Topic: People who don't use hardware wallets: Why not? - page 3. (Read 455 times)

I continue to use Electrum on a desktop pc with Windows and had no problems with it. I don't feel like I need a hardware wallet if the computer that holds my coins is mostly offline and even disconnected from the wall. Why would I spend more money on additional hardware that doesn't offer much more security?

My short answer would be: my software wallet is 99% of the time offline. You can't hack into it.

i guess the same. if you are just a small holder, it is not worth buying a hardware wallet. you can even use electrum for btc. but paperwallets are also great. but if you are a big timer, definitely, cold storage is a must. but mostly only big businesses such as crypto exchanges are using cold storage. for other users, just use reliable non-custodial wallets. meaning you should not lose your private keys and other important details. it is on you if you can't access your funds owed to being forgotten where you hide your keys or passwords.

Cuz i prefer paper wallet. Paper wallet you dont have to rely on the software and hardware you are buying. You just secure it entirely yourself. Paper wallet is the best cold storage option.

For most people though, they buy bitcoin as an investment and literally dont know anything about it. Thats the majority of people. So they just keep it on the exchange.

Hell my mom has a whole Bitcoin she bought in 2017 and earlier this year she mentioned something about my bitcoin on coinbase and i was like uh hell no i dont have my bitcoin on coinbase and told her i store them myself and she said "how is that possible?" Shes got a whole Bitcoin, and will eventually make hundreds of thousands of dollars on it since i think i finally convinced her just to hold onto it for years, but she doesnt even know bitcoin is any different than digital fiat where you have to store it with an institution. Level of knowledge for most owners of bitcoin is that they barely know anything about it and they certainly won't figure out what a hw wallet is and how to use it, at least not until bitcoin and bitcoin knowledge is much more mainstream.

And even for those that do know a bit about what bitcoin is for, if you only buy a few hundred dollars or even a few thousand dollars and you're not all that likely to wanna spend like a hundred bucks just to keep your bitcoin somewhere other than where you've already been keeping it. And for those that get more serious and understand the importance of actually owning your Bitcoin, paper wallets are free and there is no need for a hardware wallet if you are just holding it long term.

Of the few people i know who have some bitcoin i think only one uses a hw wallet. He originally bought through robinhood but then read up on bitcoin more and bought a hw wallet and moved them off robinhood once robinhood started allowing that.

I think a lot of times when people start out as newbies they don't realize the importance, and then they get into a situation where they might have enough invested to justify it but are so tied into various defi protocols with their non-hardware address that they're afraid to switch. I definiely had a bit of that going on before I finally made the switch.

Of course yes, but you should ask if they can afford the cost of buying a hardware wallet..
For someone not to know how to create an airgapped device for their crypto savings simple means such a person is a newbie, and I can tell you that 99 percent of newbies can't afford a hardware wallet, even though they are not quite expensive, majority who come into crypto are not rich people but poor/average people looking for means to make money..
You don't expect them to spend the little money they wanna buy Bitcoin with on hardware devices, those who are rich I believe already know about the importance of hardware wallet in crypto, so they first go for it since they are buying bitcoin in/with a large amount of money.
But for the poor/average user out there, it makes no sense spending hundreds of dollars on a hardware device to end up saving just $10 worth of bitcoin inside. 

There are probably many reasons but I suppose the main one is that the majority of those holding bitcoin or altcoins are small holders which will need to use a great deal of their capital just to buy a hardware wallet, and as such it is not a very attractive offer for them, another reason is simply ignorance, whether that ignorance is about how to secure their computer or how easy it is for scammers to get to their coins they simply do not understand the risks and they prefer to not use hardware wallets.

If you have access to your private key and can remember were you store the keys, I honestly don't see the need of having a hardware wallet because this is just a luxury at the end of the day. Moreover because of the hardware wallets form factor its more likely to be stolen which will be a cost on one's part. Secondly if you get  get used with it, if the wallet remains chances are high that you won't spend your crypto which is a disadvantage for me.

Still have several investor prefer hold or saving assets not in recommended and more safety place are hardware wallet, I don't think with some opinion about they don't use hardware wallet and prefer save Bitcoin or altcoin assets in exchange market account. Almost several years I know with cryptocurrency still not used hardware wallet for saving my fund, I know with safety saving place when holding assets in hardware wallet. I have earn profit as soon possible and not typical with long term holder and face difficult for selling fund as soon possible when holding in hardware wallet.

If I hold at exchange market just take few second only for selling my fund, but when using hardware wallet need several minutes later and I afraid with great moment waiting for our coins sending from hardware wallet credit faster in exchange account.

