Ledger Nano S in complement with Electrum or Ledger Live

[Maus0728]

As of now, I am waiting for my Ledger Nano S to arrive in our country and hoping that the product will arrive safely in my delivery address. Of course, as a beginner in using this product, I managed to read a lot of articles regarding Ledger and I found out that there are various ways in setting up a cold storage, which means choosing a method in securing your crypto is subjective and actually depends on the user's preference. So, I decided to only just use a HW in complement with Ledger live or Electrum

As far as I have understood, In order to set up a cold storage using the Ledger Nano S/X, I needed to use Electrum or Ledger Live App in order to communicate with the HW. HW is only used if you wanted to sign the transaction you have broadcasted in the bitcoin network without compromising your private keys hence it is called "coldwallet". The problem is, I am torn between Ledger Live or Electrum.

Here are the key takeaways If I will be using Electrum.

• it has more flexible functionalities which will increase my privacy
• It can be upgraded to support Multi-Sig
• Only supports bitcoin
• UTXO Management

In Ledger Live App

• I have read that there are too many major issues if you are operating Windows OS (I am using Windows 10)
• Supports Altcoin (I am holding ETH and XRP)
• Does not support any coin control features that involves the use of UTXO

Which of the 2 should I use? Or do you think that it is a good idea to have both of them? I will be using Ledger for long term hold and a hot wallet (coins.ph) for storing small amount which I can spend for daily transaction. Suggestion from @o_e_l_e_o

I would probably use the Ledger Nano as a cold wallet to store the majority of your bitcoin which you keep at home, and a mobile wallet as a hot wallet which stores a small amount of "spending" bitcoin which you carry with you. You can then top up your mobile wallet from your cold storage as needed.

I am also considering this suggestion from @nc50lc to integrate the use the of Electrum and Ledger Live app at the same time.

Secondly, if you want to separate your long-term hodling, you can just make a second Bitcoin account through Ledger Live or second wallet with different derivation path (to 2nd account) via Electrum.
Lastly, that was suggested to the topic OP who's already got a spare phone and not planning to buy a hardware wallet.

What do you think?

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[o_e_l_e_o]

You will have to use Ledger Live at least a little, as there is no way to update the firmware or install/uninstall apps from your hardware wallet without using it.

You can also access the same wallet using both Ledger Live and Electrum - after all, the software is just an interface to access the private keys, which are stored on the hardware device. You can set up Ledger Live to access your BTC, ETH, and XRP, but then also use Electrum to access the same BTC addresses. I prefer using Electrum to Ledger Live mostly because it allows me to view all my addresses, generate new ones as I need, and gives me complete control of my UTXOs, but I still have Ledger Live installed and use it to update firmware. The few altcoins that I do hold (at the moment, only Monero), I use different software again to access them - mostly for privacy reasons, but Ledger Live doesn't support Monero anyway.

In addition to nc50lc's suggestion above, you can also separate your accounts by using a passphrase (or different passphrases), which adds an additional layer of security to any addresses behind the passphrase, but also adds an increased risk as if you forget your passphrase your coins are permanently inaccessible. This is an advanced feature, so I maybe wouldn't worry about this for now until you have set up your wallet and are happy with how it works.

[Pmalek]

I use both Electrum and Ledger Live. Since you have altcoins you will have to use Ledger Live as well. I prefer viewing my portfolio from the Ledger Live interface. I use Ledger Live to generate new receiving addresses but when I send Bitcoins myself I like doing it from Electrum. It gives me much better control and bigger set of features.   

[Maus0728]

but then also use Electrum to access the same BTC addresses.

I thought that I am generating a different bitcoin address in Electrum aside from Ledger Live App. Is it not?

I prefer using Electrum to Ledger Live mostly because it allows me to view all my addresses, generate new ones as I need, and gives me complete control of my UTXOs,

Do you mean generating a new receiving address using Electrum? Ledger Live app also does that isn't it?

but when I send Bitcoins myself I like doing it from Electrum. It gives me much better control and bigger set of features.   

