Hardware wallet company and seed phrase question

[Ghepetto]

Strange question but but here goes.  

Lets say I had a ledger, trezor or any hardware wallet with a seed phrase secured.   Let us assume I have fifteen random cryptos stored on it for this question.

Now the company that I bought the hardware wallet from gets nuked in a war and is gone forever.


Will I still be able to access all my crypto?   If so how?

[Edwardard]

Strange question but but here goes.  

Its not a strange question, but yeah it looks weird when such questions come from a sr. member.

Will I still be able to access all my crypto?   If so how?

Any hardware wallet company doesnt have access to your coins, in any case if you are not able to spend from that hardware wallet itself (for any reason), you can import your seed in any other compatible wallet and spend your crypto from there. For e.g. if you got dogecoin and 14 other cryptos, and you want to send doge, just import the seed it in any self custodial dogecoin wallet and you're done. Do the same for rest of the crypto coins, i.e., import the same seed in their respective compatible wallets.
Simple trick: Buy another hardware wallet and restore all  your coins easily (with the seedphrase ofc)

[Pmalek]

For e.g. if you got dogecoin and 14 other cryptos, and you want to send doge, just import the seed it in any self custodial dogecoin wallet and you're done. Do the same for rest of the crypto coins, i.e., import the same seed in their respective compatible wallets.

I would only suggest importing a seed that's been generated in a safer system such as a hardware wallet into a software wallet if it's an emergency. Most of the times though, it's not an emergency. If someone losses their hardware wallet or it breaks, they get afraid they will lose access to their coins and want to reassure themselves by recovering them asap. You are just minimizing the security of your seed that way and making it potentially vulnerable as well because it's been used with a hot wallet.

Importing your hardware wallet seed into one software is bad enough. Doing it in 15 different ones just increases potential attack vectors. For your crypto to get stolen, either one of those 15 hot wallets need to mess something up. Compare it to having a secret, telling that secret to one person and revealing it to 15 people.

If you can't use your current hardware wallet any longer, get one from another brand and restore your wallets from your backup seed. Generate new seeds and wallets on the new one if you lost trust in the old device and gradually move your coins to the new one. 

[Charles-Tim]

It is nothing like emergency, you have your hardware wallet like Trezor which you can even access with different wallet software like Electrum for bitcoin, Metamask for ERC20 etc, even if the official software of the wallet is outdated, you can use other reputable software wallets to spend your coins. Not that your wallet is stolen, just that the company that produces it is no more existing, which makes this not to be an emergency.

Know that it is your coin, you control the keys, not the company that produces the hardware wallet, you have full control over it. Because the company is affected, that does not mean your coin is affected.

As time goes on, you may later decide to continue to use the hardware wallet or not, but it is nothing that require emergency of buying another hardware wallet immediately.

[Pmalek]

It is nothing like emergency, you have your hardware wallet like Trezor which you can even access with different wallet software like Electrum for bitcoin, Metamask for ERC20 etc, even if the official software of the wallet is outdated, you can use other reputable software wallets to spend your coins.

That's true, but don't forget that OP used an imaginary scenario in which they have 15 different cryptocurrencies. You have covered bitcoin and ethereum with Electrum and MetaMask, but what about the rest?
Trezor should really improve their website and the page that shows supported coins > https://trezor.io/coins. The source doesn't show what alternative 3rd-party wallets work in connection with Trezor HWs in case you don't want to use Trezor Suite. Do they compile this information somewhere else?

[Charles-Tim]

That's true, but don't forget that OP used an imaginary scenario in which they have 15 different cryptocurrencies. You have covered bitcoin and ethereum with Electrum and MetaMask, but what about the rest?

I do not know much about this, but I saw a Trezor article which is related to it and which may be helpful: https://trezor.io/learn/a/third-party-apps-and-trezor

Wallets listed are Electrum, Exodus, MetaMask, MyEtherWallet and MyCrypto wallet. I do not know if MyCrypto wallet support many other coins because I have not used the wallet before. The last time I downloaded Exodus, it is supporting many cryptocurrencies including Solana and NFTs, although it is a close source wallet.