I never had a large amount of bitcoin to account for in a hardware wallet. However, after being infected once and getting away with it, I'm more positive about investing in one. Honestly, I don't think they're that expensive. Trezor and Ledger start at around €70–€80; it's not a prohibitively expensive amount of money if you're concerned about the security of your funds. Most people usually don't bother and are pretty careless, including myself, and resort to using exchanges, online wallets, or desktop wallets, thinking that nothing unpleasant will come in their way. Unfortunately, this cannot be further from the truth, because if you're not careful enough, it's very likely you'll get burned.

I'm now in the process of either creating an air-gapped wallet on a separate computer or purchasing a hardware wallet. I still haven't made up my mind.

I kinda agree with the assumption that for a few hundred dollar investment they probably wouldn't even consider hardware wallet despite having better security. I don't need hardware wallet if I only have $500-$1000 worth of bitcoin, for that I'm sure electrum and other non-custodial wallets can provide me with enough security.

But obviously we all have our own preferences when it comes to the security of investment assets, hardware wallet are not as expensive as most people think and I think they will be affordable for any new investor if they need better security.

I believe this is the main reason. Since they can store their coins in exchanges or online wallets for free, hardware wallets stay in second plan, because they are expensive, especially for small investors. If they have 200$-300$, it's likely they will prefer to use this money to acquire more btcs, instead of purchasing a wallet.

In my case, I spent about 150$ in an more archaic model (Trezor One) years ago, but I just did that after several years of personal bitcoin adoption. Anyway, if I was going to purchase the modern hardware wallets' models I would have spent much more.

But I don't think it's hard to setup and use hardware wallet. Anyone who is able to use an online wallet or exchange won't have any difficult at a hardware one. There are so many tutorials, guides and videos disponible that the whole process becomes pretty simple.

Why not is because there is Bitcoincore that's free.


Even when I was aware of it since its existence. I also don't trust HW. Although I haven't heard anyone got hacked or hardware wallet codes are altered, I can't just rely on the words of the company but I do think they are true to thier words in serving Bitcoin holders.

Are the codes of these hardware wallets even open source?

Unbelievable that after all the posts that you obviously haven't read, you still claim what some geniuses claim before you - what hundreds of $ are you talking about if every intelligent person who knows how to use the internet knows that it is untrue?

Please read my post and DaveF's post and stop spreading misinformation

From this, we can deduce that most people investing in Bitcoin nowadays are mostly doing so just for the sack of making a profit without even thinking of how to secure their Bitcoins. They only think, let me buy leave it in the exchange and sell it when it gains in price even though there are other means of securing your Bitcoin even if not in a hardware wallet if the cost was the issue.

The main reason is the cost, to own a hardware wallet, they will have to spend a few hundred dollars to own it. While many investors are new to the market, the bitcoin they hold is not too large, even less than the cost of buying a hardware wallet. Owning a hardware wallet does not mean that your crypto assets will be absolutely safe, what matters most is how you store and use them.
Many people are still using software wallets like electrum to store their bitcoins, and they have never had any problems, so there is no reason for them to spend extra money buying hardware wallets.

Problem is that people will not recommend a specific brand because all people prefer different models. Because of that many people dont know which one to get and also there are some scandals like with ledger. Maybe there needs to be a official certificate from the bitcoin foundation for some brands.

The block stream wallet is less then that: https://store.blockstream.com/product/blockstream-jade-hardware-wallet/

I am going to go out and say most people don't use them because most people don't know.
I had a friend who was into BTC for a while. Bought and sold on Coinbase for a while and pulled out to a local electrum wallet. Did not know about hardware wallets till I dropped a coldcard on his desk and said 'use this'

Was partly my fault for not discussing it with him before, but it was just one of those things that although we did talk about crypto a lot the discussion of hardware wallets and security just never came up.

-Dave

Guys and girls, don't make me laugh with your comments about HW being too expensive, because that's simply not true. The Nano S Plus costs about $80, and the older Trezor model costs about the same. How much did you pay for your smartphones, TV, computers and other things you use every day?

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For all the reasons already mentioned, but does it matter at all? Most people do not even understand what Bitcoin is, and investing in something without knowing what exactly it is about is completely wrong. When you build a house, you won't move into it if it doesn't have a roof, if you buy a car, you'll probably first get a driver's license and so on. So the first place should be knowledge, then the application of that knowledge in order to ensure proper storage, and only then investment - unfortunately, many go in the reverse order.

actually the reason people don't use hard wallets is very simple, because their assets are not bigger than the price of those hardware wallets and it's more convenient to use regular wallets offered by platfrom  parties like imtoken , trust and others,

Because hardware wallets is expensive to ordinary person so many decide to use wallet which they think safe because they don't also store huge balance on their wallets. The only people need to grab some hardware wallets are those people who can spend millions of dollars since this is so big to be trusted on wallet apps since this maybe could turn them to scam if they see one of their costumer deposit some huge amount of money on their platform.