A better crypto wallet for Bitcoin?

[5W-KILO]

Good morning beautiful people.

Is there anyone using Tangem wallet on this forum?
The need to have recovery seed is not available but the chip holds your private keys.

In one way how is this safer than other self custodial wallets?
No Bluetooth, no WIFI, no USB



If you have this crypto wallet what is the reason behind you choosing it over others like Ledger?
And for the rest of you, is there any reason why you will never use Tangem wallet?

Thanks.

[Charles-Tim]

You can more about the wallet on this this: TANGEM WALLET: An Innovative Seedles Cold Wallet Setup

Seed phrase has an advantage which is memorizing it as the fourth backup after 3 offline backups. Memorizing it can be unreliable backup because you can not rely on your brain, but it might safe your coins in some situations like a natural disaster.

Not all Tangem wallets are seedless wallet compulsory.

One of the reasons I can not use the hardware wallet is because it is close source.

Its only advantage that I see is that it can help against phishing attack, but phishing attacks are easy to avoid if you learn about it.

[GreatArkansas]

Lately, I realized that having pen and paper only for your Bitcoin wallet is becoming better than these some rocket sciences wallet, especially hardware wallet. It's scary on what's happening everything right now.
That's why sometimes I got anxious about these, like even I am using hardware wallet, its still not safe because of these lot of hacks, etc.

[The Cryptovator]

Is there anyone using Tangem wallet on this forum?
The need to have recovery seed is not available but the chip holds your private keys.

If you have this crypto wallet what is the reason behind you choosing it over others like Ledger?
And for the rest of you, is there any reason why you will never use Tangem wallet?

So far I have read the thread about the Tangem wallet; you can also generate a seed phrase as well if you want. But since you are talking about seedless wallets, then I probably won’t use them. If I don’t have a seed phrase, then in case of any incident or if I lose the wallet card, then I am not sure how we will recover my wallet.

I don’t consider it a special wallet at all. So there is no strong reason to move on from the Tangem wallet to another hardware wallet. It’s true now I am ignoring using the Ledger wallet and continuing to use Trezor. Tangem seems to still be closed source, whereas the Trezor wallet is open source. Probably that’s why I won’t move to Tangem from the Trezor.

[SeriouslyGiveaway]

Lately, I realized that having pen and paper only for your Bitcoin wallet is becoming better than these some rocket sciences wallet, especially hardware wallet. It's scary on what's happening everything right now.
That's why sometimes I got anxious about these, like even I am using hardware wallet, its still not safe because of these lot of hacks, etc.

With a pen and a piece of paper, you can write down the wallet seed phrase when you are creating the wallet offline, and nobody know about your wallet and its seed phrase, including a passphrase (extended seed phrase) if you set it up for your wallet.

Paper wallet has its weakness especially physical factors that can damage or destroy our paper wallets and paper wallet backups but we can easily make multiple backups and store them in different places.

The biggest strength of paper wallet is, as said, we don't have to feel fearful about any wallet manufacturers, resellers and delivery man.

[JollyGood]

I had never heard of Tangem but regardless of the service they provide, there is no doubt at all that using a closed source wallet is an extremely bad idea. I think you cannot have real hopes of securing your crypto if you do not even know the software has been assessed as being safe to use. Hardware wallets have been exposed as being a very weak link in safely storing crypto therefore it is also unwise to use any. As a precaution, it is better to stop using hardware wallets such as Ledger and Trezor therefore moving the funds out of them (to a different wallet) should be a priority.

So far I have read the thread about the Tangem wallet; you can also generate a seed phrase as well if you want. But since you are talking about seedless wallets, then I probably won’t use them. If I don’t have a seed phrase, then in case of any incident or if I lose the wallet card, then I am not sure how we will recover my wallet.

I don’t consider it a special wallet at all. So there is no strong reason to move on from the Tangem wallet to another hardware wallet. It’s true now I am ignoring using the Ledger wallet and continuing to use Trezor. Tangem seems to still be closed source, whereas the Trezor wallet is open source. Probably that’s why I won’t move to Tangem from the Trezor.

[mirakal]

I have no idea about this wallet so I made some research and I'm surprised it looks like a credit card.


