Letting a network-connected computer see your keys risks someone else finding them, through a hack, leak or malware, which would mean losing ownership of your bitcoin.
In 2013, Trezor was created to stop coin loss, for good.Ĭryptocurrencies depend on secrets being encrypted and decrypted using privately held, impossible-to-guess keys, which must be created and stored offline to preserve their uniqueness. The Bitcoin security problem could not be solved using traditional approaches, so a tailor-made solution was needed to let individuals manage security offline in an easy-to-use package. Corrupted drives, hacks, scams, fires and more led many people to lose their bitcoin permanently.īy removing intermediaries like banks, Bitcoin puts more responsibility on the user. In the beginning, wallets were stored on computer hard drives, cloud storage or in physical form. Security for Bitcoin is a unique problem: every individual must be able to secure their own assets independently or the idea fails. They make cryptocurrencies convenient to own because they can be independently secured by anyone, and even help preserve your privacy. There’s a reason hardware wallets are recommended - they keep keys offline and let them be physically secured by the asset owner. Your assets are only as secure as your keys, so it is important to use the right crypto wallet. The term wallet refers to a place for storing data including pairs of digital keys which unlock coins on the network. Hardware wallets are secure devices native to cryptocurrency, specifically created to make Bitcoin and other digital assets easy to use safely.