I guess I need to understand what UTXO's or coin control are in order to maximize this cool feature.
Thank you everyone! I know now what I am going to do!

[Rath_]

I thought that I am generating a different bitcoin address in Electrum aside from Ledger Live App. Is it not?

That is why you need to change the derivation path while creating a wallet in Electrum with your hardware wallet. After choosing your device, you will be asked to select the type of address you used and you might need to modify the derivation path.

legacy (p2pkh) (1...) - m/44'/0'/0'
p2sh-segwit (p2wpkh-p2sh) (3...) - m/49'/0'/0'
native segwit (p2wpkh) (bc1...) - m/84'/0'/0'

The last number is the number of your account. The first one is 0, the second one is 1 and so on.

Do you mean generating a new receiving address using Electrum? Ledger Live app also does that isn't it?

Yes, it does. However, you can't see a full list of your addresses and you can't generate a new address unless you use the previous one. In Electrum, you can generate as many addresses as you want at once.

[Pmalek]

I guess I need to understand what UTXO's or coin control are in order to maximize this cool feature.

Coin control allows you to handpick which inputs you want to spend. In Electrum if you have two entries/inputs of 0.7 BTC and 0.3 BTC, you can decide yourself which of these you want to spend by simply clicking on it and selecting 'spend from'. Ledger Live doesn't have that. They use some other algorithms but don't give you, the user, control of what you spend.

[crwth]

I don't use Electrum anymore and I'm just using Ledger Live, in PC, and in my smartphone to access my BTC and another crypto. I think it's secure enough to use and you would only transact when you need to, so no need to make a cold wallet into it too. The hardware itself can't be compromised IMO.

The fees in Ledger Liver aren't that flexible compared to Electrum though. I don't know if it can be a benefit or not.

[Maus0728]

That is why you need to change the derivation path while creating a wallet in Electrum with your hardware wallet. After choosing your device, you will be asked to select the type of address you used and you might need to modify the derivation path.

legacy (p2pkh) (1...) - m/44'/0'/0'
p2sh-segwit (p2wpkh-p2sh) (3...) - m/49'/0'/0'
native segwit (p2wpkh) (bc1...) - m/84'/0'/0'

The last number is the number of your account. The first one is 0, the second one is 1 and so on.

I think these guides are enough in order to understand these! Thanks everyone for guiding me on what I am going to learn at a step-by-step basis.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0044.mediawiki - BIP 44
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0049.mediawiki - BIP 49
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki - BIP 32 (most technical one)

Coin control allows you to handpick which inputs you want to spend. In Electrum if you have two entries/inputs of 0.7 BTC and 0.3 BTC, you can decide yourself which of these you want to spend by simply clicking on it and selecting 'spend from'. Ledger Live doesn't have that. They use some other algorithms but don't give you, the user, control of what you spend.

As far as I understood, this coin control is commonly used in making transaction when a campaign manager sends the bitcoin payment into the signature campaign, am I right?

Another example.

If I say I own a bitcoin address 'X' and there 2 transactions held on it whereas the first transaction of BTC 10 was sent from address 'Y' to 'X' while the other transaction sent BTC 3 from 'Z' to 'X'. Is this what you call the two entries/inputs or is this the UTXO's?

I don't use Electrum anymore and I'm just using Ledger Live, in PC, and in my smartphone to access my BTC and another crypto. I think it's secure enough to use and you would only transact when you need to, so no need to make a cold wallet into it too. The hardware itself can't be compromised IMO.

The fees in Ledger Liver aren't that flexible compared to Electrum though. I don't know if it can be a benefit or not.

I must say that I decided to use both of them since i want to explore the coin control feature of Electrum and I am aiming for the technical knowledge and experience that I can gain. Also, privacy does matter after all.

[crwth]

I must say that I decided to use both of them since i want to explore the coin control feature of Electrum and I am aiming for the technical knowledge and experience that I can gain. Also, privacy does matter after all.

