Advice: My current thoughts on hardware crypto wallets
Posted By RichC on November 5, 2021
Although I’m not an all-in cryptocurrency buyer, trader or investor (pick your poison), I do own and am accumulating small amounts of different crypto. After a fair amount of reading this past year, my conclusion is to use a reputable cryptocurrency exchange like Coinbase Pro, Coinbase (disclosure: I own $COIN stock), Uphold or
Interactive Brokers to trade crypto … then move any large amounts or long term hold crypto (private keys – see below) to a hardware wallet. Think of an online wallet as a checking account for day to day transaction and having a separate savings account or even safety deposit box (offline) for fewer transactions (a hardware wallet). Perhaps some will pushback on that analogy, but nevertheless keeping “private keys” offline is safer and makes sense to me.
— When you own cryptocurrencies, what you really own is a private key. Your coins are associated with a set of “public/private key”.
—Your coins do not physically exist on any device — not even your hardware wallet.
— Hardware wallets store and safekeep your private keys, so that you can be the custodian of your own money.
It is interesting to see the impact this relatively new commodity or currency is having in society today and likely will in our future. I’m old enough to remember the day purchases were only made with cash or checks and when I used my first plastic credit card. It was a SOHIO gasoline card, then Sears store credit card that eventually became our Discover Card in 1986. Now I don’t even think twice about paying with “plastic” or even using credit. Thankfully both Brenda and I have always been advocates for paying our statements in full, rarely pay interest or take out loans and always use a “cash back” or “points” (grr) card rather than using 
cash, check or bank debit transactions. We’ve recently even started to “pay the convenience fee” on our utility bills since the 4% cash back saves more than the fee!
I assume sooner or later the US digital-dollar will make its way into normal everyday circulation and we’ll all be banking and transacting with a form of regulated and non-regulated “wild west” blockchain. For now, it is the learning curve and keeping whatever assets we own safe from hacking … for that, a reputable hardware wallet makes the most sense. After doing your research, click the image below for a 20% discount and order an “untampered with” hardware wallet like the Nano S or recommended Nano X directly from Ledger.
Let’s add a final word of caution and a reader survey from Investopedia:
[Cryptocurrency] Bitcoin enables the citizens of a country to undermine government authority by circumventing capital controls imposed by it. It also facilitates nefarious activities by helping criminals evade detection. Finally, by removing intermediaries, Bitcoin can potentially throw a wrench in the existing financial infrastructure system and destabilize it.
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