By The Horns: A Bitcoin podcast about South Africa
By The Horns: A Bitcoin podcast about South Africa
Mastering Bitcoin Security – The Essential Role of Hardware Wallets
Decoding the intricate world of Bitcoin hardware wallets, we sit down with the insightful Cole, a Bitcoin enthusiast, adept content creator, and educator. It's an episode packed with a thorough evaluation of various hardware wallets on the market - from the Cold card, SeedSigner, Blockstream Jade, to the bitbox and Ledger devices. Together, we dissect the ins and outs of these devices, spotlighting their key features, benefits, and risks. Our aim? To empower you with the knowledge to make an informed choice based on your individual needs.
Bitcoin Only - https://bitcoinonly.io/
Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town - https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/
Follow Cole:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/coletu
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@UCh93ezgriAjq7lFzXQiAdVQ
Website: https://www.southernbitcoiner.com/
Ever wondered why hardware wallets are vital for securing Bitcoin offline or about the risks of using a software wallet? Let's break it down for you. We also illuminate on the necessity of moving coins off exchanges and shed light on the different types of hardware wallets available. Not just that, we delve into the darker side, shedding light on the risks associated with using Ledger hardware wallets and how it can jeopardize users' Bitcoin. What's more, we touch upon the murky waters of the scam bubble around NFTs - a must-know for anyone getting their feet wet in this space.
As we navigate the discussion, we take you on a deep dive into the unique features of Seed Signer, a stateless device that generates Bitcoin private keys and transactions without storing seed phrases. We also scrutinize the Bitbox hardware wallet, sharing our honest insights on its pros and cons. As we conclude, we compare various open-source hardware wallets and why the Cold Card wallet tops our list of recommended wallets for storing your hard-earned Bitcoins. It's a riveting episode brimming with detailed analysis, expert opinions, and invaluable insights. So join us, and let's demystify the world of Bitcoin hardware wallets together!
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Hello and welcome to another episode of by the Haunts. Today I spoke to Cole, a local Bitcoiner, content creator and educator. If you're in the market for hardware wallets and are trying to decide which ones to choose, then this episode is for you. We did a deep dive into a few different hardware wallets that are available on the market today, discussing the pros and cons of each one. We evaluated the Cole card, seed signer, blockstream Jade, bitbox and Ledger devices. Hopefully, this episode will provide you with some clarity of which hardware wallets is best suited for you. But before we get into today's discussion, here's a word from our sponsor, bitcoin Only. Have you ever tried to import a hardware wallet into South Africa? If you have, then you know it's a slow and expensive process with many hidden costs and risks, like the post office losing a package. But I'd like to tell you about my new company, bitcoin Only. Bitcoin Only is your one stop shop for all high quality Bitcoin hardware wallets in South Africa. We stock Blockstream Jade, cole cards, seed signers and more. We also offer Bitcoin consultations if you need any advice on your self-custody solution, or we'd like to set up a Bitcoin wall so your family can get hold of your Bitcoin if something unexpected happens to you, head over to bitcoinonlyio and apply the code BTC at checkout to get a discount on your next purchase. That's bitcoinonlyio Bitcoin for the sovereign individual.
Speaker 1:Cape Town is getting its first Bitcoin conference. From the 26th to the 28th of January 2025, the Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town Conference is taking place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. The theme for this conference is one that I think is extremely interesting, and it's all about parallel institutions and Bitcoin. Now, most of the Africans know about the likes of the Afriforum, saakalicha, the IRR and Solidaritate. These are parallel institutions that, for the past few decades, have been filling the vacuum left by governments and conferences. Bitcoin is building a parallel institution of money, so this conference aims to bring these two groups together to discuss ideas and learn from each other. No parallel institution can function without the ability to transact, and Bitcoin can't function without motivated individuals building the foundations of the new parallel economy. This makes these two groups natural allies. If you want to be part of what is going to be an extremely interesting conference taking place in the most beautiful city on earth, grab yourself a ticket today. There's only going to be 350 of them, so get one before they're gone. Click the link in the description to get yourself a ticket and be part of this true being made. That's, adopting Bitcoin Cape Town from the 26th to the 28th of January 2024. See you there.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Buy the Horns Bitcoin Podcast about South Africa. Today, I'm joined by Cole, otherwise known as Southern Bitcoiner, otherwise also known as Cole Bitcoin educator from South Africa. Cole, welcome to the show man. Sweet, thank you for having me. My pleasure, man. You've been a busy little bee lately, haven't you? Putting out lots of content, reviewing lots of people's different hardware wallets. I love it. It's a skill with content gaining traction. It's great to see man.
Speaker 2:Exactly, twitter's been very good to me recently, so things I've been doing very well on Twitter and, yeah, pumping out a lot of content out there.
Speaker 1:Great man. Yeah, producing content is tough. People see a video and they think it's just you in front of a camera, but editing is a tedious process and curating all that content really takes a lot of time. So and it's not something you can just start with and you get overnight success right, this is a long term project. It takes a long time to get interaction. So, well done to you, man, and the content you're producing is great. It's very much needed, so I think you find yourself a good niche there.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yeah, I mean, people don't see that there's actually a few hours behind the scenes and at the end all you get is a three minute video. So, yeah, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes, a lot of trial and error as well, figuring out what works and what doesn't, and, yeah, you only see the final product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then obviously all the research and expertise and know how that's got you to this point, right, like that's also, that's like thousands of hours of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the scripts. I probably script a video five or six times then before I've got one that actually I like. So I'll, you know, do a rough, do a few different things for different ways of phrasing it, then I'll pick the best one, which does take a lot of hours of research. Thank God for chat GPT. That makes things a lot quicker. So, thank you. What's that guy's name? Thank, you yeah it's kind of guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I mean chat GPT does help a lot there, especially for summarizing information. It's super handy, even though you got to be super wary of it, though, because often the information is biased, and sometimes it's like someone who said something with enough conviction and it just you're like oh, it sounds true, because I said with enough confidence, that's a chat GPT does a lot. Like it just like gives you an answer and you're like that's incorrect, and then it's like oh, yes, it is Chat GPT is like sorry, you caught me in the lie especially with Bitcoin stuff.
