Hardware wallets and seed storage

BEGINNERS & HELP Storing crypto
#1

say I know this is off topic but I gotta ask. I’m in this about 2 weeks…been putting off blockchain for years but hey, better late than never. So, I got my first hard wallet yesterday…the least expensive Trezor. I am admittedly quite disappointed. I thought that it would be able to store all coins/tokens…it cannot. It also does not appear to interface with many exchanges. Is there some open source code out there to make your own hard wallet with a solid state drive (SD or thumb) that is customizable?

The reason this is quite important is that I thought there was a soft layer of security on paperwallets where you could still password protect the privatekey…opps (I think you can do this is BTC paper but not Etherbased)

and finally they say not to upload your seed list. WHY??? Isn’t uploading it to reputable online storage and held in a folder/vault that is 2FA password protected not WAYYYY saver than under the mattress or ever a safe? That just seems to me to be the safest of all yet I have seen time and time again that this isn’t but not told why. Why?

And if I lose my Trezor and have access to my seed list online 2FA secured BUT I cannot get another Trezor (I only have one)…how do I access funds? I cannot.

So, wouldn’t 2FA online storage of paperwallets be the most secure storage? especially if it were your cell…

Thankx much!!

I need help with JavaScript
#2

Hi,

I’m not sure how many coins/tokens your Trezor supports, but I use a Ledger and it supports a very wide range (much increased over the past 18 months — so that bodes well for future growth in supported coins/tokens too).

No… you need a special hardware secure element, which you can read about here:

No, it’s not safer. You should never upload your seed to any kind of cloud storage however reputable and secure they are, because when you enter your seed to upload it there could be machine key loggers or simliar types of attacks at work. So whether you have 2FA or not doesn’t avoid this type of security risk.
Remember that there is a much higher probability that online attackers could access both your seed and passwords and thereby steal your crypto than someone finding your seed phrase hidden wherever you’ve hidden it and then knowing what to do with it AND knowing the other relevant passwords etc.

You’d need to buy another Trezor - that’s why many people have more than one hardware wallet (as a backup). I personally don’t, but at the moment I’m prepared to have to wait a few days to access my funds until I get a new Ledger delivered. It’s not currently essential that I have immediate access to my crypto — this obviously depends on personal circumstances.

I hope that answers your questions… let us know if I’ve left anything hanging. I’d encourage you to check out Ledger (I’m not on commission or anything, honestly, I promise!!)… even if it’s just to read up on all these security and wallet issues on their website. There’s loads of great user-friendly info there.

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#3

very key information, thank you. I wanted Ledger however they do not ship to where I am presently residing. I have to be careful what I say too living here but the Trezor was shipped from Czech republic by UPS and the customs here completely tore the shipment down opening up even the packaging. It does not appear that Trezor was hacked but who knows. I’m not a millionaire so I’m mixing everything up into Trezor, paper wallet, exchange, and online 2FA vault…was a good experience moving between each of the storage locations as this is a whole new ball of wax. YEs, I ordered a second Trezor as I want to rule out having to wait…cheers

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#4

Glad that was helpful :slightly_smiling_face: It really does take an awful lot of time to get your head round all of the security implications — a lot of people never do, so it’s really good that you’re asking all these very logical questions. There are so many things you hear regarding crypto security, chanted like mantras, but often they don’t seem to make logical sense at first…it’s definitely a gradual realisation that takes time (and a lot of questioning and reading — sorry I know you don’t like reading :wink: )

Obviously it’s your own personal choice and determined by your own particular situation, but I would keep as much as possible in cold storage (your hardware wallet ) i.e. offline.

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#5

Just a little update… I was wrong when I said that you don’t want your hardware wallet to interface with exchanges (you’ll see I’ve removed that paragraph from my orginal reply above). Your hardware wallet can interface with an exchange, and sign and deposit funds there, for example, without your private keys leaving the hardware wallet.

I’ve never used an interface between my Ledger and exchanges to be honest, as I don’t make many transactions. So I’m not sure how Trezor compares with other hardware wallets in terms of interface capacity…

Now I’ve moved this discussion to a separate topic, hopefully someone else will comment on this, or I’ll let you know when I’ve researched it myself.

@thecil, @Mauro @Fabrice

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Which hardware wallet would guys recommend?
#6

why are there compatability issue with any hard wallet? If it can hold BTC and ETH should it not be able to hold every token due to ERC24? Cardano seems to be somewhat unique as well. It also appears that with BTC you can password protect your private key on a paper wallet. Why can you not do this with all other tokens? Curious.

PS: I really should have read the fundamental first as I am struggling with the JS button click assignment…