Latest news about Bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies. Your daily crypto news habit.
We often get asked about hardware crypto wallets and what we would recommend and yet we have not covered that topic much, so it is about time we do it. There are pretty much 3 main products on the market that have been available for a while and have proven to be a reliable and most of all secure solutions for storing your crypto coins. These three manufacturers of hardware crypto coin wallets are: Ledger, Trezor and KeepKey and which of them you choose is often more of a personal preference.
The one we actually prefer and use is the Ledger Nano S, though the company also makes Ledger Blue, a more powerful, bigger and feature rich device that of course also costs more. We have not used or even tried the Blue model yet, so there isn’t much that we can talk about it at this point and it is also currently out of stock at the official website, so not easy to get at the moment. Anyway, one of the main reasons why we have opted out for the Nano S is the very compact size of the device, it is the smallest of all of the options with pretty much the size of a regular USB flash drive.
The Trezor wallet called also the Bitcoin Safe is the most common alternative of the Ledger Nano S, it is available in Black and White color and comes at almost the same price. Trezor is also working on a new improved model called Model T, though that one is not freely available for sale, currently still fulfilling pre-orders at the moment apparently. The Third option in the form of the KeepKey hardware wallet is probably the least popular of the three options, but that does not mean it is inferior to them. It is a bit different in how it looks, offering a more modern clean and sleek design and very similar functionality as the others at pretty much the same price point.
We are not trying to do a review of the different crypto hardware wallets covered here, we are just pointing the options available, so you can take a look at them and decide which one better suits your needs. Again, we use the Ledger Nano S, but that does not necessary mean that it will be the one you will like the best or that it will be the optimal solution for your needs. Just take a look at the available options and see what works best for you, they all work for all of the main crypto currencies, but there are some differences in the level of support of not so popular and newer ones.
What you need to be extra careful with is where you purchase your hardware wallet from, the best solution would be to go directly from the official website getting it from the manufacturer of the device. You can also check the list of official resellers and purchase from any of them, especially if you have a local company that sells them, just make sure they are listed as official reseller. It is not wise to look for a cheaper price and purchase from eBay or any other unofficial source as there could be unpleasant surprises that you get along with your hardware wallet. When you get the hardware wallet make sure it does not come pre-initialized with any printed security key or something like that, you need to initialize and generate the private key yourself on the device (if not sure you can always do a reset before you start). If the device comes already initialized (it should not come like that!) somebody else probably already has your private key and can use it to steal the coins you store and we are pretty sure you don’t want this to happen.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Bitcoin Insider. Every investment and trading move involves risk - this is especially true for cryptocurrencies given their volatility. We strongly advise our readers to conduct their own research when making a decision.