Speaker 2:It's not the best with Bitcoin. Only kind of questions doesn't really often feed you the correct information. But for this recent video I did. It was explaining how secure 24 words are. So it's like picking one grain of sand and picking one star in the observable universe, then picking one cell in the average human body, then a centimeter squared on earth, 4,000 times in a row. So that's how secure 24 words heat phrase is and all those numbers help. I got a lot of help from chat GPT doing that math and getting all those figures. And then, of course, you have to check other sources. So Google it as well and make sure it's feeding you the correct info. Then run the numbers yourself on a whiteboard like this one, and then yeah, but it makes things a lot, lot quicker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, definitely. So the type of content you're producing, like, what is it's overall? For people who haven't seen your content yet, what is it that you're going for, like, what's the aim of what you're trying to achieve here?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I had this idea to make content that is a lot more short and sweet and to the point, very concise, because I've seen with my generation I'm sure other generations are suffering from this as well but short, what's it? Man? The word has slipped my mind, but you can't focus for long, short term focus or something. I forgot the word. Yeah, so it's a one minute video If it doesn't grab your attention within five seconds. Next video that doesn't grab your attention within five seconds next. So people in my generation I don't think they have time to watch these. Well, they do have time. They don't have the attention span to watch a hour long video, so let me put together these super simple, short and sweet videos that are two to three minutes long. That's what's going on Twitter now and you just are you basically the Andreas and the novelist for Tik Tok.
Speaker 1:Is that what you're telling?
Speaker 2:me. I don't actually put anything on Tik Tok, I don't have one, but for Twitter, yeah, and also the videos. I mean, if there's a hardware wallet video, you'd rather watch the 15 minute one than the hour long one.
Speaker 1:Yeah definitely, definitely. You know, like I'm often researching stuff and you know, if you build your own, building your own company, you've got to do everything right. So you've got to learn about all these aspects. So one of the things I got stuck on recently was, like DNS settings. What are DNS settings? How they work?
Speaker 1:So you go on YouTube and that's like the primary place to find this information and you absolutely right, if you find an hour video, we find a two minute video. You're going to watch the two minute video because you're like listen, time is money here. I can't afford to spend three days in this problem. I need to solve it ASAP. So it's like I want to get the answers as quickly as possible. And it's such a skill being able to summarize really dense amounts of information into like a two minutes or three minute clip, and that's what people are after. And also, you are right, the people's attention spans have been ruined by social media, so that's the kind of like the content they want to consume anyway. So, yeah, I think you're nailing it there. But yeah, so the type of content you've been focusing on, is it relating just to Bitcoin in general or are you focusing on certain aspects of Bitcoin or like what themes are going after.
Speaker 2:Yeah, many anything related to Bitcoin, so Bitcoin, anything. But if you look at all my content, most of it is about securing Bitcoin. So hardware wallets how secure is 24 words? How do hardware wallets work, how to verify spara wallet, things like that. So I think I've focused on security, but in the future that will probably change. I'm going to broaden it up and speak about a lot more things, different things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's that's a great segue into what we're going to discuss today. So I got you on here because I want to talk about hardware wallets and specifically, why do people, should people, use hardware wallets? What are hardware wallets? What types of hardware wallets should people be looking at? What are the good ones, what are the shit ones and what are the expensive ones, and what are the ones that are good value for money? So I think a good starting point is why? Why would you use a hardware wallets over just a software wallets on your phone or on your PC?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there are two types of wallets. There's a hard wallet and a cold wallet, or a software wallet and a Hardware wallet. And a software wallet is on your phone or on your computer and the problem with that is that it's on an internet connected device and you want to put your Bitcoin somewhere where it's hard for hackers to access. So that's where hardware wallets come into play, and hardware wallets Secure your Bitcoin offline rather than storing it on a phone or on an internet connected device. So, basically, the reason you would need a hardware wallet is to secure your Bitcoin in an offline environment where it's harder for acts rule for hackers to access your keys, which, ultimately, is your Bitcoin. The, the keys that can spend your Bitcoin, represent your Bitcoin, basically.
Speaker 1:Right, so this is probably a good, a good point, then, to ask the question how, how does a hardwallet secure your Bitcoin? You just mentioned your private keys living on a hardware wallet, and People have this notion, when you think of a hardware wallet, that your Bitcoin actually lives on that device, and that's not, strictly speaking, true. Do you mind explaining to people actually how a hardware wallet functions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there, that's exactly right. Hard wallets never actually store any Bitcoin. Bitcoin isn't a physical thing that can be stored. Bitcoin is digital money. So instead, your hardware wallet stores a set of keys that are needed to spend your Bitcoin. So there are two types of keys, as a public key or private key. The public keys used to receive Bitcoin and the private keys used to spend Bitcoin. So anyone with that private key I just mentioned can spend your Bitcoin and has access to your Bitcoin and can steal it or hack it, whatever it may be. So the hardware wallet it takes that private key and generates it and stores it offline.
Speaker 2:And this this private key. You can think of it as like a super secure password that represents your right to spend your coins. Anyone with that password has your coins, so storing it offline Keeps it away from where hackers could access it and whenever you want to spend. These keys are needed to sign off on a transaction, and your hardware wallet does that offline as well. So, basically, all Operations involving the private key are moved in an offline environment. So, yeah, that's that's basically how your hardware wallet actually works behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:So if I keep my Bitcoin on a software wallet on my phone, the risk there is much greater than on a hardware wallet, because my phone is permanently connected to the internet and that means there's like a stack vector for hackers to gain access to my my coins right, because my private keys are effectively kept on that app on my phone and that has access to internet and there's a there's a way for them to get it right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, um, software wallet hacks aren't, as they don't happen as often as people think. They're quite rare, but they do happen and it's far easier for a hacker to attack you if your keys are online. So, yeah, because they're online, it's easier for an attacker to gain access to that and they're stored offline. I mean stored online, and because they're online, we don't they could be stored. You know, if someone gains access to your phone, that's access to your keys and I think some of them stored on the cloud. I'm not really sure. And if someone gains, if you use weak passwords on your cloud storage and someone gains access to that, your, your Bitcoin's gone. So yeah, storing it offline is a lot safer.
Speaker 1:It's a very important point you raised there about how often software let's get hacked, which is not very often at all, and I think it's important for people to realize that you're the least secure place You're but going is an exchange like they, by orders of magnitude, are less safe than a software wallet. They get hacked all the time. I mean it's kind of like a case of of when, not if, we all your local exchange to get hacked, because they all seem to get hacked at some point and and that's just because they've got such big security threats. They're such a honeypot like people are always going off them, whereas the software on it, on your phone, is they have to talk to you specifically. They don't know how much Bitcoin you've got to start with, so is worthwhile Expanding all these resources going off to, and often a software wallet stores or encrypts your private keys on the secure elements on the phone itself Is my understanding for some of them.
