Most secure wallet / hardware wallet for long term storage 2024 ?

[Genesis Block]

I've had a few various wallets over the years, but was wondering what the consensus is currently?

[Zaguru12]

The consensus for a secure wallet is an open source cold wallet like the hardware wallet you mentioned or a software wallet on an airgapped device. There are different types of open source hardware wallets and you can choose any from the list here. For hot wallets been used on airgapped device I will go for electrum wallet, Although other open source wallets can still serve same purpose.

You need to understand that the safety of your wallet also depends on how you safeguard your wallet seed phrase. There for a proper offline backup is advised

[Charles-Tim]

Safest wallets are still cold wallets.

Recommended are wallet on airgapped device and airgapped hardware wallets. Or paper wallet that is safely created on an airgapped device.

Another safe wallet is multisig wallet if setup properly.

Making it more secure offline if it is single sig, passphrase is recommended.

[seoincorporation]

I've had a few various wallets over the years, but was wondering what the consensus is currently?

There are a lot of different hardware wallets nowadays, some of them are digital and others are pure metal, personally, i don't like the digital ones because i don't feel like they can last forever, but the mechanical ones are cool. I would recommend the Billfold:

This one is against fire, corrosion, water... so, for me feels like one of the most secure options nowadays. I don't like the fact that words can only use 4 characters, but is secure enough from my point of view.

[Charles-Tim]

There are a lot of different hardware wallets nowadays, some of them are digital and others are pure metal, personally, i don't like the digital ones because i don't feel like they can last forever, but the mechanical ones are cool. I would recommend the Billfold:

This one is against fire, corrosion, water... so, for me feels like one of the most secure options nowadays. I don't like the fact that words can only use 4 characters, but is secure enough from my point of view.

Bitfodl is not a hardware wallet but a steel case for BIP39 seed phrase backup. OP is asking of a hardware wallet and not a backup.

https://shop.ledger.com/products/the-billfodl

[Apocollapse]

Probably taking look with the new improvement and update from the wallet you use, there's a wallet blacklist certain address and another one share the seed phrase to third party. More might coming, we just don't know which wallet will do that, that why it's important to keep updated.

I would recommend the Billfold:

This one is against fire, corrosion, water... so, for me feels like one of the most secure options nowadays. I don't like the fact that words can only use 4 characters, but is secure enough from my point of view.

It looks like you mixed up between hardware wallet and metal for seed phrase back up.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

The consensus for a secure wallet is an open source cold wallet like the hardware wallet you mentioned or a software wallet on an airgapped device. There are different types of open source hardware wallets and you can choose any from the list here. For hot wallets been used on airgapped device I will go for electrum wallet, Although other open source wallets can still serve same purpose.

You need to understand that the safety of your wallet also depends on how you safeguard your wallet seed phrase. There for a proper offline backup is advised

Your last paragraph is completely right, and I was going to mention this in my comment, so, seeing that you've already said same thing, I thought I should quote, thereby acknowledging that you've mentioned same as well.

Overall, it is very important that we as users understand that we are our own security, a person can use either a hot wallet or cold/hardware wallet for several years and never get hacked or lose his or her funds, but another may do same and get hacked the very next day.

So, in the nutshell, our funds is just as secure as we ourselves chose to tighten our wallet security, ive personally been using myceluim wallet on mobile for a several years now, since 2017 actually, and never have I been hacked or had lost funds in any malicious form, I own a hardware wallet I bought of recent, but haven't started using it yet.
So, in the end, ones we chose the right type of wallet, like open source non-custodial wallet, could be a cold or hot wallet (both makes sense actually), the security of our funds at this point is completely in our hands.

[Dunamisx]

All you need is to understand the way you can first go about the use of cold storages, their types and the required standard of practice required on their use, a lot of examples have already been mentioned to you from the above replies made, i will have these best non custodial wallets as recommendation for you to choose which one to use for the best practice of your privacy and security.

wallets for security and privacy
Bitcoin Core
Passport
Electrum
Sparrow Bluewallet

[SamReomo]

I've had a few various wallets over the years, but was wondering what the consensus is currently?

