Crypto Hardware Wallets Are Going Next Level

History does seem to repeat itself and it feels like in the crypto world we see it faster then after. Everyone dishing out their crypto to companies, exchanges, DeFi and so on only to be screwed yet again. It seems like every few years this happens and with it a new push on hardware wallets and people understanding they need to hold their own crypto assets.

The issue however is hardware wallets are pretty complicated to understand and work with.

The First Hardware Wallet

While there are some makeshift hardware wallets before this the first big named one was Trezor. The Trezor one released in 2014. Was a hardware wallet that did very basic but secure things for keeping your crypto safe. It did this by created a seed on the wallet that would never leave the wallet so couldn't be hacked online via malware. It also used a PIN so when it was connected to a computer that was compromised the PIN could be set before hand this not allowing any type of keylogger from pulling the data. The simplicity of it is what makes it such a beautiful and long standing creation.

Next Evolutions

After that came KeepKey and I'll admit I used this hardware wallet myself for a very long time. That was until it was taken over by another company. It was a solid choice for myself for MANY years.

After that came some rather weird creations. One of which was called the bitcoin stick and another cold card. There was even a case of a credit card looking item as a "secure" option which honestly I wouldn't touch.

Just two years later the next phase of popular hardware wallets released called the Ledger series. The Ledger Nano S and the Ledger Nano X. These devices offers up a small solution that supported a number of other cryptos however was limited on the amount that could be stored on it. It's still the number one used hardware wallet but to be honest I personally hate it and use other options.

From there came two other lesser known hardware wallets the Secalot and ProKey a Trezor clone. But the one I know use is called Ellipal and I love the thing!

Ellipal is a cold storage hardware wallet that holds all of the other older hardware wallets core features but adds more. For one I can store a lot of other cryptos on it and the security on the thing is rather solid from. I've ever tested recovering a wallet with a second and the air tight frame keeps it from being hacked from Wifi and other type attacks which started to show their ugly head recently. The big sell point for me well two big sell points for me where how robust the wallet was. It could stand a bit of a beating compared to the other hardware wallets that felt like they would snap in your hand. It also offered up a beautiful and simply UI interface and one you could collect to a mobile app to keep tabs on things all while keeping your crypto safe. Ellipal released in 2018 which means 4 years have passed since then.

In that 4 years some other rather odd ball wallets have released such as D'Cent biometric wallet, Keystone wallet (which I'll admit I do like the looks of it I just never handled it first hand) the BitBox02. Arculus, NGRAVE and just a bunch of other odd and ends. There's so many of them now and for the most part many of the new ones look to have copied over the design of Ellipal. These others however for sure are not as popular and none really have gone mainstream besides ledger.

The Next Evolution?

This next hardware wallet might very well be the one that goes mainstream now that people are getting a huge reality check in terms of "not your keys, not your crypto" FTX was a huge wake up call and this new product from Ledger might just be in time for a huge selling point.

The Ledger Stax is set to release Q1 of 2023 so within the next 1-4 months we will be seeing this hardware wallet. It's designed by Apple's iPod creator. This stylish design and function might make it the hottest sold hardware wallet ever.

These new hardware wallets can be stacked, can display NFTs on the front giving it that customized show off feel along with many other features. The key is in it's size which allows it to also be carried around in a wallet being it's the size of a credit card.

All looks great but we won't know for sure till people get their hands on it and start using it. Does it break easy? Does it really support 1,000+ coins or can you only load a few because of memory issues like other ledgers? Lots of questions but I do love the design and I could see it being adopted heavily next year.

I wont be going into extreme details of the wallet I'll leave that for another post most likely when I get my hands on one myself or feel I have enough information to provide a real quality article about it.

What hardware wallet are you currently using?

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