Speaker 1:So you it's not like software wallets are are super insecure. It's just that relative to hardware wallets, they are insecure because hardware wallets like never touch the internet. But I think if there's any takeaway for anyone from this discussion Is I like get your coins off the exchange like that's just a, that's a nightmare waiting to happen and you and, and, if you get them on to a software wallet or if you get them on to a hardware wallet, that's already like a massive improvement versus just being on the exchange. But, all that being said, hardware wallets are obviously Far more secure because they never touch the internet. But not all hardware wallets are created equal right, like they're not just all the same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah so I think in this discussion I want to get into the different, different brands of hardware wallets and the different trade-offs, and I think a good starting point. I know I told you we're gonna speak about. You know four or five other ones, but one of them I'd like to bring up as an example of a hardware wallet that's absolutely Shat the bed recently is ledger, and, yeah, maybe explains people what ledger did and how they shot themselves in the foot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So people think only recently ledger became a shitty hardware wallet, but I think it's kind of always been one because of its closed source. So when your Bitcoin is at risk, well, when, when a wallet is storing your Bitcoin, you want that code to be open and available so you know what's going on with your Bitcoin and how they are securing it. Where ledger is close source, it's kind of like a black box. You can't see inside, you don't know what it's actually doing with your coins and, yeah, I just wouldn't be comfortable storing my Bitcoin in a wallet that you don't know what's going on with it.
Speaker 2:Recently, ledger did this new service. What's it called ledger recovery? I think yeah. So they basically Share, take your seed off the device and share it between a few different parties and if you lose access to your ledger, those parties can come together to regain access to your coins. So ledger is basically asking you to pay them so that they can put your seed, will store your seed with third parties, which is against the ethos of Bitcoin. And Another thing I read is that if ledger gets Subpoenaed by a government and they say we need this user's keys, we need this user's Bitcoin, ledger can now hand over your keys, basically because it's stored with a whole bunch of different parties. So yeah, ledger definitely to avoid, to be avoided hundred percent.
Speaker 1:And you know that the saddest thing about ledger is that they had such a massive market lead. They were like the first guys to make really big commercially available hard wallets and and they kind of the closed source thing was something that people could kind of get past. You know they were like, yeah, it sucks, but you know ledger's been around for a while and they haven't scammed anyone yet. But then they had that massive data hack where they lost a bunch of their customers Home address records and then a bunch of the customers were being extorted by people who bought that on the on the black market sport that are that data sets and they now had everyone's address. And, incidentally, that's why my company Bitcoin only we don't we don't ship to your home, we ship using pago, which goes to like a shop that you choose. You go pick it up, because I don't want your home address on my records, because if my store gets hacked then you're at risk Because people know you have Bitcoin, because you bought a Bitcoin hardwallets, and that's exactly what what happens to ledger. And then they they came up with this ledger recover thing which, like you say, the real risk is not so much ledger Conspiring to steal your Bitcoin it's. It's them handing it over to three-letter security agencies and then just being able to take your Bitcoin. So that's a real risk.
Speaker 1:So we wrote a newsletter Early under you and myself. My partner, brandon advice, wrote this newsletter about why ledger is kind of. If anyone's using a ledger presently and you haven't upgraded your firmware, you still okay, but it's those firmware updates and on the older devices it's not such a risk like that the nano s. But the later ones that is a risk. But sooner or later everyone's gonna have to update their firmware and then you running that firmware that's got the ledger recover on it. So To me personally, if you're using your ledger in a multi-seg is probably okay, but if you're using a ledger as a single-seg, hardwallets Not time to move, time to move on. That's not really a risk just yet, but it will become bigger and bigger one in the future. So, yeah, ledger absolutely shot themselves in the foot. There Sucks for them and it happened quickly, huh Like. I don't know what their sales are looking like now, but I can imagine they're probably a fraction of what they were, you know, a year ago. I.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of these crypto users, though, who don't really know what's going on behind the scenes, are just still going to stick with ledger, because they don't actually understand what is going on with ledger and what ledger is doing. They don't really care about the security of it all. They just need somewhere to store their shit-coin NFTs, you know and ledger is the most famous option.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, lucky for them, those NFTs are worth zero now, so they don't have to worry about it anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if it's not worth zero now, it will be in the future. So if ledger writes you, they're still in nothing.
Speaker 1:I don't know how many NFTs are worth anything anymore, but there can't be many that are still worth something, because that entire scam bubble is completely popped and it's not like people like us weren't telling people about NFTs a year and a half, two years ago. Like guys, this is completely a scam. It's like the new ICO. These things are all going to go to zero. Anyway, here we are. Yeah, but yeah. So this is why you and I advocate for Bitcoin-only hardware wallets, and the biggest reason for this for me is that you don't then have to be worried about your dev team, who's busy working on these hardware wallets, to have to focus their time and energy on different blockchains with different security protocols and with different you know everything.
Speaker 1:Every coin is different.
Speaker 1:Well, not every coin.
Speaker 1:Some of them are complete copies of each other, but most of them are different and they have different rules running them and therefore the devs need to dedicate more time to those coins.
Speaker 1:So if your hardware wallets is supporting a thousand coins, the devs in the background have to split their time between those, so you're not going to get the best security outcomes, whereas if you are getting a wallet that's Bitcoin-only, you can be assured that the devs working on that are focusing all their time and effort on securing Bitcoin alone, and then you get a more secure wallet, and the other reason for going Bitcoin-only is that you end up with people who value Bitcoin's ethos, running the companies there and making design decisions based on that alone, so you don't end up with the shit-coin ethics. You know ways and means to hand over your private keys to the three-layer security agencies, for example. So, yeah, and that's why I want to discuss Bitcoin-only wallets on this podcast with you, and I think let's start with what I perceive to be the big boss at the moment the most secure one, also one of the most expensive, but the cold card. What's your take on the cold card?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the cold card is a very solid wallet. It feels very ultra secure. They've done a great job, fully air-gapped. Now with a Mark IV, they've got dual vendor secure elements, so you don't need to trust one secure element. There's actually three chips involved two secure elements and then the one MCU. So, yeah, cold card's a proper device.
Speaker 2:There's present cons to everything, of course, and I think the con with cold card is that they are no longer free and open source. Now they are source viewable, so you can still see the code that is running on your cold card, but other companies can't copy it and use it, basically, and that disincentivizes people to look at this code because you can't really do anything with it. If the company has fully open source code, other developers can use that code, which is a great incentive to take a look at it and see how you can use it yourself if you're a business. So there's a lot more eyes on free and open source code and because cold card is made, there's only source viewable. I think that's one of the downsides of cold card.
