Hardware Wallets: The Safest Way To Store Your Private Keys

Not your keys, not your cryptocurrencies

The most common way to acquire cryptocurrencies is to buy them on an exchange

. Leaving them on the exchange means that you are not in the possession of your private keys

Private Key

Private keys are used to spend cryptocurrencies.

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, therefore your cryptocurrencies. Those are always stored on the blockchain and your private key allows you to manage them, i.e. moving, selling, trading or sending. Who owns your private keys, owns your crypto as well.
 

Different ways of storing your private keys

As mentioned before, you can store your keys (or any other information) securely, or comfortably. Those tools for storing and operating your cryptocurrencies are called wallets

. One of the most secure ways of storing your cryptocurrencies is paper wallets, writing your private keys on an actual paper and keeping it safe. This way of storing your crypto is very secure (you can hide the paper in the photo album at your grandmother’s house) but every time you want to actually manage your coins, you need to get this paper wallet.

Storing your coins on the exchanges is one of the most common beginner mistakes. Almost every day media inform us that another exchange got hacked, the owner disappeared with the crypto or died, taking the access to the cryptocurrencies to the grave with him. If you keep your assets on an exchange, they are exposed to every danger of the internet, starting with the cyber attacks, hacks, human errors or malice.

Software and mobile wallets may seem like a good compromise between security and usability, but with the rising amount of malware and hacks, they are not a very secure option. Furthermore, the moment you lose possession of your computer or mobile phone, your crypto is lost forever. You probably remember the epic tale of an early crypto adopter whose parents thrown his PC with hundreds of bitcoins in the trash. And how many times have you lost or broke your phone? Vulnerabilities of PCs and phones are well known, and if you keep your private keys there it’s just a matter of time before you lose them.

Be your own bank

Hardware wallets offer a much more thorough level of protection than previously mentioned types of wallets. These physical devices enable users to take access to their cryptocurrencies into their own hands and store them in a much-harder-to-hack environment.
With hardware wallet, you are in physical possession of your cryptocurrencies. Hardware wallet is a single-use computer that stores your private keys and other information. It provides a full and impenetrable level of isolation between your private keys (coins) and your easy-to-hack computer or phones. Its function is similar to the generator of the codes you get from your bank. Furthermore, it is backed up with a paper back-up (seedphrase) that can be used to restore the whole wallet, with all the information it possesses, in case you lose or destroy it. The hardware wallet is the real bank, owned and operated solely by you, in your pocket.
 

Different types of hardware wallets

The very first hardware wallet was invented in 2011 by Czech crypto-enthusiasts, known as “Stick” and “Slush”. Trezor One created a standard that is used by other hardware wallets. It is based on open-source software and hardware, with a community of researchers, white-hat hackers and security auditors always improving the security. The younger brother, Trezor Model T, featured a touch-screen and created another standard for the hardware wallets. Trezor hardware wallet code is used in tens of other hardware wallets, from KeepKey to Archos.

It is also used by Ledger - the French manufacturer is using the open-source Trezor code to some extent - for their products, the Ledger Nano S, Ledger Nano X, and Blue.

Trezor is surely one of the best choices you can make if you’re looking to invest in the security of your cryptocurrency assets.