Cryptocurrency has taken the world by storm and is growing every single day. This means that new people are coming to the scene every day which is awesome, but newcomers need to stay aware of how they can protect their new investments.
Hardware wallets are a great option to safeguard your bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, and we will briefly cover why it is important that you safeguard your bitcoins and how hardware wallets do exactly this.
What is a cryptocurrency wallet?
These digital assets and the ownership of them is defined by holding a secret – a private key, which grants you access to them.
Keeping this digital secret, while still having access to it can be proven hard. If a malicious hacker gains access to this private key all your funds can be gone within seconds. In the beginning of bitcoin many people carelessly lost their private keys or wrote them online resulting in various hacks.
Today, however people are more aware of the importance of safeguarding their private keys and thus hacks are less common, but still prevailing. Using a hardware wallet – a little dedicated security device is definitely the safest and best option for users to secure their cryptocurrency funds.
How does a hardware wallet work?
Hardware wallets are small USB devices that can store your desired cryptocurrency offline safely from hackers. It is a great way to provide secure key management while still keeping your funds accessible and easily usable.
Hardware wallets are however pricier than storing your cryptocurrency online and usually cost around 70-150$. In order to justify this price tag, we will cover the various options you have to store your bitcoin and determine what option is the best and safest for you.
Option 1: Buy bitcoin and store them on an exchange
Storing your bitcoin on an exchange is a convenient and easy way for many users new in the crypto field. However why is this not a good option to securely store your funds?
If you don’t have any private key to your bitcoin you are actually not the owner of them. The exchange simply has an obligation to give you the bitcoin if you ask, but on the blockchain they are the owners of the bitcoin itself. Exchanges have been hacked previously and this could happen again in the future. Therefore, an option where you store them with a private key gives you full ownership and more security.
Option 2: Install a software wallet
The second best option you have is to install a software wallet, which grants you a private key and thus control of your bitcoin. Installing a wallet on your computer or mobile phone is a decent option for limited funds, but if you are investing more than you are willing to lose this is still not the safest option. Software can be hacked and malicious mobile apps or a virus could get access to your private key as long as it is on your computer or phone.
Option 3: Use a hardware wallet
A hardware wallet or bitcoin wallet is a dedicated device with a secure screen that provides the safest option and can’t be hacked or compromised by a virus it will:
- Keep your private keys safe from malicious hacks or unauthorized access from external users.
- Independently verify and show on your screen the activity of the wallet.
It is therefore the safest option as no external hacker or user can access this device except the physical holder of the bitcoin wallet. If you store a larger of amount of BTC or any other cryptocurrency we therefore strongly recommend this option as it will keep your funds safe so you can HODL as long as you’d like.
We hope that you found this overview useful and if you have any questions feel free to reach out and we will get back to you as soon as possible.