4 Comments
Dec 2, 2022Liked by Carl ₿ Menger

Hi Carl, great articles thank you! I have just started investigating Bitcoin and there's something I can't get my head quite around:

You say the hardware wallet contains your private key, and you also need to write it down, incase wallet breaks or lost, you can recover your coin. If your wallet is stolen, the thief has the key, correct? Then why not just remember the 12 words (easy to do with a little practice) and have them written down and buried somewhere just incase, instead of carrying around the wallet which seems to me to be a very weak link or point of failure in self custody.

Hope I was clear enough, sorry for the essay!

Cheers, D

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author

Hi Don Joaquin,

Thanks for reaching out. Basically, you are right. Anyone who has your hardware wallet theoretically has your private key and can dispose of your Bitcoin. However, hardware wallets have an additional security feature. Most of them are password protected and thus prevent unauthorized access.

You can, of course, just remember your words. With Bitcoin, however, these are usually 24 and not 12. You would then have to type in these words before each transaction so that you can send your Bitcoin, which makes the whole thing very cumbersome. Therefore, a hardware wallet also facilitates the handling of your Bitcoin.

Let me know if you got further questions.

Carl

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Nov 25, 2022Liked by Carl ₿ Menger

thanks man great educational content personally using Blockstream green getting a jade hardware wallet had been using Wasabi been tinkering around with different ones

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author

Thanks for your feedback. Glad you liked the article. Next one will be about running your own node. Stay tuned.

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