Topic: Hardware wallet demand increases in 2022 bear market as exchange scramble - page 3. (Read 717 times)

I think as more and more strict regulations are implemented on Crypto currencies, people will start to look for alternative ways to store their Private keys and they are also getting more familiar with the concept of controlling their own Private keys and not giving that power to 3rd party Exchanges.

The Crypto exchanges are the weak link in the Pseudo anonymity of Crypto currency holdings and people are recognizing that now. We cannot discount the fact that criminals are also buying more hardware wallets to protect their proceeds from criminal activities. 

I can't comment on the numbers and estimates, but I will take your word for it. Luckily (in this case), the awakening doesn't happen simultaneously and people realize little by little that it's wrong and dangerous to store your coins on exchanges. So we don't have to worry about exchange users flooding the mempools with withdrawalal transactions. Not yet at least.   

I know. I have mentioned a few times that there are differences between the earlier Nano X batches and the more-recent ones that started having battery and charging issues. 

I do remember reading about a few broken Trezor cases and I have a picture in my head of a user duct tapping the USB cable to the device because it wasn't working otherwise. Maybe that exact picture is posted somewhere in my showoff your hardware wallet thread, or I saw it elsewhere else. But nothing significant. I am sure you could find problems with Trezor's as well if you dig for it on Reddit. I am not really interested in that though.

Perhaps, the idea of moving your funds into a more secure wallet which is a hardware wallet has been gaining more recommendations and suggestions. As if you are a bag holder and of having a huge amount of Bitcoin your mind now is to think to find a safe wallet to protect it and seeing/hearing people talking about hardware wallets gives them an interest and this is what is happening now. This is not actually surprising for I know that this will come as the market continue to develop where new technology could possibly hit the market. Imagine how these computers have been a growing industry.

It create huge demand because many people got afraid on what will happen to their coins stored their since there are scenarios that exchange scam or hold the balances of their users for long years. And people cannot afford that it will happen to them that's why this series of events is not surprising because many people want to secure their funds and wait until the bull run came safely.

Not surprising where people do mind off about total security on the times where hacking accidents and losses because of stolen funds is really becoming that rampant which these steps should
have done earlier.As anticipated where people do only learn up things when unfortunate things happen again. Me whether its a bull market or bear then i have secured out my hardware wallet
and save up my assets which are good for long term.Only the amounts that i do put up on any platform or custodial wallets are the amounts which i do tend to rolling it out
to make some profits and those profits would be sent out on my HW for long term purposes.

It would not surprise me all that much if the hardware wallet rise in demand came from the extremely painful lessons some people have made in the past few weeks and months regarding the all important law of "not your keys, not your coins". I am of course talking about fiascos like the Celcius withdrawal freezing and bankruptcy declaration. People need to understand that only they are responsible for their money, nobody else.

Although I would be careful with new scams and hacks regarding hardware wallets bought from third partys in the coming months. I would not trust to buy a hardware wallet unless its directly from the source or a reputable vendor.

I had a ledger nano for years and it works as intended. The problem with hardware wallets is that they require some sort of software and that software is more vulnerable than the device itself.
Trezor is not much better because there's a video on youtube where some guy managed to hack into it by physically altering the device, so with the right knowledge and tools it's possible to fool it into thinking that it should verify the transaction.

Bear markets usually look like this. People don't want to trade in this market so they move coins back to their wallets for safety. It's more about choosing not to participate in the market than being afraid that governments could shut down exchanges.

That is also an important point because the number of individuals' wallet usage is also a determination towards the existence of exchange storage to personal wallets with the keys. After all, those wallets are recoverable and users are in total control of their coins.

But come to think of it, not that hardware wallets have it own  challenges.

It would be interesting to know if the number of people installing a wallet like electrum is also going up as many people simply do not have enough money to justify buying a hardware wallet but they could still want to secure their coins, so this would be a good metric to see if those people are also leaving exchanges behind.

However wanting to get complete control of our coins should not need a bear market but it is nice to know that people are striving to reach that goal and get control over their coins once again.

Those who use the exchange, those who want to exchange one coin for the other see exchanges as a bus stop and a transfer ground. But for storing Bitcoin almost every investor and holders know the vulnerability of exchange and the risk involved in leaving your coins on the exchange since you don't have the private keys to the wallet, but with a hardware wallet, one can store Bitcoin for as long as possible without fear of hack or phishing attacks.

Perhaps, many users of the ledger's products will agree with you and also don't experience any problems with their hardware wallets, but still, breakdowns do occur. I don't think that this is a statistical error, but more like the poor quality of the materials used, as you say. A cracked display or a plastic case, as well as failed buttons, are not the most expensive elements in the design of this devices. It would seem, why not improve their quality. After all, it doesn't require a lot of financial investment for this. But if we take into account the multi-million dollar sales of ledger's devices, then saving even on such trifles will result in a large amount. Really, business in the most ordinary greed? But on the other hand, this company's support service, apparently, works flawlessly and is ready to provide a completely new device during the warranty period - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.59864720. Without having to send a broken device, which deserves special praise.
 