Speaker 1:So within the Bitcoin community, I would assume that there's a bunch of people now calling the cold card scene shit coiners et cetera, because it's no longer open source, the code base, so you can't view it like you say, but you can't compile it and run it, and I would imagine they made that decision because they want to protect the IP to a degree that they can produce their cold card and sell them at the price they sell them at and that someone else can't produce a similar device and undercut them. I imagine that's probably what's going on, because cold card they do a lot of their. I don't know if they do all of their manufacturing, but maybe the assembly and their team sits in Canada. We obviously they've got high costs of labor, high costs of living, et cetera, et cetera, whereas if someone in China started producing fold cards, for example, then it'll be a lot cheaper for them to do. So I understand why they've gotten that route, but obviously now the downside is, like you say, is that you can't. You have less eyes on the, on the code, because there's less people actually trying to implement it commercially. So it is a double-edged sword.
Speaker 1:The other thing about cold card, though, is is the price. I mean, I retail a cold card Mark for for 5,100 round, and the margins on that are thin because you can't I just can't really charge more than that for it, because people aren't just aren't going to buy it, like not in South Africa, they're just really expensive. And that is because shipping and taxes and import duties and all that stuff adds up obviously. So that is a downside to them. But if you are securing a large amount of Bitcoin or you're securing Bitcoin that's grown in value, then 5,000 round on your security might not be a big deal. You know, if you support it is yeah. So that's a personal decision to make, but I would say that they probably are the most, the most secure out of the out of the wallets thus far. Like, yeah, like you said, open sourcing Cool, and what's your? How do you find use experience on a cold card compared to some of the other ones, though?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I will agree with you there. Cold card is one of the pricier ones but probably one of the most secure there. That's out there, with the downside being it's source viewable the usability. I think if you really want to use the cold card to its full capabilities, if you want to use it to its full using all the security measures it isn't the easiest to use, of course, with the air gap you need to its best use with a wallet like sparrow, which in itself is quite complicated for new users. Yeah, air gap, sd operation, signing offline, then moving the sign transaction back online. It's not the easiest, but cold card does allow you to plug it, plug in the device and use it. Non air gap, I believe. I don't really know because I've never used it like that. I only use it air gap.
Speaker 1:It kind of defeats the point, like why would you spend so much money and then not use it? Air gap yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Sorry.
Speaker 1:No, they do allow you to use it in non air gap mode there. Plug in, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it defeats the $5,000 around price point. So you have for newer users. I think it definitely is quite hard to use. It's not the most usable device. If you want to use it like, you should use it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So this is the thing like the. Maybe we should just explain air gap mode before we get into into detail about how, how, why you should use it. But yeah, do you mind just telling people what air gap does?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically the cold card like I mentioned earlier how hard it is to work is it generates a private and a public key and the public key is used to receive Bitcoin and that can be put online, because you can't spend Bitcoin with the public key. No one can steal your coins if they have that. So the public keys put online and you use that to receive the coin. So let's say, I receive one Bitcoin it's quite a lot, but just, for example, one Bitcoin and now I need to send it With cold card. You use the public key to build that transaction. Then, basically, on your computer, you're saying I want to spend this Bitcoin, send it to this person. Then you take that transaction in a file, a dot, psb, t file and you put it on an SD card. So here's my SD card, you take it completely offline, you separate it from the computer and you put it on the cold card and then cold card takes your private key and signs that transaction completely offline.
Speaker 2:Now the reason it's air gapped is because the cold card is never plugged in to the device, like a ledger or a treasure would be never plugged in. Everything is air gapped. So there's air between the two devices. There's no cables or nothing has to be plugged in. So the SD card you plug it in the cold card. It signs it offline, no strings attached. Then you pull out the SD card and put it back on the computer and now that SD card has the signed transaction, so you can now broadcast the signed transaction that's sitting on the SD card. And, yeah, that is where you can now send the Bitcoin, because it's been delivered to the Bitcoin network. Basically, right.
Speaker 1:So, in a nutshell, air gap means that you can sign a transaction. They're creating a transaction, a signing transaction or like, separated by a gap of air. They're not done on the same device. So you create a transaction on a wallet in your computer. You then save it to SD card, put it in your cold card, sign it, take the SD card out back in your computer, broadcast it to the internet. Transaction done.
Speaker 1:So there's various permutations around air gapped. So with the cold card they started out. I think they're the first guys to implement this properly. I might be wrong, but in the earlier designs I think they were the first guys to do it using the SD card. But now there's different methods of doing that, using QR codes, for example, and the new Mark 4 cold card. Yeah, there's a seed sign. The new Mark 4 cold card actually has NFC on it so you can tap it onto a device. So let's say you've got a wallet on your phone, you've got a watch only wallet and that's where you create the transactions. Broadcast to the internet, you create it there and then, through NFC, which your phone has got near field communication, you can tap it onto your cold card and actually broadcast the signed transaction that way. Well, the PSPT cold card sign, it's tapped it back in Send the sign transaction then broadcasts that way. So they are the.
Speaker 1:The usability on a gap is getting much better. You know, in the last few years I've seen a lot better. But, that being said, once you're familiar with the SD card process on the on the mark three cold card, for example, which is the one I've got, it's super easy. You know, once you've done it, once it's really easy to do and it just gives you great peace of mind. You know, and and what I love about about the team at cold card over at coin kite is these guys take this stuff seriously. Like the cold power adapter, for example, like you can run your call, your your cold card offer nine volts, one of those rectangular nine volt batteries and a. You and I both got the cold power adapters. There's a little adapter that bolted plugs on to the top of a nine volt battery and then, using a Power only cable, that cold card manufacturers also.
Speaker 1:No data can travel, it powers the device. You know that this thing is not. There's no way is. This thing is generating and passing on information that shouldn't be passed on. So yeah, that's what I love about the cold card. But, that being said, you just showed the seed signer. Let's move on to the seed signer. Do you mind giving us a bit of an overview of what that is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the reason I showed the seed signer when you were talking about different ways to a gap is that the Seed signer uses QR codes rather than an SD card to communicate information. So your seed signer has a little camera at the back and it's got a little screen that can display QR's and basically, seed signer communicates info through QR code, it signs offline and then your sign transaction is again in the form of QR code. So that's a different approach to a gap, and what the seed signer actually is is it's hardware you buy yourself. So this screen is just bought from a local Computer store, the camera as well, and then there's a Raspberry Pi board inside. This is all bought from local computer stores here in South Africa. I didn't have to buy this from any hardware wallet manufacturer, like cold card or Blockstream Jade or whatever it may be. So I view seed signers a truly sovereign signing device or a hardware wallet, whatever, whatever word you want to give to it, because you do everything yourself. You know there's there's no trust involved here. So a fully sovereign signing device, and the people at seed signer are really passionate about this as well. They've put a lot of effort into this.