[Pmalek]

I do not know much about this, but I saw a Trezor article which is related to it and which may be helpful: https://trezor.io/learn/a/third-party-apps-and-trezor

Yeah that can help. I took another look at Trezor's coin page. For example, if your search for bitcoin or ethereum, the site only shows you Trezor Suite as the supported software. But if you type in polygon, then it displays 3rd-part software like MyCrypto or MEW. I guess if the asset is supported by Trezor Suite, they don't mention alternative wallets. If not (like in the case of polygon), they do.

Wallets listed are Electrum, Exodus, MetaMask, MyEtherWallet and MyCrypto wallet. I do not know if MyCrypto wallet support many other coins because I have not used the wallet before.

I have never either, but I think it's similar to MEW and only used for ether and ethereum-based tokens.

The last time I downloaded Exodus, it is supporting many cryptocurrencies including Solana and NFTs, although it is a close source wallet.

Yeah, Exodus is a multicurrency wallet, meaning that most coins and tokens would probably work by connecting your Trezor to it. It's closed-source, but your open-source Trezor does the sending. Exodus is just a means to get coins from A to B. All transaction details will be displayed and should be checked on the HWs screen.

[Ghepetto]

Thank you for the replies, perhaps I asked the wrong question.  Let me elaborate:

Strange question but but here goes. 

Its not a strange question, but yeah it looks weird when such questions come from a sr. member.

Will I still be able to access all my crypto?   If so how?

Any hardware wallet company doesnt have access to your coins, in any case if you are not able to spend from that hardware wallet itself (for any reason), you can import your seed in any other compatible wallet and spend your crypto from there. For e.g. if you got dogecoin and 14 other cryptos, and you want to send doge, just import the seed it in any self custodial dogecoin wallet and you're done. Do the same for rest of the crypto coins, i.e., import the same seed in their respective compatible wallets.
Simple trick: Buy another hardware wallet and restore all  your coins easily (with the seedphrase ofc)

I understand how to use a recovery phrase with the same hardware wallet and how it works.

My question was aimed at the "not able to spend from that hardware wallet itself" as I heard about an instance where one alt was DNS for a few days from a known issue, with the software, for the hardware wallet which was fixed later by the company.  So this is more of a case where none of the hardware wallets from that company would work due to a software issue. Buying a new piece of hardware would not have fixed this issue after importing seeds.

I'm not sure what would cause this or the mechanics behind it, which is why I am asking.  It could be a non issue but I wanted to be sure.

So when you say self custodial wallet do you mean the same hardware wallet?   In this case that would not work.  It was a software issue. If I had to guess I do not think the hardware wallet seed would work with a QT wallet, but I am unsure.  Maybe something like electrum if it were Bitcoin?

It is nothing like emergency, you have your hardware wallet like Trezor which you can even access with different wallet software like Electrum for bitcoin, Metamask for ERC20 etc, even if the official software of the wallet is outdated, you can use other reputable software wallets to spend your coins. Not that your wallet is stolen, just that the company that produces it is no more existing, which makes this not to be an emergency.

Know that it is your coin, you control the keys, not the company that produces the hardware wallet, you have full control over it. Because the company is affected, that does not mean your coin is affected.

As time goes on, you may later decide to continue to use the hardware wallet or not, but it is nothing that require emergency of buying another hardware wallet immediately.

Not an emergency at all.
Thanks for answering the electrum question before I posted.  Also, I understand no coins are effected but I was unsure how to access them in the case I mentioned above.

Basically, I was trying to decide if I should advise people to use a hardware wallet versus QT wallets in a faraday cage.

But if we can import the seeds into a different brand of hardware wallet it's a non issue in this instance.  It seems unlikely that all HW companies would get nuked at once, AND anybody would survive.


However, could this be an attack vector? AKA a government shuts down all the companies?  Confiscates/corrupts all the software? 

If so a QT in a faraday might be better?

[o_e_l_e_o]

My question was aimed at the "not able to spend from that hardware wallet itself" as I heard about an instance where one alt was DNS for a few days from a known issue, with the software, for the hardware wallet which was fixed later by the company.  So this is more of a case where none of the hardware wallets from that company would work due to a software issue. Buying a new piece of hardware would not have fixed this issue after importing seeds.