Source: Tangem Official Website

Based on what I read, it has no screen, no battery, and can only be accessed through a phone with NFC, and you can buy a set of up to 3 cards, one main card and the other 2 are backup cards which you can use to access the same wallet. I think this is a good one.

As for the price, it's actually quite affordable compared to some other hardware wallets.

• 2-card set - $54.90
• 3-card set - $69.90

Source: Tangem Official Pricing

One thing I also learned is that if you choose the seedless setup and lose all your cards, you will lose access to your funds permanently. So keeping the backup cards safe is very important.

https://tangem.com/en/help-center/app-functionality/features-customization/

A wallet created with a seed phrase is marked Seed next to the wallet name. If there is no Seed label, the wallet was created without a seed phrase.

[Pmalek]

No Bluetooth, no WIFI, no USB

And no source code! If we criticize Ledger for being closed-source (just one of the many things they deserve to be criticized for), then the same rules should apply to other products. Tangem being one of them. I don't see what advantage a Tangem would have over the competition. The seedless setup? The smart cards? Naah.

If someone wants to move away from traditional hardware wallets because of what's been happening lately, it makes sense to upgrade to something more secure, not the other way around. Stateless, airgapped, offline, etc.

[EL MOHA]

Lately, I realized that having pen and paper only for your Bitcoin wallet is becoming better than these some rocket sciences wallet, especially hardware wallet. It's scary on what's happening everything right now.
That's why sometimes I got anxious about these, like even I am using hardware wallet, its still not safe because of these lot of hacks, etc.

Seriously it’s understandably scary but we need to be realistic regardless of the hack that happens one thing that we need to still know is that nothing beats the use of self custody and with self custody one shouldn’t also just settle for any wallet but should actually filter them starting having only large amounts of coins on cold wallet only and while this cold wallet can be an hardware not all hardware should be used most especially those who many are pointing fingers at.

As for me I think the best form of cold wallet is self set up airgapped wallet, this way I am confident about supply chain not been tampered later on like we say with ledger or having problem of leaked data. Then the software wallet to be used will be an open source.

Tangem doesn’t have the best attributes for me to use them

[Ambatman]

This is the first time I'm hearing about this wallet and I know I did a thorough research on good open source hardware wallets a year ago
Then a quick check showed why I didn't see it
It's closed sourced.
It looks sleek so does keycard hardware wallet.
I personally usually go with the wallets that's mainstream since I believe most of those might have gone through better reviews.

[JollyGood]

The fact remains that there are plenty of products on the market, you have to be very careful about the products you use for your crypto. Now seems to the best time to remind people that hardware wallets come with their own problems and it is not worth taking the risk.

No matter how good any product might be (or claim to be), the fact remains that closed source is always going to be a risk when crypto is at stake. If any software cannot be independently evaluated and assessed in order to be deemed safe or secure, then the best course of action has to be to avoid using it.

And no source code! If we criticize Ledger for being closed-source (just one of the many things they deserve to be criticized for), then the same rules should apply to other products. Tangem being one of them. I don't see what advantage a Tangem would have over the competition. The seedless setup? The smart cards? Naah.

If someone wants to move away from traditional hardware wallets because of what's been happening lately, it makes sense to upgrade to something more secure, not the other way around. Stateless, airgapped, offline, etc.

[Meuserna]

I see too many issues to ever recommend Tangem to anyone. Maybe for small amounts of Bitcoin, it's not terrible? Eh. For any coins you care about, care enough to avoid Tangem.

First of all, avoid trendy gadgets like the plague.

Second: Never trust your Bitcoin to Closed Source code. Don't even trust Source Verifiable code. The code needs to be open so devs can battle test it in their own work to find bugs and errors. The ColdCard catastrophe with over $100 million worth of Bitcoin stolen proved why this matters.

Third: How can you trust a company whose marketing makes it seem like they don't even know the basics of Bitcoin? Tangem says their wallets are "seedleess" but they actually mean seed-phrase-less, not seedless. Even Tangem's "seedless" wallets have a seed, and anyone who doesn't understand that needs to learn what a Bitcoin wallet actually is.

A seed phrase is human readable entropy used in the math that generates a SEED. That seed is used to generate all of the private and public keys.

