Is cold wallet better

[pawanjain]

Although, if you want to send and see your balance, you have to connect it to your computer and with the Internet, but the wallet itself is offline. Some people set up a local computer with no Internet access as their cold wallet but is this really feasible.

We don't require the hardware wallet device just to see the balance in it. If we have the public key, that is, the addresses holding the funds then we can use any block explorer to see the balance.
To send the funds to someone else we do require the hardware wallet device though.
Yes, there are some people who setup a cold wallet using a computer with no internet access and it is considered safe too if you have multiple backups of the wallet.
But the thing is that we have to be cautious of what we are doing with the computer and how we are accessing it to make transactions from that wallet.

[Zaguru12]

Cold wallet is different from airgapped and I will always choose the latter.

Example of cold wallets are Ledger nano, Trezor and Tangem.
The problems I have with them is the needy to connect to the computer via USB connection, airgapped wallets are not like that, and security wise airgapped wallets are better.

Airgapped hardware wallets uses QR codes and SD cards.
Airgapped wallet is better.

Wow this is news to me, so airgapped wallets are different from cold wallet? But I thought cold wallets are wallets that uses hardware devices to store your coins, without needing the internet, so how is it exactly different from airgapped wallets setup

@KiaKia is wrong there is nothing differentiating a cold wallet from airgapped wallet, airgapped wallet is just another type of cold wallet storage. They are basically just two types of wallet which is hot wallet which are wallets that requires internet connection and then cold wallet which doesn’t requires any internet connection as you have rightly said.

Under cold wallet storage there are different ways to do it either the popular hardware wallets we all know regardless of whether there are airgapped or hot wallets like electrum wallet which can be used on airgapped devices as a cold wallet both saves it’s purpose as a cold wallet since the keys and seed phrase are not exposed to the internet.

[suzanne5223]

Recently, I saw an article about cold wallet in coingeko, talking about cold wallets, I then remembered a friend of mine back in 2022, that was hitting it big back then in the crypto space, he bought 2 cold wallets and decided to store it there, I asked why, he said for security, he went on to explain how it works, it's basically like a storage device/memory card although it's shaped as a USB drive, you store your crypto data in there.

It is not every cold wallet that has the shape of a USD drive, and the security of the crypto your friend has in the wallet is determined by how s/he use the wallet.
No matter how secure the cold wallet is, if your friend uses it in the way that will expose the wallet to vulnerability s/he will still loose the crypto in the cold wallet.

I was like is this truly secured, what if u lost it and this can literally be stolen, he said it was password protected and it do have recovery phrase, tha blew my mind, it's like holding your crypto in your hand literally.

Yes, every self custody wallet has a password, backup seed phrase, and privacy keys, which can be used to recover all the crypto in the wallet. However, you still need to keep them in at least two secure locations.

[Cryptomultiplier]

Cold wallet is different from airgapped and I will always choose the latter.

Example of cold wallets are Ledger nano, Trezor and Tangem.
The problems I have with them is the needy to connect to the computer via USB connection, airgapped wallets are not like that, and security wise airgapped wallets are better.

Airgapped hardware wallets uses QR codes and SD cards.
Airgapped wallet is better.

Wow this is news to me, so airgapped wallets are different from cold wallet? But I thought cold wallets are wallets that uses hardware devices to store your coins, without needing the internet, so how is it exactly different from airgapped wallets setup

@KiaKia is wrong there is nothing differentiating a cold wallet from airgapped wallet, airgapped wallet is just another type of cold wallet storage. They are basically just two types of wallet which is hot wallet which are wallets that requires internet connection and then cold wallet which doesn’t requires any internet connection as you have rightly said.

Under cold wallet storage there are different ways to do it either the popular hardware wallets we all know regardless of whether there are airgapped or hot wallets like electrum wallet which can be used on airgapped devices as a cold wallet both saves it’s purpose as a cold wallet since the keys and seed phrase are not exposed to the internet.

There's of course different types of cold wallets and I can say it depends on what you can afford, and what your plans are for long term.
An air gapped wallet may be for more serious usage that requires long term investment plan of savings and less access to Internet devices, hence why it uses something like QR codes, while a hardware wallet like Trezor or Ledger that you decide to use require USD input or Bluetooth connection to an online device.
The knowledge of your intention is always good because, it is true that cold wallets are also known as self custodial wallets, but the reality is that, not all self custodial wallets are cold wallets.

[Cleanslate_]

Yes cold wallet (hardware wallet) remains the best because it is only used for storing your Bitcoin and are strongly protected from attacks that other software wallets are exposed to, it stores all your private keys, when you want to make transaction you have to connect it to the computer and internet before transactions can be made and all the signing takes place on the device, and the private keys are so secured because it is not exposed to the internet, although it is very expensive but the best to be used .