Speaker 2:The guy was the seed signer guy. What? What was it? Forensics? He was in forensics so he knows a lot about these different secure elements and how the three letter agencies can gain access to your coins and other things like that. So he wanted to make a device that didn't store any seed phrases. So the seed signer creates a seed and then as soon as you cut the power on your seed signer, it wipes the seed clean. There's no seed saved on this device and, yeah, that's what's cool about seed signer it's stateless, truly sovereign. You know, you build this thing yourself.
Speaker 2:The software that they deliver is fully free and open source, so it can be viewed that, like I mentioned earlier, there's always pros and cons to everything. So the con with the seed signer is that their raspberry pi board is also kind of like a black box. It's not open source and it's not built specifically for Bitcoin. So the raspberry pi Doesn't isn't built for Bitcoin, so it lacks some of the security features that a cold card or a box room Jade might have. For example, the cold card. You can't load malicious software on there. That wasn't created by the cold card developers Because it's got certain signatures.
Speaker 2:Because this is just general purpose hardware, I can boot anything on here, even if it's designed to steal my Bitcoin. So, this SD card you want to make sure you verify the software that goes on here and you want to make sure that it's always your SD card you're plugging in, not an SD card from an evil maid like an evil maid attack. So, yeah, that's basically seed sign it. It's also fully air-gapped, like we said earlier with the QR codes, and Got a lot of cool features as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, yeah, so there's a bit of impact there about the seed signer. So let's start at the back with the SD card. So that's the biggest risk, right, is that someone Downloads a Melissa or creates a malicious version of the software that you're running. So the software you run on your seed signer lives on that SD card, right? So, yeah, someone gets the same SD card. It looks exactly the same.
Speaker 1:They put the malicious software on there, they have access to a seed signer device which you might not store that securely because it doesn't actually hold your private keys, and I see like whatever it can just live somewhere not hyper secure, unlike your other hardware wallet, and then they swap out your SD cards and you get some malicious code running on there which then next time you scan your private keys, it's does something the fairest, sends it to a different address or whatever. So that is the one risk with a with a seed signer and, like you said, the evil maid attack. It is Quite a stretch that someone would pull that off, but obviously a highly motivated individual who's targeting you specifically, etc, etc. Can pull that off. But there's definitely ways you can.
Speaker 1:You can defend against that and what I like about the seed signer is, as you mentioned. It's stateless, and what stateless means is that it doesn't store your private keys on the device. Your private keys are actually held on a QR code, and what seed signer does is you can. You can generate your keys on there using dice rolls or using there's various ways to do it but it then creates a QR code for you that you then transcribe onto a piece of paper Templates QR code template and it takes your 12 or 24 words and converts them into a QR code and if you've got one lying around behind you, I don't have mine because I think it's what I did, but I usually you have them on job, but no, but look if you've seen one QR code.
Speaker 1:You see them all, so it looks like a QR code. And what you do is you power up your seed signer so you plug it into a power source a battery bank works great, especially with a power and a cable and Then you load your private key into the seed signer by scanning your QR code and that QR code is taking your 12 words and converting it into a QR code. Then you scan that, it loads your private keys in and now your device is ready to sign. So then you can create your transaction on sparrow on blue wallets or whatever wallet you're using. Generate your partially signed Bitcoin transaction, your PSPT. Scan that with your seed signer, because it's got a little camera on the back. It then imports that information from the transaction onto a seed signer. You can then say cool, to prove this transaction. You can see all the outputs Prove the transaction. And it generates a QR code on the screen which you then show back to your phone or your PC or wherever you've got your watch only wallet living to then Broadcast the approved transaction on. So it's stateless and and it uses the pulley egg out and stateless, which is great.
Speaker 1:Like you say, the the Raspberry Pi zero Issue, that can be a bit of a supply chain issue, because a few months back by the year ago, there was a big Raspberry Pi shortage so we couldn't get hold of any Pi zero boards. So we couldn't actually manufacture our own seed signers, which is quite annoying. And then you have to buy a different Pi which has a Wi-Fi board on it, for example. Yes, it like get rid of that because you don't want your device being able to connect to Wi-Fi. The other big issue with the seed signer and this might not be an issue for some people, but it is for most normies is that it's DIY. You got to go and build it yourself, and that's not everyone's cup of tea, but if your people like Cole and I, great, it's a cool, cool thing. I should go on as a wedding gift. Shout out to my boy again. He won as a wedding gift. My wife and I Great wedding gift. So yeah, very, very cool, I got us a kit. Let me just put it together.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that I don't like about the seed signer is it doesn't come with a beat. Well, it doesn't come to you. The designs over battery included. So you got to plug it into a power supply same as the cold card. That's quite a quite annoying. So you have to have like a separate power supply for the thing or you have to plug it into your computer, which is often how you're doing it If using sparrow, which then you know creates security risks. If you don't have it, if you don't have a power only cable, so you use like a, because everyone's got those like old school USB cables lying around for the old phones, old Samsung devices. But that's a data and power cable and then you know if your Computer's got malicious software on it, which you have to assume it does. You could run into into issues there.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mentioned, there's no secure elements on here as well or Anything to make sure that your seat can't be extracted if it's loaded, so plugging it into the computer. I think this device specifically. You should avoid plugging it into the computer. I understand also with the Raspberry board being closed. I've I'm not sure if this is fun or not. I've seen a few other cold card manufacturers say that you can't really verify that the seat has been wiped because the board is closed. You can't. You don't know what the board is doing behind the scenes. So Although when you cut the power, you, when you load it back up, the seat is gone, we don't know if the board actually has wiped out. So that's another problem. But most of these problems we talk about really for all these hardware wallets are Are they really gonna happen? It's something like that, really like the evil made attack. You're better just getting your coins off an exchange and on a device like this or even on a software wallet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're right, like this is worth reiterating. Like I said in the beginning, these problems we discussing here are such multiple orders of magnitude lower than leaving your coins on an exchange. You know, like we talk about like fringe cases here, about like your board might be compromised or like the maid could swap out your SD card. You know you're not your coins being stolen off. An exchange is far, far, far more likely.