I understand what your saying, privacy is priority . Awesome goal btw. Anyways, I thought the privacy that Priority or Privacy is being done automatically by Electrum? The big compromise of that is the change, right? If it's way too big and the sent amount?

[Maus0728]

I understand what your saying, privacy is priority . Awesome goal btw. Anyways, I thought the privacy that Priority or Privacy is being done automatically by Electrum? The big compromise of that is the change, right? If it's way too big and the sent amount?

As far as I know, if you are complementing Electrum as a means to communicate with your hardware wallet (e.g., Ledger Nano S/X / Trezor) you actually increasing your privacy since you are not disclosing your addresses to Ledger itself though they are open source!

And also the coin control which will give you more control of managing your input when broadcasting a tx in bitcoin network. (Still familiarizing myself with this one)

[Rath_]

As far as I understood, this coin control is commonly used in making transaction when a campaign manager sends the bitcoin payment into the signature campaign, am I right?

No, what you are talking about is pay to many. Coin control allows you to select specific coins which you received so that you don't use two different addresses in a single transaction, for example.

If I say I own a bitcoin address 'X' and there 2 transactions held on it whereas the first transaction of BTC 10 was sent from address 'Y' to 'X' while the other transaction sent BTC 3 from 'Z' to 'X'. Is this what you call the two entries/inputs or is this the UTXO's?

Yes, they are UTXOs which later can be used as 2 separate inputs in a transaction. You don't have to spend all of the inputs at once if one of them is sufficient to cover the outputs' value.

[...] you actually increasing your privacy since you are not disclosing your addresses to Ledger itself though they are open source!

Actually, you don't expose your private keys. Ledger needs to know your public key to generate addresses on its own.

@Down You're right. I have misread that part and wrote Ledger instead of Electrum.

[bob123]

[...] you actually increasing your privacy since you are not disclosing your addresses to Ledger itself though they are open source!

Actually, you don't expose your private keys. Ledger needs to know your public key to generate addresses on its own.

I think he meant that the addresses don't get exposed to the server when using electrum instead of ledger live.
And AFAIK ledger live isn't even using bloom filter, so every address your software checks is indeed transmitted to ledgers server.

With electrum on the other hand, the server can only know which addresses you are not interested in, but can't specify which exactly you own. They can only determine a superset of your addresses.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I think it's secure enough to use and you would only transact when you need to, so no need to make a cold wallet into it too.

On the whole, people aren't using Electrum over Ledger Live from a security point of view - both are open source, and neither have any major vulnerabilities known about at the moment. The reason many people choose Electrum is because it offers more features than Ledger Live, as has been discussed above - coin control, address management, pay to many, etc.

The hardware itself can't be compromised IMO.

All hardware can be compromised. The question is how easy or difficult it is to compromise. As far as we know, the secure element on Ledger devices needs a scanning electron microscope costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the expertise to use it, to compromise it. A Trezor, on the other hand, can be compromised with a circuit board costing <$100.

The fees in Ledger Liver aren't that flexible compared to Electrum though.

The fees are whatever you want them to be. Both Electrum and Ledger Live allow users to set their own custom fees.

[HCP]

At the end of the day... there is no reason why you can't use both Electrum and Ledger Live. I do... and it doesn't cause any issues.

Ledger Live is necessary for installing/removing coin apps, doing firmware upgrades etc. So, you're definitely going to need to use it at some point, so you may as well install it and experiment with it. It's quite handy for viewing your entire portfolio as well if you are holding multiple coins).

But I also appreciate some of the more advanced features in Electrum, so will use that as well when I need to make sure of those features (coin control, pay2many etc).

In Ledger Live App

I have read that there are too many major issues if you are operating Windows OS (I am using Windows 10)

Nope. Ledger Live works perfectly fine with Windows 10. That is exactly what I am using. The issues people were having was trying to use Ledger Live on unsupported versions of Windows... ie. Windows 7.

There were some recent issues with some overzealous antivirus programs incorrectly detecting the installer as being infected ("false positives")... and some recent issues with the update process being a bit screwy... but as far as I'm aware, Ledger Live+Windows 10 is OK.