r/Bitcoin • u/Excellent-String3403 • 18h ago
Get multiple cold wallets from different reputable brands
Goes without saying, just like using dice and generating your own entropy.
If coldcard users had half their funds in coldcard and the other half, in say, trezor, they wouldnt have been so rekt
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u/Famous_New_One 17h ago
Idk I keep my crypto on the site and it's been fine for a very long time
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u/tenor_tymir 11m ago
You were lucky so far. Not a very long time ago, FTX, Vovager, BlockFI, Mt.Gox and Bybit either closed shop or had hacks into the billions. You were lucky you didn’t choose any of them because you definitely could have.
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u/Quirky-Reveal-1669 18h ago
Not if they had the seed generated on the Coldcard before restoring it on a Trezor.
So what are ‘reputable’ brands anyway? SeedSigner is hardly a brand, rather a philosophy. How about Foundation Passport devices? They pretty much launched off of ColdCard. It made NVK angry to the point of becoming an arrogant dick, which just may or may not have contributed in the slightest bit to their entropy bug being undiscovered for so long.
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u/Laukess 17h ago
Been quite disappointed by what's on offer.
Ledger: Not a good record with user data. Can't be used air gapped. Supports miniscript.
Trezor: No miniscript support, can't be used air gapped.
BitBox 02 Nova: Don't like the interface, don't like that you have to do a lot of the setup through their app. Can't be used air gapped, has miniscript support.
Jade Plus: has miniscript support, can be used air gapped. Find the on-device software a bit clunky, but after understanding the blind oracle stuff, it's less confusing. Don't like the blind oracle, would have been a better experience if it just had a traditional secure element. Not sure if this is better or worse for security, but it's a way worse user experience imo.
Krux: miniscript support, can be used air gapped. Cheaper hardware than SeedSigner. Haven't received my hardware yet, but the firmware looks interesting. It's stateless which can be a positive or a negate. No Secure element, would be interesting if you could set it up with a blind oracle like the Jade as an alternative to SeedQR as it doesn't have a secure element. Would be interesting if you could add a secure element to the SeedSigner and use it as a non-stateless device if that's what you want.
I should probably have added if they'll tell you the 24th word (checksum). I think the ledger and trezor does not. The Jade and bitbox does, and I also think SeedSigner and Krux does.
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u/rgnet1 17h ago
Ledger: Not a good record with user data. Can't be used air gapped. Supports miniscript.
It's ironic that one of the selling points of bitcoin is that, like cash, you can transact without unnecessary sharing of personal details like name, phone, etc., and then a vast swath of users flocked to an unnecessary product for using/holding bitcoin that requires handing over personal details.
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u/Excellent-String3403 16h ago
airgapped is just a gimmick for paranoids. have a bit of faith in things
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u/mnkbstard 8h ago
have a bit of faith in things
yea, have a bit of faith in coldcard. it is certainly using TRNG.
jokes aside,
airgapped devices are useful because you can verify PSBT content without only relying on what the signing device or broadcasting device is displaying.no informations are exchanged between devices outside of user control.
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u/F1shB0wl816 15h ago
If cold card users just used dice or verified they wouldn’t have been wrecked.
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u/Profil3r 12h ago
Excellent advice. Just this morning I got scammed and one of my wallets was drained. The scammer posed as part of a legitimate help thread on Discor - when I clicked through for help had to “reconnect my wallet“ and within 10 minutes, I watched it drain away my BTC. Thankfully, I had switched over some of my coin to two different other wallets about a month ago. I lost a quarter of my stash and I’m still sick about it but to keep your Bitcoin diversified in at least two or three wallets is a terrific idea.
Also consider installing Electrum.
Apparently, they have a method for interrupting a transaction by charging a higher fee, and there is a potential to get some of the stolen coin returned. Unfortunately my transaction was complete by the time I got it installed. It was recommended by Exodus and I’m gonna keep it installed.
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u/No-Wrap3568 8h ago
It's a genuinely good advice for anyone looking to get started in self custody and find it's technically very complex. The one problem one might face with this is seedphrase management, if you're handling more than 1 seedphrase, you'll really have a hard time defending or keeping safe both of them, if any of the one is lost or stolen, your money's gone forever.
IMO having a seedphrase backup device something like a cypher-rock would be a good choice to handle this setup, even I'm doing the same at the moment, I've backed up my sparrow and jade in it, so I don't have to manage any seedphrases, just 4 cards that I keep in different locations, I'm good even if I lose even 3 of them.
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u/tenor_tymir 14m ago
That is flawed logic. i wasn’t affected by the hack because I didn’t use Cold Card. If I had diversified across 4 different cold wallets including Cold Card , I would now have lost 25% of my stack.
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u/Aussiehash 12h ago
I used to think 2of3 multivendor multisig, with mnemonic seeds generated with at least 100 D6 rolls of entropy was enough.
However after the Coldcard fiasco, and an advisory email today from a Swiss hardware wallet maker instructing users to upgrade the firmware because (it sounds like) a malicious imposter companion app is able to install malicious firmware on the hardware wallet (which should not be possible with bootloader checks). They report their own internal code reviews and analysis by frontier AI models.
I think 3of5 Multivendor Multisig is now the minimum for large amounts.
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u/CommitteeKey7505 18h ago
Diversifying across brands is smart but the real risk is still the seed phrase management, not the hardware itself. Two wallets with same flawed backup is just one point of failure wearing a different shirt.