Electrum is the wallet that you should consider. It's the safest wallet for storing your Bitcoin for long-term. But, you may go with Electrum as cold wallet. A cold wallet is much safe for long-term storing of your Bitcoin than a hot wallet.

Some people believe that you should never connect to internet even for a once on the system where you store your cold wallet. While others believe that you may connect to internet during wallet creation and once it's created then you should disconnect it forever from internet to have facilities of cold wallet.

With the help of electrum you can do both of those but I prefer you to go with offline one as that's a little bit more safe for you. Here's a guide that you read in order to create an electrum offline wallet. The software based cold wallet would be more than enough to safely store your Bitcoin for long term.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

I've had a few various wallets over the years, but was wondering what the consensus is currently?

Electrum is the wallet that you should consider. It's the safest wallet for storing your Bitcoin for long-term. But, you may go with Electrum as cold wallet. A cold wallet is much safe for long-term storing of your Bitcoin than a hot wallet.

Some people believe that you should never connect to internet even for a once on the system where you store your cold wallet. While others believe that you may connect to internet during wallet creation and once it's created then you should disconnect it forever from internet to have facilities of cold wallet.

With the help of electrum you can do both of those but I prefer you to go with offline one as that's a little bit more safe for you. Here's a guide that you read in order to create an electrum offline wallet. The software based cold wallet would be more than enough to safely store your Bitcoin for long term.

I think i go with your recommendations on the use of electrum wallet because it has lots of advantages and we can also have many applicable use of this same wallet as a multisig bitcoin wallet and generate as many as possible bitcoin address, there's more to discover about the security ethics in using electrum wallet and other applicable measures we ca take along it use, i have some of them listed below.

Creating Electrum Cold Storage
Creating a cold storage wallet

How to create Electrum Multisig wallet
Creating a multisig wallet

2FA in using Electrum wallet.
Two Factor Authentication

How to verify your Electrum Wallet
[GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum

[btc78]

A lot of people are saying that cold wallets are the safest but I beg to disagree. Cold wallets are connected to the internet and therefore hackable. No matter how good and secure the system is… there’s still a possibility that it can be accessed and traced through the internet.

Trezor has been one of the most trusted hard core wallets out there allowing for a much secure storage of cryptocurrencies. It might be a problem however that it is quite costly but I like to think it’s quite worth it.

[MusaMohamed]

I've had a few various wallets over the years, but was wondering what the consensus is currently?

If you have been already in Bitcoin community for years, used some different wallets, I believe you already well known about basics criteria to choose a good Bitcoin wallet to use.

Non custodial: you own private keys.
Open source: reproducible, can be tested by community, to detect back doors from wallet developers.

Other things like Lightning Network support for example, comes after first two criteria.

https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet
https://walletscrutiny.com/

[Maus0728]

There's not a lot of replies yet but I can tell that cold wallets are going to be the best one still, and I can attest to that since that's where I store my bitcoin for the long-term, not to mention that it's easy to use since there's a tutorial, if y'all are curious how to create your own cold storage wallet, check out @Aanouluwatofunmi's post, you got there the instructions to make one.

Another thing why I think that cold wallets are still the top pick is that it's obviously the most secured of them all storages out there, if it's not connected to the Internet then there's no way that someone can get into your bitcoins, it's also the fact that they're obsoletion resistance like this is the peak of this and it can never be more better. Kind of like if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Have to remember though, even if you think that they're safe, this whole stuff is reliant on how you do things, if you are bad at securing stuff and careless about this kind of stuff, even that cold wallet isn't going to save from malicious groups of people from stealing your money.

[Troytech]

I've had a few various wallets over the years, but was wondering what the consensus is currently?

