Topic: What is the best hardware wallet for holding Bitcoin only? (Read 321 times)

Exactly the two best are Trezor and Coldcard for sure. I am not a big fan of Ledger personally, especially after the data breach.

I have to say, everyone has their own definition of best for holding Bitcoin only since everyone has different preferences and priorities, but I am pretty confident as well that Satochip is objectively not the 'best for holding Bitcoin only'. The fact it runs multi-coin firmware alone disqualifies it for just holding Bitcoin in my opinion. Tibu was probably just trying to sell his product, knowing it wasn't the best product for OP's use case.

I know - terrible handling of user data, terrible QC and I'm surprised these things have apparently no tamper protection. From what I gathered from other devices (though not tried), once you open them, they show you a warning LED or something. Instead, here people were able to re-plug the battery on their own. Also very questionable.

Problem with Satochip is that you need to buy additional device for reading and using Satochip, so the price is more than 25 euros, and I doubt many people have devices for reading smartcards at their home.
Card reader is more expensive than than card wallet itself, so we can see that total package at your website is 80 euros.

And after recent battery issues or should I say fiasco they are facing with their nano x device, I would strongly advice everyone not to waste money on this device, and not to participate in ledger faulty lottery.
If you don't trust me, check out ledger reddit page, people are posting daily complains even after receiving replacement device, and mods are constantly downvoting and deleting posts.

I would take the Trezor T if I had to choose from those 2 brands as well; but if I can choose others, I'd have a look in Secure Element in Hardware Wallets and find good alternative options that have been around for a while as well, pen tested, with open source design and secure element.

They handled it terribly. They tried to play it down and didn't know what to do. They failed their customers because they couldn't protect their data.

But Trezor isn't innocent either. All hardware wallets have flaws. Trezor wallets have a seed extraction vulnerability that can't be fixed. It's a design flaw. It can only be mitigated with a strong passphrase or saving a code on a SD card. When those vulnerabilities became known, Trezor didn't to the right thing either. The right thing would have been to admit the design flaw, instruct their users to add an additional layer of security (passphrase), and explain the issues of the seed extraction problem in their instructions manual that comes with their devices.

All companies in all spheres of life are interested in protecting their business first and foremost. Trezor and Ledger are no different. Even if it means taking a piss at their customers. It's time people understand that.

Despite the way Ledger handled privacy concerns, the security of their wallets isn't affected. The privacy of their users is.
And despite Trezor's design flaw, they remain one of the best wallets in this niche. Both are still recommended purchases, although I would personally go for the Nano S over the Nano X for several reasons. dkbit98 mentioned the battery problems, so there is one.

If I personally had to select between a Ledger and Trezor right now, knowing everything I know today, I would pick the Trezor T. Hopefully with a discount code.   

That hardware wallet is quite unheard of. And since it's not that well known, we can make the assumption that people haven't made that much audits concerning the code. Why not go for the hardware wallets that's being followed by thousands of developers worldwide? Not that the "Satochip" hardware wallet is bad, but it's totally up to you if you want to risk it.

From your image alone I can see it has USB, NFC and supports tons of coins, already 3 potential security issues if OP wants to hold only BTC as long term investment.

Have to look deeper into it but this is what I can say so far.
I’d urge anyone to be especially wary of wireless technologies in general. I research in this field myself and it’s like, bugs and exploits everywhere. It’s really not fun and especially not good to have on a device storing your wealth.

Hello,

How about a Satochip hardware wallet ?
It's based on a smartcard. It's fully open source, low form factor, easy to use.
Compatible with the well known Electrum client (and many more...)

I don't agree with this. They are amongst the oldest hardware wallet companies that I know and thus get kind of a 'tried & tested' status, but I wouldn't recommend any Ledger products anymore especially after we saw how they handle customer data. (link, link 2)

I think Trezor model T with Bitcoin-only firmware can be a good option.
BitBox02 Bitcoin edition has been around for a while now and shares the secure chip of the ColdCard.

BitBox and ColdCard are open source, which is quite important for me, so maybe check these threads:
Open Source Hardware Wallets
ColdCard hardware wallet
Thoughts about Passport hardware wallet

I'm not a fan how ColdCard handle the 'open source' after Foundation Devices actually wanted to use the code (in compliance with license) and that's a turnoff from ColdCard for me. But all of the wallets I mentioned are great options I think, just read threads here about them and decide for yourself.

Cobo Vault would be a cool option due to airgap via camera, but it's multicoin, which poses a much larger attack surface than a Bitcoin-only wallet.