A Tangem "seedless" wallet still has a seed, from which all of the private keys and addresses are generated. But that seed is not generated from a seed phrase, which means two things, both of them catastrophically bad:

1. A Tangem "seedless" wallet provides the user with no human readable backup, which means the user doesn't have the ability to restore their wallet manually in a worst case scenario. Whatever knucklehead at Tangem thought that was a good idea needs to be fired.

2. The user has no way to prove the entropy used to generate the supposedly "seedless" Tangem wallet is truly random, which means the user has no way to prove the wallet is even safe. Whatever knucklehead at Tangem thought that was a good idea needs to be fired.

I would never trust Tangem.

[Meuserna]

Here's my advice for the best hardware wallet money can buy:

Get a Raspberry Pi Zero, a camera, and an LCD hat. Off the shelf parts.

Install SeedSigner. When you're ready for an even more advanced hardware wallet, install ShieldSigner instead of SeedSigner. Same hardware. ShieldSigner is a fork of SeedSigner that adds more features and security.

Full instructions for building one yourself are on the SeedSigner website, and there are tons of tutorials online too.

Here's what you get:

The device is fully airgapped. USB is for power only. No WIFI. No Bluetooth. Having no way to connect it to the internet or to any device connected to the internet means online thieves can't reach it.

The device is stateless. This means your seed phrase and wallet aren't saved on the device. They're wiped every time it turns off or reboots. If a thief steals the device, they can't steal your Bitcoin because your wallet isn't on it.

ShieldSigner supports encrypted Seed QR. This means even if somebody finds your QR, they can't read it. Without your decryption key, the QR scans as gibberish (because it's encrypted).

ShieldSigner supports passphrase QR. This gives you the ability to use a strong passphrase instead of an easily crackable weak one.

SeedSigner and ShieldSigner are fully open source. This helps prevent bugs because anybody can test the code and even battle-test it by using it in their own work. I firmly believe the ColdCard bug would have been found in 2021 if ColdCard had kept their code open source, and thousands of Bitcoiners wouldn't have been robbed.

The device runs on off the shelf parts. This helps prevent supply chain attacks such as the Ledger thefts we're seeing. And, because you're not buying a device from a hardware wallet company, your name and address don't end up on a mailing list that gets leaked to thieves.

P.S. Krux is another excellent option for a hardware wallet/signer that gives you all of the above, but it runs on different hardware.

[FinneysTrueVision]

Tangem requires a mobile application to show you what you are signing because it doesn’t have a built in screen. Unlike traditional hardware wallets, you have to blindly trust that the mobile application, which is on an internet connected device, is showing you accurate information about what you are signing. It is also possible to download a fake app which skips the confirmation screen altogether and Tangem will still sign the transaction which could be malicious. This was demonstrated by the CEO of Seedor.

I see ads for Tangem all over YouTube and Amazon. They also spend a lot on influencers to shill their wallet. They might have a large marketing budget but this does not change the fact that they are a very insecure closed source wallet. I don’t think it should even be considered a hardware wallet. It is not much better than a compromised hot wallet if you get fooled into downloading a fake app.

[5W-KILO]

Lately, I realized that having pen and paper only for your Bitcoin wallet is becoming better than these some rocket sciences wallet, especially hardware wallet. It's scary on what's happening everything right now.
That's why sometimes I got anxious about these, like even I am using hardware wallet, its still not safe because of these lot of hacks, etc.

Thanks for this wonderful reply, by the way I hope you don't mind me asking you this.
What is your own best method of generating your own recovery seed and writing it down in a book?

I will love to know.

I think all beginners who skipped the root of generating Bitcoin recovery seed by themselves needs to go back and learn about it, enough of entrusting this task on some crypto company or crypto wallets.

[satscraper]

If you have this crypto wallet what is the reason behind you choosing it over others like Ledger?


Thanks.

Forum has dedicated thread for this wallet, so you might want to follow it to find answers to your questions both those you’ve already asked and those you might have in the future.

I’ve been using this wallet for around three years and have found it very convenient for on-the-go use. For example, I usually pay for shopping with crypto cards, but prefer to keep them minimal sum there so when any card lacks of money I use Tangem to top it up directly inside the shop.