I don't think they can be an overall best wallet cause they are all built differently to suite different individuals with different purpose of usage, Personal and overall self custody is the best and which ever wallet you are using should be cold wallets with open source so you can have information if they are back doors by the developers, which ever wallet your using your private keys is what matters the most and you should try your best to store and save it well, maybe consider using a hard wallet like trezor if you want to store very large amount of asset in it. Practice self custody.

I've had a few various wallets over the years, but was wondering what the consensus is currently?

There are a lot of different hardware wallets nowadays, some of them are digital and others are pure metal, personally, i don't like the digital ones because i don't feel like they can last forever, but the mechanical ones are cool. I would recommend the Billfold:

This one is against fire, corrosion, water... so, for me feels like one of the most secure options nowadays. I don't like the fact that words can only use 4 characters, but is secure enough from my point of view.

Except the fact that's its so easy to lose if your careless, when I was anticipating which hard wallet I would buy, I was considering different factors such as how long I can keep I can keep it safe, especially if you plan to hold your bitcoin for up to 20 years and thigns like change of apartment, maybe getting other hard wallets and lots of possibilities that can occur along the line. So I think it's not really about the best hard wallet it's if you can keep it safe and how careful you are personally.

[Smack That Ace]

I think choosing a wallet to store bitcoins is important, but the most important thing is how we use and preserve them. It's not that we can just use a hardware wallet and our bitcoins will be absolutely safe and will never be lost. I have been using Electrum wallet for many years, but so far I have never had any problems or lost even a few satoshis.

So if you can afford it, owning a hardware wallet is not bad, but if you don't have one, you can also use an open source software wallet like Electrum. Focus more on how to use and preserve them, and your bitcoins will still be safe.

[satscraper]

Another safe wallet is multisig wallet if setup properly.

Yeah, I would also advocate such setup for most secure and at same time long-term-storage but   with some very considerable detailing,  i.e.. cosigners in this multisig must be hardware wallets from different makers. To leverage the safety and complexity I would use 2-of-3 type  of multisig.

BTW, below is Sparrow's recommendations for wallet's type depending on the size of stash.  Definitely, they are arguable, but, could be taken into consideration

[dkbit98]

I've had a few various wallets over the years, but was wondering what the consensus is currently?

There is no consensus, each wallet have pros and cons.
Safest wallets are open source and airgapped devices.

Here is my list of Open Source hardware wallets:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5288971.0

There are a lot of different hardware wallets nowadays, some of them are digital and others are pure metal, personally, i don't like the digital ones because i don't feel like they can last forever, but the mechanical ones are cool. I would recommend the Billfold

First, this is not exactly a hardware wallet, this is cold storage backup solution for seed words.
Second, I would never buy this Billfodl or any similar plates with individual letters, because it can get destroyed much easier.
Material stainless steel is very good but it needs to be more simple design, even regular ss washers can be used for this purpose.
Jameson Lopp tested a bunch of this metal backup plates, and Billfodl is very poorly rated:
https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/

[Pmalek]

A lot of people are saying that cold wallets are the safest but I beg to disagree. Cold wallets are connected to the internet and therefore hackable.

Cold wallets are not connected to the internet, their keys are and should be on a device with a clean OS that doesn't possess the hardware to connect to the internet. If you have a cold wallet that is connected to the internet, then you are doing something wrong.

Trezor has been one of the most trusted hard core wallets out there allowing for a much secure storage of cryptocurrencies.

Trezor is a hardware wallet. Some people put hardware wallets in the cold wallet category, others believe they should be in a category of their own. They are neither hot nor cold, they are simply hardware wallets.

To answer OP's question. Since your thread is in the hardware wallet sub, I will only focus on HWs. The best ones are those that are airgapped, and you don't need to connect them to your computer. You can export the master private key, import it to a supported software client, and sign transactions offline. Stateless use is another plus. The usual open-source and non-custodial rules still apply.