Speaker 1:Um, so yeah, but uh, yeah, the, the seed sign of me personally is great and what I really like about it is because it's totally open source and like see, the guy from seed signer there isn't really. I mean, there is the founder guy who started it, but now it's become whole. It's a whole open source project. There's a bunch of contributors. It's like it's like Bitcoin. It's become this whole other animal, that's, that's like taken on a life of its own and the rated which firmware updates come out is is quite fast. So like there's always new updates happening and the user interface on the on the seed signers is always improving. And so one of my, one of my favorite wallets I love it and just the way it operates by the QR codes is is great. And Then show me one to the next one and which is the blockchain Jade, relatively new Arrival on the hardware wallet scene.
Speaker 1:It's been around for like two years or so, but gaining quite a bit of traction recently, and I think the reason why it's gaining traction is it's state. Can be you stateless, it's air gaps, you know it uses QR codes, but it is way, way, way cheaper than the competitors, specifically, even cheaper than the seed signer, which is built from like components you can find, you know, at your local hardware stores. Even once you've imported and bought a retailer like Bitcoin, only it's still cheaper, which is a very compelling, you know it's very compelling for most people that are so affordable. But my question to you is have they made security trade-offs to make it that cheap? Is it? Is the? Have they managed to kind of like, attain the vana? Here We've got a secure device that is also still cost effective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I do have a blockchain Jade, but every time I open a new hardware device, I want to film a video on it and I haven't filmed a video yet, so I haven't opened it. So I don't actually have experience with it. I've seen videos about it and I've read through all the docs, so no more or less what it's all about. Yeah, so the jade is fully open source, which is always good. But with that being fully open source, it comes with downsides, the way they've done it. So they have a virtual secure element and I believe you need to use blockchain green, which is their wallet, to access that and to do updates, upgrade your blockchain Jade. So it's not. They say it's air-gapped, but I wouldn't really call it fully air-gapped. You know, from a C generation to updates, to signing, I wouldn't consider it fully air-gapped.
Speaker 2:And there are some downsides to using a virtual secure element because it uses their whole Server, the, the blockchain server. So I think it's a super secure device at a great price. I mean, again, these things we're talking about are. It's very unlikely. This is what's going to compromise you. What's more likely to compromise you is you losing your seed phrase or keeping your Bitcoin in an exchange. But yeah, that's one of the downsides is that virtual secure element and it's not fully air-gapped and there are ways around that. You can use the jade air-gapped, I believe, and stateless. You can generate the seed without connecting to anything and it wipes the seed. But again, to push updates you have to connect to blockchain green via Bluetooth. So, yeah, I think it's a super secure device at a great price, but it does come with its trade-offs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so. So I've used it, the jade, quite a bit now and it has become my. So I've got quite a few different hardware. It's a player out of a bunch of different ones. I've played around with a bunch of different ones, and, from my perspective, this is the most user-friendly wallet I've come across so far, and there's ways around the virtual secure elements and and this is a pro anacon the virtual scale element. Because it's a pro, because you don't have to have a secure element on the device, and that's the expensive part. That is why the cold card is so expensive, because they got two secure elements on the device, and and that's literally what makes your device so expensive. So, with a server, you build it once and then everyone can connect to it. So If you.
Speaker 1:What it also means, though, is that people can't hack your device. It's like the seed signer. If you use it in a stateless air gap mode, you don't store your private keys on the device. It's just a key, it's just a signing device. You actually because how most hardware wallet work is a, your private keys live on the hardware wallet and then it gets encrypted by a pin. So this confuses a lot of first-time users. Because you've got this device, it's got a pin, you got the 12 words, the seed words and you got a passphrase. There's like three things you got to keep track of and especially for first-time users, you're like what do these things mean? I don't know what. What is the difference between the pin, the passphrase and the seed words? So the way I recommend people use the Jade Is the same way you use a seed signer. You create your seed words on there and and I do agree with you you've got to download the latest version of the firmware to run it in the latest stateless air gap mode. And so there is a Issue there because there's a dependency on block stream. However, they have open source the software. So what I would imagine they're gonna do is probably start pushing this through github so you are able to download your latest versions from github or from different different sources. That's probably what I reckon they're doing, but like the speculation on my part, but I I'd imagine that would be the next move in security from their side. Adam back from block stream knows what he's doing, so hopefully that's the route they go.
Speaker 1:But you use the device in a way that you create the QR code from your seed words. You have that QR code and then you add a passphrase to your seed words. So then every time you want to use your Jade you just scan your QR code, you put in your passphrase which you keep in your head, and then you know Bob's your uncle. You can, you can, karen, and sign the transaction. What I really like about that is there is no secure element to hack on the device, the device. I don't know if it breaks itself like a cold card does if people try to, you know, to put in a passphrase too many times. I'm not quite sure about that, but yeah, I think from what I've seen, the trade-offs me are pretty good. If you use it in in in air gap mode and stateless mode, it's kind of Got a better interface than the seed signer. You don't have to build it yourself and it's cheaper and you get all the same guarantees with a bit more security.
Speaker 1:And this is a really interesting thing about the jet there's the dependency on downloading the firmware from Blockstream Green, which is a companion wallet that goes with it. But they've spent so much time making the wallet, the Jade, compatible with other software wallets for watch-only wallets that they actually haven't got watch-only functionality on Green for the Jade, yet it doesn't really work. So that was interesting for me. I found that out this week. So I can't actually use the Jade with my Blockstream Green with my Jade as a watch-only wallet because they haven't finished building that yet, whereas it works really well in watch-only mode with Blue Wallet. For example, we can use it with Sparrow. That works fine. So I like where Blockstream is going with us and I think as they keep its rating on the product, it's going to get better and better.
Speaker 1:So for me personally this is a really great wallet to get started on and it's also got multi-sig support and one of the things they do is that the biggest drawback to multi-sig for me is your wallet coordination file, because you've got to store that somewhere securely. If you lose your keys, you can reinstate the wallet from the config file, the coordination file but that needs to be stored somewhere and it's a digital file. So often people store it on a flash disk. Problem with flash disks is they've got about a five-year lifespan. Then they start getting squirrely, so you could end up storing. You store your multi-sig coordination file on a flash and you're safe at home and then 10 years later you need to use it and then that flash is corrupted and then you're screwed. So all the flash gets stolen or lost or whatever.