Things to consider:
* trust model / attacker models considered
* open / closed source hardware and software
* USB or airgapped operation (would heavily adwise against wireless tech)
* Airgap via SD card or camera (latter is more practical)

On the one hand, one doesn't need a special device for key management if the main goal was holding bitcoin long-term until it becomes something more than a speculative asset, perhaps widely adopted legal tender. On the other hand, a hardware wallet can be very useful if there is a need for periodic transfers. Especially, it is very important when it comes to newbies. One of the reasons why I consider this type of wallet newbie-friendly is that it allows to safely operate on a system full of trojans, keyloggers, etc. Secret keys never leave a device, which means they cannot be intercepted or stolen by a malicious attacker. The second reason is that a hardware wallet is a good source of entropy, which means it can be utilized as a tool for generating truly random wallets offline. The third reason is when one invests in something like a hardware wallet, one inevitably goes through some educational information regarding recommendations on how to interact with cryptocurrencies properly. In other words, before you start to use something you have never dealt with, you usually read the manual. I believe it might help a bit to not mess things up.

This could be a great idea, assuming that the user actually knows how to generate a wallet safely in an air-gapped manner(which is like a very small minority of bitcoiners). But since OP is asking which hardware wallet to use, what are the chances?  Just paying the $70 for a reputable hardware wallet is the way to go in 99.9% of cases.

Money invested in security has never been wasted, especially when it comes to crypto security. One of the most important features of HW is that the seed is generated in a completely secure offline environment, while in the case of any desktop/mobile wallet the seed can very easily be compromised if the computer or mobile device is infected. There is also the potential risk of fake wallets which should also not be ignored.

Considering all of this, I wouldn’t agree that $50 or less is an investment that can be called wasted.

That's what I was going to recommend--why waste money on a HW wallet just to store bitcoin?  Assuming you're going to keep it long-term, it would be so much cheaper and probably more convenient to transfer your bitcoin to an Electrum wallet, write down or stamp the seed phrase into a piece of metal and keep it in a safe place.  You'd have to basically do the same thing with a HW wallet anyway, right?

Yeah, and if he wasn't ever interested in HW wallets before, it's entirely plausible that he's not that familiar with them.

For only holding even a paper wallet would do, as long as it's generated safely.

This being said, you will basically run the HW only once, to generate one seed and get one of the associated addresses (to deposit and see on block explorer).
(At least in theory) the current vulnerabilities don't even matter, since in some more years you may just get a better HW and recover from the seed you've saved/written down from "this" HW.

Conclusion: I'd just go for the cheapest that works with Electrum.




He/she may have been living in own bubble. Less than 600 posts, of which most in Indonesian and Altcoin Bounties. I wouldn't be that surprised.

I won't recommend any specific hardware wallet model, and you should know that there is no perfect device for holding your keys.
Ideal hardware wallet should be open source with secure element for protecting keys, it should be airgapped device without connection with computer or internet,
it should be compatible with other software wallets, it should fully support multisig setup.
There is active Hardware Wallet section in this forum and you can check my List of Open Source Hardware Wallets and Hardware Wallets with Secure Elements.
Note: Don't waste your money buying ledger nano X now because they have many issues with their battery now.

If you want something with a reputation that is exclusively for Bitcoin, then you don't need to look beyond Trezor that offers just that - Bitcoin-only firmware. This way you will surely avoid all possible attack vectors that could appear through some altcoins apps or in any other way through multi-coins firmware.

Very important - Trezor has vulnerabilities that allow the attacker who gains physical access to the device to extract the seed, so it is desirable to add a  passphrase to prevent this.

This is an old member who doesn't know the hardware wallet. Don't be surprised, many people don't know.

There are so much information about hardware wallets(or wallets in general) on the web that you're better off doing research.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/general-bitcoin-wallets-which-what-why-1631151
https://cryptosec.info/wallets

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EDIT: uhh.. should you know about hardware wallets by now? 🧐

I don't understand the swallow hardware yet. Can you share a little knowledge about the hardware wallet that you recommend.  Can you share a little knowledge with me about Ledger/Trezo. Like how the Ledger/Trezo wallet works and is secure. I want to save the little btc I have. Is it safe if I save for the next few years.

The Coldcard[1] wallet is probably the hardware wallet with the highest reputation among the hardcore bitcoiners. The UX can be really tough though, depending on how knowledgeable you are. It's pretty much just for a select demographic so my common recommendations are still Ledger/Trezor.

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[1] https://coldcardwallet.com/