviously require me to do two transactions if I was looking to send the coins to an exchange, friend or an store (Paper wallet -> New Wallet -> Friend VS Paper wallet -> Friend).

[Lucius]

I dont want to read instructions for hours. Just easy management. I only want to store my coin(s) (all forks I can get) and then hodl them again. I want to claim my forks because if there will be a situation I have to sell my Bitcoin quickly, I dont want to fuck around with the forks for days.

First you need to check which wallet supports what you want to store on it, and in case of Ledger&Trezor BSV is not supported. In this regard, it does not matter which device you choose, but in terms of price you can currently get the Ledger Nano S for 50% off which is a great offer.

You can do the whole process very quickly, of course if you prepare well - which means that you have a hardware wallet, and all the other wallets through which you will claim forked coins, and then send them to the hardware wallet.

[OmegaStarScream]

-snip-
4.   Is exodus.io the real website/source? On this website they are linking to exodusupdate.com what made me curious.
-snip-

Exodus.io is the official website (make sure you typed it correctly). Where did you find links leading to Exodusupdate.com? I have reached out to the support and they said they do not own that domain and it's a phishing site.

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> Can I protect the Ledger with a password? Or could devs still have a backdoor to the coins? I mean its millions, maybe billions of cash if you count all ledgers in the world. <…>

Yes, the PIN is the first wall of security. Fail thrice in a row, and the device will reset to factory settings, but you’ll always have your (well hidden and perhaps encrypted) backup card to default to in case this happens.

Theoretically I figure, Ledger could deploy a rouge firmware that might leak private keys to a backdoor server using Ledger Live as a bridge. Open source code based hardware wallets could well do that too, and it’s a question of which one is spotted first in the event of it happening.

Cynics may also wonder what is preventing Ledger from issuing a rogue firmware update themselves. The answer is quite trivial: just think about what we have to gain versus what we have to lose… An internal sponsored attack would not only be very quickly spotted and obvious to trace, but profits would be much less than what Ledger’s future equity is worth on the market.

Extract from the first article listed below.

I personally use Ledger, but the profit counterargument above is perhaps not the best that can be used.


These are some of Ledger’s security notes for the general public:
https://www.ledger.com/ledger-101%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8apart-2-why-hardware-wallets-are-secure/
https://medium.com/ledger-on-security-and-blockchain/ledger-101-part-3-best-practices-when-using-a-hardware-wallet-198b60df2681
https://www.ledger.com/ledger-101-part-4-advanced-security-principles

[Husna QA]

Curious about your Bitcoin in paperwallet. how to send bitcoin from paper?, what kind of wallet do you use?. 

Paper Wallet is only a printout that contains a Bitcoin address or public key that allows transferring coins to the wallet, and a private key that gives access to send funds. This Private Key is imported into other software for sending funds.
You can make a Paper Wallet e.g. on bitaddress.org or bitcoinpaperwallet.com
Note: It Recommend to disconnect the internet during the process of generating an address.

[UnDerDoG81]

-snip-
4.   Is exodus.io the real website/source? On this website they are linking to exodusupdate.com what made me curious.
-snip-

Exodus.io is the official website (make sure you typed it correctly). Where did you find links leading to Exodusupdate.com? I have reached out to the support and they said they do not own that domain and it's a phishing site.

I copied my text from reddit, I first asked there but they deleted it from the bitcoin group with the reason "bitcoin is bitcoin we dont care about forks" lol. Thats why the link not got copied. On this website https://medium.com/@nesterenkoi565/how-to-sweep-for-bitcoin-cash-and-bitcoin-sv-on-exodus-wallet-7021c68d66a they are linking to exodusupdate.com.

Thanks @all

The 50% discount sounds good. But I am still afraid of the mentioned possible firmware hack. I might also consider generating a new paper wallet and sending it there. First I have to read more about Ledger security.

[Rath_]

Theoretically I figure, Ledger could deploy a rouge firmware that might leak private keys to a backdoor server using Ledger Live as a bridge. Open source code based hardware wallets could well do that too, and it’s a question of which one is spotted first in the event of it happening.

While Ledger can't give us much information about the chip due to NDA, most of their software is open-source, including Ledger Live.

You have both HWs, wich one would you recommend as for easiness and for safety?

Both Ledger and Trezor devices are easy to use, have detailed documentation and supportive community. I can't really recommend you a specific model and whether or not you should buy a device from Ledger. It should be your decision if you want to trust Ledger or buy either Trezor One or T which are already vulnerable to (sophisticated) physical attacks which cannot be fixed.

Note that you don't have to use Ledger devices strictly with their software. You can pair their wallets with Electrum and even use them to sign transactions on an air-gapped machine. IMO, that would be an overkill setup.

[UnDerDoG81]

Thanks! I used some Passphrase (not sure if it was BIP 38 in 2014) with my paper wallet. I guess it will be not that easy to import my private keys to Exodus, Electrum or a Hardware Wallet?

[Rath_]

Thanks! I used some Passphrase (not sure if it was BIP 38 in 2014) with my paper wallet. I guess it will be not that easy to import my private keys to Exodus, Electrum or a Hardware Wallet?

I don't think you can add a passphrase in Exodus; you can do it in Electrum. Both Ledger and Trezor also support passphrases. Coinomi might be the most convenient choice for you since you will be able to claim the forked coins easily after moving your bitcoins.

[bob123]

Thanks! I used some Passphrase (not sure if it was BIP 38 in 2014) with my paper wallet. I guess it will be not that easy to import my private keys to Exodus, Electrum or a Hardware Wallet?

You could import it into electrum and send your BTC to a new wallet.
You definitely can't import private keys into a hardware wallet (which would be completely against the reason to get a hardware wallet).

As mentioned by BitCryptex, coinomi might be a good choice for you. It support a lot of shitcoin altcoins. You could easily access all of them.
But, depending on the amount of BTC you have, you might want to use a more trusted wallet to move your BTC first.

[UserU]

I don't think you can add a passphrase in Exodus; you can do it in Electrum.

Do you mean adding extra word(s) to the existing 12?

[UnDerDoG81]

Thanks guys! Looks like I have to read a lot before I do anything. I now ordered the Ledger Nano S.

I am a real noob in Crypto. But as much as I remember, I imported one private key in 2016 to the blockchain.com app on my phone. It asked me for the passphrase, I entered it and everything worked out fine. After that, I sent my coin to Bitstamp and tried daytrading. Lost a few bucks and sent it back to a new cold storage lol.

[Rath_]

Exodus does support the 12-phrase

Passphrase is not the same as 12 word recovery phrase. In his case, the passphrase is the 13th word which is completely custom and not related to the BIP39 wordlist.

[UserU]

Passphrase is not the same as 12 word recovery phrase. In his case, the passphrase is the 13th word which is completely custom and not related to the BIP39 wordlist.

Ah, got it. I didn't realize you were replying to my post right before I edited it.

[UnDerDoG81]

Just another quick question. I ordered the Nano S. Should I do some kind of formatting when it arrives? I know it sounds like from a Hollywood movie. But maybe it could have been manipulated by the delivery service etc.?