Then you can buy a hardware wallet from a different company which uses different software which is not bugged. Or if all hardware wallets are affected, you can use a new hardware wallet to transfer your 14 other coins to a brand new wallet, and then import your old seed phrase which now only contains that particular bugged altcoin in to the software of that particular altcoin in order to spend it.

Or a better option is not to buy shitcoins which are so buggy you can't even spend them.

However, could this be an attack vector? AKA a government shuts down all the companies?  Confiscates/corrupts all the software?

Not really. Even if they shut down all existing hardware wallet manufacturers, then nothing changes about the devices already produced. You might not be able to use the proprietary software such as Ledger Live or Trezor Suite in order to interact with your device, but it has always been preferable to use open source alternatives, preferably pointed at your own node, so as not to compromise your privacy. Just link your hardware wallet to Electrum instead.

[Ghepetto]

Thank you all for the replies and information, much appreciated.

[Pmalek]

My question was aimed at the "not able to spend from that hardware wallet itself" as I heard about an instance where one alt was DNS for a few days from a known issue, with the software, for the hardware wallet which was fixed later by the company.  So this is more of a case where none of the hardware wallets from that company would work due to a software issue.

Oh, I see. Maybe I can even guess which altcoin you are talking about but it's not important for this discussion.

In case hardware wallet #1 has an issue with a particular coin, how do you know that wallets #2 and #3 don't have the same problems? If the coin changed something on a protocol level, an update or a fix needs to be released by the wallets that support that coin to continue interacting with it in an uninterrupted manner. Some wallets could fix the code in a day, others might need a bit more time. Patience is a virtue in that case. Maybe there is a temporary workaround that you can use until your client fixes its main software. Like you said yourself, they fixed it in a few days.

If you were impatient and hurried to buy a different HW, you would have just wasted money. Chances are that the fix would be released before you new device is even shipped to your home.

[Husires]

However, could this be an attack vector? AKA a government shuts down all the companies?  Confiscates/corrupts all the software? 

Manufacturers of hardware wallets assume that the device generates private keys in a secure way that is not connected and will not connected to the Internet. They also use a standard to generate seeds. These standards are not tied to a specific vendor, so you can import the private key using any other wallet, or even ask a programmer to write a wallet compatible with that standard.

If the hardware wallet uses their own standard or there is no way to know how to generate the private key, then there is no difference between them and closed source wallets, and therefore your money is at risk and it is better to avoid them.

This applies to some altcoins that do not have an active developing.
for those altcoins keeping in in HW or CEX is the same.

[Pmalek]

If the hardware wallet uses their own standard or there is no way to know how to generate the private key, then there is no difference between them and closed source wallets, and therefore your money is at risk and it is better to avoid them.

This applies to some altcoins that do not have an active developing.
for those altcoins keeping in in HW or CEX is the same.

Are you talking about a possibility in which the software and blockchain is so badly done that it becomes impossible to make transactions or something else? If that is the case, then yeah, a non-functional shitcoin is equally non-functional no matter who holds the keys.

If you are talking about censorship, freezing of addresses, and reversibility of transactions, things are a bit different. These things could be initiated by the issuers and developers if your coins are on a CEX or in your hardware wallet. The additional risks with CEXs are that they can freeze, lose, steal, or gamble away your crypto. Or you fail their internal KYC or AML procedures.

[m2017]

Strange question but but here goes.  

Its not a strange question, but yeah it looks weird when such questions come from a sr. member.

Especially when the account was created in 2013.

Will I still be able to access all my crypto?   If so how?

Any hardware wallet company doesnt have access to your coins, in any case if you are not able to spend from that hardware wallet itself (for any reason), you can import your seed in any other compatible wallet and spend your crypto from there. For e.g. if you got dogecoin and 14 other cryptos, and you want to send doge, just import the seed it in any self custodial dogecoin wallet and you're done. Do the same for rest of the crypto coins, i.e., import the same seed in their respective compatible wallets.
Simple trick: Buy another hardware wallet and restore all  your coins easily (with the seedphrase ofc)

Even if all hardware wallet in the world are destroyed for one reason or another, you can always enter a seed-phrase in electrum, for example. Fortunately, this wallet has no physical execution and can be installed on any computer.

I'd be more worried that your fifteen random cryptos you store on hardware wallet didn't turn out to be shitcoins (this is much more common.) and become nothing than expecting HW company is gone forever.