In a world in which there is a very large information flow, such the data leak news is very quickly forgotten and, of course, remains unknown to new potential buyers of ledger devices. Such problems are discussed only in thematic forums and sections, in which there are not so many views. Most often, users look into these sections only when they have personal troubles with their HW devices, which leaves these the lledger's data leak news out of the information flow of new investors.

It seems that this is also true. This company has already occupied a very large market share and new companies (which appear from time to time and offer their own unique solutions) are not able to compete with them on a serious level and on such a scale. Which, in my opinion, is not good, because it reduces the variability of devices, allowing the emergence of new hardware wallets with completely unique solutions and operating principles.

In modern society, it has become important not only to provide a "cool product", but to be able to make it stand out from the competition and attract buyers. Even if there are questions about the quality of devices, as is the case with the ledger company. Still, buyers pay a lot of attention to the "cover" and appearance.

It is also the merit of this manufacturer that they better studied the needs of their customers and offered exactly the design that began to be in great demand. It seems to me that the company understood better than its competitors how to "serve a dish" and in "what form", which, accordingly, allowed it to dominate sales of HW devices.

I faced immense problems when I was living in India and the exchange suddenly stopped functioning when the government decided to make cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins obsolete and illegal so I had 0.1 BTC but had to somehow sell them at a much lower rate using p2p transactions because the exchange gave a limited to take all your Bitcoins out and unfortunately wasn't able to do it at a much better rate and I thought they are not going to ever allow cryptocurrencies so I didn't look into hardware wallets or paper wallets but then I realized that I should have been more intellectual and had them stored in a hardware wallet since this would prevent such situations from happening indefinitely.

As I already wrote, our devices were made in a different time when materials were cheap and easily available, and the demand for HW was probably not like today - so even though they are the same devices, according to everything I could see and read these the new ones seem to be of lower quality. I am not aware if Trezor has such problems, although I have to admit that I can't remember anyone on the forum complaining that they have a broken Trezor, or that something on the HW is broken or doesn't work as it should.

After all it doesn't make sense bear market is encourage people to use hardware wallet since there's no relation at all and there's no recent big exchanges got hacked on 2022. What I think is many people fear of those so called decentralized e.g. DAPP are losing all of their tokens after they connected to fake sites and the recent hack where you downloaded random files on discord or telegram, your token will wiped out.

Or this might just a framing news where Bitcoin adoption keep increase, that's why hardware wallet demand are increases because there's always a few people who want to hold his coins on wallet, not exchanges.

Looks like people are most likely preparing for long-term investment and at the same time, they want to hold it for themselves and not trust any 3rd party exchanges to secure their funds. This is obviously a courageous act and an intelligent work from this year's investor because, with the news of continuous phishing and hacking going on, you should consider keeping your crypto assets as safe as possible to avoid tragedic loss which is to get victim by those hackers where their techniques are always updated and who knows maybe one day, the exchanges you're keeping your coins with will get the hack.

That brings the next problem: available block space. If 100 million people want to transfer Bitcoin from an exchange to their own wallet, and then make a transaction by themselves, that's 15 GB and takes months to process on-chain.

Interesting fact, but I think education is the main factor driving this phenomenon. Many people don't consider themselves very computer savvy and think that running a wallet themselves is rocket-science. I think the number of people holding Bitcoin in self-custody will increase.

I salute the members of the forum who make their part by promoting the "Not your keys, not your bitcoins" campaign.

I think that at least 50-60% of the negative and bad posts and threads there are about Ledger hardware wallets in that sub section come from dkbit98. He probably gets a warm and fuzzy feeling in his belly when he sees something bad about Ledger.
But that doesn't change the fact that they messed up big time and in numerous occasions.

Regarding the build quality of the devices. I can only speak for myself and I don't want to jinx my Nano S, but it has been working fine for many years. And you also have Lucius stating that his Nano X is working just fine. So there you have it. I don't bother myself too much with negative comments on reddit because I have my own experience to fall back on. I am pretty sure that I am not special and that God and other forces are not protecting my Nano S in all these years. There are many like me out there who are satisfied with their products, but you don't hear such voices on reddit. 

Centralized exchange will never be good and safe to store assets in long term because these are trading platform which will never give full control to asset owners. I think that reason must be the right mindset why holders should not keep their assets long term in a centralized exchange and by far HW is the best storage wallet ever. Every investor and long term holder should know it and they should be aware of it for one thing, not your keys, not your assets.

The bitcoin price crash is not the main reason why demand for HW increase during 2022, but I think this increase can be interpreted as an increase in awareness and knowledge among users ^{[investors and holders]} about why not to store their assets long term in a centralized exchange. There are many reasons why it is increasing, but the first one I think is bitcoin users are starting to know and realize not to choose a centralized exchange for long term storage of their assets.

@PrivacyG, Trezor supports 1816 coins&tokens, but I'm not sure what that number is with Ledger, although some claim that the number is really much higher. If the reason for better sales is just shitcoins mania, then someone is going to be in big trouble when things go downhill. What I like about Trezor is the "Bitcoin-only firmware" option, which is one step higher in security considering possible attack vectors in combination with all coin apps that can be installed on the device.

I also have a small theory that potential customers prefer the Ledger design in the form of a classic USB stick, rather than the design developed by Trezor - which attracted me to buy Ledger at the beginning.