Speaker 1:So what the jade does? It actually stores your coordination file on the device, which is quite handy if you're using three different jades or one jade and two other different types of wallets. You can store the multi-sig coordination file on the actual jade itself while using it in stateless mode. So it remembers the multi-sig file but nothing else. So that's quite handy.
Speaker 1:But multi-sig used to be a method of proponent for multi-sig and now I'm more circumspect about it in that there's a lot of room for error where you can mess things up yourself, and that's the biggest risk in hardware. Wallets here is just over-complicating things, and with multi-sig it gets complicated. So it's great for corporates. We've got to have directors each holding a key. That makes sense, we've got fiduciary responsibility, et cetera. But if we average Joe, I actually come back around to think that a single-sig with a parse phrase is just a better option because there's less way for you to stuff it up. But yeah, I don't know, we're kind of getting off track here. This discussion isn't really meant to be about multi-sig, but yeah, from my perspective jade great wallets Works pretty well and is very affordable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing also I forgot to mention is because there's no secure element. That's what allows them to fully open source the device. So a lot of these devices with secure elements, the secure elements are always closed source, because a secure element manufacturer that produces open source chips just doesn't exist. So all these secure elements are closed black boxes. We don't know what's going on inside of them, and that's why companies like ColdCard have done this dual architecture where there's two secure elements with from different vendors. So it's dual vendor chips and that's one of the ways we hedge against that risk of one of them being backdoor. Yeah, so no secure element means it can be fully, fully, fully open source. There's not a single thing in there that is closed, which is great, from Blockstream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, they've done well, they really have done well. Ok, and then the next one I want to talk about is the Bitbox. So Bitbox is made by ShiftCrypto right, they're based out of Switzerland. Yeah, yeah, do you want to tell us a bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Bitbox isn't that well known compared to the other. While it's like ColdCard I've looked into it recently I've never actually used one, so I'm not an expert on this but it has quite an impressive security model. They pioneered that dual chip architecture I was just talking about. So they have a secure element that stores your seed encrypted and it needs a few things to unlock that seed. So, yeah, they pioneered that dual chip technology and three secrets needed to access that. And for a thief to gain access to the wallet they need a random secret that's on that secure chip, then they need a random secret in the MCU, in the microcontroller, and then your PIN as well. So it's got quite an impressive security model. It's fully open source, except for the secure element chip. Like I mentioned earlier, all of these secure elements are closed source and it uses it in a trustless way, similar to how ColdCard does it.
Speaker 2:And again, there's no pros without cons. The con with this device is that you actually plug it in. You can't use it air gapped. It's plugged right into the computer and there's no SD operation like with ColdCard or QR signing or flying. It's plugged in directly and that is the downside of the Bitbox. It's also got a. There's a Bitcoin only version and a shitcoin version, and the problem is the developers do have to put some time into that shitcoin version, so they might not be focusing on securing the Bitcoin as much and adding cool new features to that Bitcoin only device. So yeah, that is the Bitbox.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So that's a very big one for me is the developers and their time, because if you are focusing first off, if you're focusing on shitcoins, there's like the whole moral side of that, which we've hashed over many times. But the other thing is that those shitcoin chains because they were built so quickly and they don't have the same ethos of Bitcoin of like, move slowly. There's more the VC Silicon Valley model of like, move fast and break things, which means things break all the time and the developers have to spend a bunch of time by fixing shitcoin chains and their security models. And then, because Bitcoin is so slow moving, they probably end up spending no time or very little time on the Bitcoin side of things. And then, like you say, you just don't get new features running out that quickly.
Speaker 1:Which, even though, if they could release a new device where they spend a lot of time building this device and the kind of firmware that goes with it, what does that look like in five years time or in three years time? Are they gonna keep supporting it or are they gonna keep chasing off the shitcoins? And they could spend 200 hours, 100 hours, on a single shitcoin, building out security model there, and then that shitcoin doesn't exist in three or four years time anymore. It's literally gone to zero. And then all that time was wasted, whereas we know Bitcoin's still gonna be around in three or four years, or at least there's a much higher probability than it being around in some random shitcoin. So yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll say as well, I get the feeling these guys are. They do have a shitcoin device. They seem very pro-Bitcoin. They're not really pushing oh you can store your NFTs on our device. Guys, they pushed a lot of the Bitcoin stuff. This is also from them. They sell these little Bitcoin white papers. Yeah, I don't think they're as bad as something like a ledger. Who's like, hey, this is how you store your shitty peep, peep-oon-oo, whatever, whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Use the ledger.
Speaker 1:So that is a fair point. I definitely agree with you. They do seem like they are legit, but, once again, don't trust. Verify Like having to if you have to trust people in the space, so you get wrecked, you know. Like trust is the way to go. So, based on that, and based on what we discussed, what is your favorite wallet type of all the ones we chatted about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard to say with all these pros and cons, I think at the end of the day I mostly use cold card, with so 24 words and a passphrase and geographically distributed. So cold card is probably my favorite device. I haven't used the Blockstream Jade yet, but I think for its price that would be something I'd highly recommend to people who are new to the space and want a nice entry-level wallet. And Bitbox has really impressed me as well. It's quite an impressive device with some good security features on there and Seed Simer. It will always have a special place, of course, because it's just such a cool thing and what they've done with the being fully like fully sovereign device where you don't really need to trust any hardware wallet manufacturer. But yeah, all these cool devices, at the end I think cold card wins for my personal stash. At the end of the day, there's one device that stores your personal stash and I like the cold card, geographically distributed, of course, with the passphrase.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So the passphrase thing is super important to have. I think it's basically essential. If you're running a single-sig wallet, I think it's essential that you have a passphrase on there, and because it just gives you, like post-op, you should always have backups of your Seedwares, right, multiple backups, and those backups shouldn't be on paper. They should be ideally etched into steel. But quite only we sell these kits that allow you to create steel backups quite cheaply. But those backups, if they get found, if someone finds those 12 words and you don't have a passphrase, they can just steal your Bitcoin, right. And so this is why passphrase is so important, because you can just then not have to worry about your Seedwares being found by someone, because you've got to learn additional layer of security on top there. Yeah, what would you recommend to people about how they secure their backups?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like steel as well. So my favorite method is 24 or 12 words plus a passphrase multi-sig. I think there's a few ways you can shoot yourself in the foot and it's a bit unnecessary for most people. I mean, if you've got $1,000 in Bitcoin and you're storing on multi-sig, it's not a good idea really. So, yeah, I like steel as well Steel plate for your first 12 or 24 words, then your extra passphrase in a steel plate as well, in a different place of course. So if you can preferably put it somewhere where, if an attacker comes to your house, they can't access both keys. So, for example, if someone comes to my house there's they can't unlock everything because not all the keys are here. So that's how I recommend, and both are on steel, so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So if anyone's wondering how to do the steel backups so this little bad boy over here, this is also an open source project called BlockMix and this is basically like a plastic jig that you three d prints. Well, you don't have to three d print. You can buy these online from Bitcoin only or Macs over at Electric Eel SSLs. You actually print them for us. But you put in a 25 mil steel washer in there that seats in there and then, using this jig, you can use number punches and letter punches to bang your word onto the washer. So you can, for example, here put number one and then, let's say, your first word is whatever power. You can bang that in there. With power, using the marks, the notches on here to like move it around. You can get a nice, neat washer with a word on it and then the string of washers goes onto a bolt. You got all 12 nice and neatly held in place with the butterfly nuts and that's your 12 word backup. And one of the things you put me onto which in the beginning I was like, ah, people aren't gonna use them. But often, having used them myself now I'm like I'm sold on the idea Are those Tampa evident plastic bags. So you put your seat, your backups, inside a plastic bag that shows when it's been opened, so you can see if someone's actually found your seed words and how to squizz at them, which just gives you you know. You know that, okay, these things have been compromised, Even though I've got a passphrase protecting it. You can then move your Bitcoin onto a whole new seed and it just gives you another layer of additional security. So it's a great if you need to distribute those.