[Ghepetto]

Strange question but but here goes.  

Its not a strange question, but yeah it looks weird when such questions come from a sr. member.

Especially when the account was created in 2013.

Will I still be able to access all my crypto?   If so how?

Any hardware wallet company doesnt have access to your coins, in any case if you are not able to spend from that hardware wallet itself (for any reason), you can import your seed in any other compatible wallet and spend your crypto from there. For e.g. if you got dogecoin and 14 other cryptos, and you want to send doge, just import the seed it in any self custodial dogecoin wallet and you're done. Do the same for rest of the crypto coins, i.e., import the same seed in their respective compatible wallets.
Simple trick: Buy another hardware wallet and restore all  your coins easily (with the seedphrase ofc)

Even if all hardware wallet in the world are destroyed for one reason or another, you can always enter a seed-phrase in electrum, for example. Fortunately, this wallet has no physical execution and can be installed on any computer.

I'd be more worried that your fifteen random cryptos you store on hardware wallet didn't turn out to be shitcoins (this is much more common.) and become nothing than expecting HW company is gone forever.

Shitcoins will be shitcoins, I agree.  However trading shitcoins based off hype cycles and pumps can be very very lucrative if you ignore the fiat value (without using fiat or stablecoins to purchase the shitcoins) and just stay focused on increasing your Bitcoin holdings.  But I wouldn't expect and account that was created November 09, 2017, 07:06:34 PM to understand that.  Also, yes I also agree it is much more likely for a shitcoin to go DNS vs a HW company failing in some fashion.

My question was aimed at the "not able to spend from that hardware wallet itself" as I heard about an instance where one alt was DNS for a few days from a known issue, with the software, for the hardware wallet which was fixed later by the company.  So this is more of a case where none of the hardware wallets from that company would work due to a software issue.

Oh, I see. Maybe I can even guess which altcoin you are talking about but it's not important for this discussion.

In case hardware wallet #1 has an issue with a particular coin, how do you know that wallets #2 and #3 don't have the same problems? If the coin changed something on a protocol level, an update or a fix needs to be released by the wallets that support that coin to continue interacting with it in an uninterrupted manner. Some wallets could fix the code in a day, others might need a bit more time. Patience is a virtue in that case. Maybe there is a temporary workaround that you can use until your client fixes its main software. Like you said yourself, they fixed it in a few days.

If you were impatient and hurried to buy a different HW, you would have just wasted money. Chances are that the fix would be released before you new device is even shipped to your home.

If I had to guess it was probably Litecoin, which is an alt but in my humble opinion it's not a complete shitcoin.  Yes impatience in crypto is probably the worst quality.  In fact, procrastination can sometimes be your ally, other times it could be ones downfall.

However, could this be an attack vector? AKA a government shuts down all the companies?  Confiscates/corrupts all the software?  

Manufacturers of hardware wallets assume that the device generates private keys in a secure way that is not connected and will not connected to the Internet. They also use a standard to generate seeds. These standards are not tied to a specific vendor, so you can import the private key using any other wallet, or even ask a programmer to write a wallet compatible with that standard.

If the hardware wallet uses their own standard or there is no way to know how to generate the private key, then there is no difference between them and closed source wallets, and therefore your money is at risk and it is better to avoid them.

This applies to some altcoins that do not have an active developing.
for those altcoins keeping in in HW or CEX is the same.

My question was aimed at the "not able to spend from that hardware wallet itself" as I heard about an instance where one alt was DNS for a few days from a known issue, with the software, for the hardware wallet which was fixed later by the company.  So this is more of a case where none of the hardware wallets from that company would work due to a software issue. Buying a new piece of hardware would not have fixed this issue after importing seeds.

Then you can buy a hardware wallet from a different company which uses different software which is not bugged. Or if all hardware wallets are affected, you can use a new hardware wallet to transfer your 14 other coins to a brand new wallet, and then import your old seed phrase which now only contains that particular bugged altcoin in to the software of that particular altcoin in order to spend it.

Or a better option is not to buy shitcoins which are so buggy you can't even spend them.

However, could this be an attack vector? AKA a government shuts down all the companies?  Confiscates/corrupts all the software?