Speaker 1:So I set up a corporate client the other day with their Bitcoin security solution for the company and we had to distribute keys amongst directors. And it's a great way to do it for directors who don't wanna be involved in like day-to-day operation of the Bitcoin wallet. But you can just give them a Tampa evident plastic bag with the envelope inside it that's got their seed words written down on there. You're like, hey, in the need of. If there's an emergency and we lose access to our wallet, we're just gonna come get this bag from you so we can, you know, reinstate the wallet and then you can even if it's set for them for 20 years, you can easily see if someone's actually got access to these seed words or not, because the Tampa evident bag is there.
Speaker 1:So what I recommend to anyone if you are using a hardware wallet is you should also make steel backups of your seed words super important, Because if they're sitting on paper, moths Enemy number one they're gonna eat you, they're gonna eat your paper and then fires, flood damage. You know ink, fades, All kinds of things. So it's just much better to have. And then once the steel, and then you know you can sleep well at night and you can get super creative with how you store those seed words. Yeah, what's your. What do you think is a good way for people to store those steel backups once they've got them?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think it depends on your circumstances. Steel, I, yeah, I don't really know. To be honest, I think everyone's got their own Little cool places where they can sneak them around. Having a external safety deposit box is a good idea if you want to geographically distribute it, but for storing it, yeah, I think it's really up to you. Just be creative. Look around your house, think where would no one look for this and where would no one find this? And Chuck it there in steel in a tamper evident bag. So if somebody does find that, you'll know. And another good tip is, if it's in steel in a tamper evident bag, wrap it in something where they can't see it. So with your Washes you can't see it just by observing it like from yes, you can't see it like this. But if you've got a plate where you've punched your words in, maybe wrap it in I don't know toilet paper or something, then put it in the tamper evident bag. So if someone put an envelope, yeah, exactly maybe not toilet paper.
Speaker 2:I've just got a box of tissues here, so I'm looking at that thinking yeah, so that if someone does get your tamper evident bag, they don't have to open it to see your words. Exactly, it's wrapped up so that they can't do that.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. One of the things I'm working on at the moment you know those rodent bait stations that like keep rats poison in, like at industrial locations, like you've been to a factory, or like public spaces is like those black rodent stations with holes and he, there's where the rats come in and eat the bait perfect place. So you, I'm looking at hosting those on the online store soon. We you can buy one of those and then keep that in the back of your like kitchen cupboard, for example. Anyone breaks into house to see that no one's sticking their hand inside that thing. Like no one wants to touch poison, but it's not poison, it's your seeds. So you can stick those in a tamper evident bag inside something like that. And another great one is put it in your freezer. You know the sky got from the gold bugs, they would say. Put it in your gold in an ice cream container In your freezer and just write dog food on it. You know someone breaks into house and I stealing dog food. Another great place. But my personal favorite, look, the time-honored tradition of the pirates cannot be faulted. You bury that shit in a yogurt tub in your backyard. No one's finding that, you know. Like you know when you need them, which is hopefully not often you can go and dig it up and you got your seed words, because they're on steel, so there's many ways to skin the cat. What I would say, though, is putting it in your safe at home is probably a bad idea. Like that's a honeypot. Like if someone breaks into house like they're like where's the safe? Taking to the safe, like don't store your things that are really valuable in your safe. Like leave some breadcrumbs there, some like trolls that people would take as a diversion, you know, but then leave your your Bitcoin seeds there, and what you could leave there is your QR code to the seed, because anyone breaking into house probably does, unless they watch this video Probably doesn't know what the QR code is and, once again, if it's secured with a passphrase, worthless them, and they don't know what the passphrase is. So many ways, many ways around this, but call, we have gone over time here. I'm sorry about that, but yeah, thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 1:This has been a great discussion, and I think if anyone gets a takeaway from this is go get yourself a hard-to-won it and Use it in stateless mode and use an air gap mode, my personal favorite of the lots is I love the cold card. I think it's great, but to be honest, I think I'm a biggest fan of the seed signer and the Jade because of that stateless air gap mode. I think it really because it just means that you don't have to worry about the actual physical device getting stolen and and getting hacked and I know cold card protects against that but can break itself and all that. But there's if what you're paying I think you can just get. You can get a much more affordable device to achieve that same goal. All right, cool on that. Thank you very much. Tell me, if people want to find you and find your videos and content you're producing, where can they? Where can they find your content?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm Twitter. On Twitter I'm at at cold T you. Youtube is southern Bitcoin and have a website, southern bit corner dot com. That puts I put all my video guides on there and they're they're stepped. So if you wanted cold card guides, click on the cold card guides and then step one is set up, step to how to pass phrase. Step three how to Use dice rolls, something like that. So, yeah, that's where you can find me and thank you for having me. It was good to chat about hardware wallets. I remember that Any hardware wallet is safer than the exchange.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I will put all the links down below in the video. Yeah, cole, thank you so much, bro. We'll catch up can soon and love your work, man, you're doing a great service the Bitcoin community. Keep it up. Thank you, cheers Ricky Like it. Cheers, man you.