Not really. Even if they shut down all existing hardware wallet manufacturers, then nothing changes about the devices already produced. You might not be able to use the proprietary software such as Ledger Live or Trezor Suite in order to interact with your device, but it has always been preferable to use open source alternatives, preferably pointed at your own node, so as not to compromise your privacy. Just link your hardware wallet to Electrum instead.

The responses above address the more specific question I asked later after I realized my initial inquiry was too broad.  My initial question seems to have confused some.  I was not asking how to use a recovery phrase for a hardware wallet (on a new HW same make) or if the coins were gone.

I was trying to ask how to use a seed phrase without a HW, generated from a HW in something like electrum.  AKA -seed compatibility.  And could this be exploited by governments to attack HW's had the answer to the previous question been not compatible.  But this seems like a non issue.  I can and have, many times walked someone through the simple process of seed creation, how it works.
 

o_e_l_e_o  - great idea to get a new HW and tx everything else to it and leave the bugged coin before importing it into anything that's hot.


Again, thank you all for the info!  It's very nice to see some people still frequent BCT taking the time to respond to the less knowledgeable regarding specifics.

[dkbit98]

Now the company that I bought the hardware wallet from gets nuked in a war and is gone forever.

If nuke falls on company...  
This probably means their servers will go down and you won't be able to send transactions with their official app, but I don't think anyone will care about that in nuclear war scenario.
In all other cases when company servers are not working, you can always use your generated seed words and import them in any other supported wallet, preferably hardware wallet.
Most hardware wallets use BIP39 seed words and that works with almost all wallets (software and hardware), so only difference could be derivation paths.

[Ghepetto]

Now the company that I bought the hardware wallet from gets nuked in a war and is gone forever.

If nuke falls on company... 
This probably means they servers will go down and you won't be able to send transactions with their official app, but I don't think anyone will care about that in nuclear war scenario.
In all other cases when company servers are not working, you can always use your generated seed words and import them in any other supported wallet, preferably hardware wallet.

Thanks for confirming, and yeah the nuke scenario was a bit much lol.

[Pmalek]

I was trying to ask how to use a seed phrase without a HW, generated from a HW in something like electrum.  AKA -seed compatibility.

The compatibility is there because most hardware wallets follow the BIP39 implementation. Electrum is somewhat different because it uses a unique seed creation process based on version numbers and not checksums like in BIP39, but it still accepts and supports BIP39 seeds with a minor settings change.

If your hardware wallet uses standard derivation paths (which popular brands do) and you have the correct recovery phrase + the passphrase (if one exists), you won't have difficulties recovering from a backup. Your coins could be lost if the original derivation path is something completely unorthodox and there would be no one in the world who knows which one it is.   

[o_e_l_e_o]

I was trying to ask how to use a seed phrase without a HW, generated from a HW in something like electrum.  AKA -seed compatibility.  And could this be exploited by governments to attack HW's had the answer to the previous question been not compatible.  But this seems like a non issue.

It's certainly a non-issue for bitcoin. There are plenty of good open source software wallets out there which accept BIP39 seed phrases.

For altcoins, however, it is a different story. You'll have no problems with the major ones, but for some random shitcoin there is no guarantee whatsoever that there is some standalone wallet software which will allow you to import seed phrases.

Your coins could be lost if the original derivation path is something completely unorthodox and there would be no one in the world who knows which one it is.

Which again, won't be an issue for bitcoin, but could certainly be an issue for the software for some random altcoin with a poor implementation which is using arbitrary derivation paths and no one knows what they are.

[n0nce]

Lets say I had a ledger, trezor or any hardware wallet with a seed phrase secured.   Let us assume I have fifteen random cryptos stored on it for this question.

Now the company that I bought the hardware wallet from gets nuked in a war and is gone forever.

Will I still be able to access all my crypto?   If so how?

Yes, since their software won't be deleted from your computer, nor from GitHub, if their headquarters get nuked in a war.

If the software stops getting development / updates, you need to check if there are alternatives. For accessing the Trezor's Bitcoin funds, you can use Electrum, Sparrow, or even Bitcoin Core. For other coins, it gets tricky; it depends on whether alternative software exists or not. You have to check with the developers / documentation of those coins to get a full answer to this question.