CRYPTO INVESTORS TURN TO HARDWARE WALLETS

The year 2022 would forever remain a very eventful year for Cryptocurrency Community. The year so far has featured the high notes of crypto with developments like a massive adoption of move-to-earn, NFT inclusion for Solana, celebrity partnerships with crypto exchanges, etc. And has also experienced low points like, BTC touching down below $20 thousand, Luna crash, Delistings, and more.

Among all these, the crypto space has suffered an unusual attack by hackers. According to statistics, it shows that hackers have stolen about $1.97 billion worth of cryptocurrency from as many as 175 Blockchain projects from January to June of 2022. And this is threatening enough.

This goes forth to show that amidst the unstable market condition with Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, there’s still a surge of hack activities in the crypto space. The least anyone can do now is to guard their holdings, and by extension, we are talking about your Crypto wallets.

CRYPTO WALLETS
A cryptocurrency wallet is simply software, program, or service, the device that is used to store digital assets like Cryptocurrencies. This is done through the use of public keys and private keys.

Among the various kinds of crypto wallets, it’s been proven that hardware wallets are significantly more secure and by far reduce the risk of assets being stolen.

HARDWARE WALLETS
It’s no more news that hardware cryptocurrency wallet sales have increased. This isn’t only due to security concerns, but also a step was taken by investors as they withdraw their assets from centralized exchanges.

Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Ledger; a hardware crypto wallet firm, in an interview, said it makes six times an increase in revenue from week to week.

Let’s discuss what hardware wallets are and how they work.

A Hardware wallet is one of the secure methods of storing crypto. Through the use of these physical devices, the digital keys tied to an individual’s assets are safely backed up. It is important to note that private key knowledge is needed in this context.

Private Key
As the name implies, a private key is a secret set of alphanumeric digits used in cryptography, very similar to a password. In crypto transactions, private keys can be used to validate transactions and provide ownership to a blockchain address. It is equally critical to note that funds cannot be removed from a blockchain address without its corresponding private key.

Although the security advantages of using a hardware wallet are applaudable, nevertheless, there are a few disadvantages to the usage of these devices.

• Hardware wallets are usually expensive in comparison to Software wallets
• Hardware wallets are suitable for long-term holding of assets and are not suitable for day-to-day transactions, as they require the holder to always plug into a device to access assets.

•Set up can sometimes be a daunting experience for newbies.

HOW TO USE

•After purchase, connect your hardware wallet to a PC or smartphone

•Complete the required setup, afterwards add a PIN which serves as an extra Security later.

•The app associated with your hardware wallet will assign you a wallet address to send and receive tokens

•When you’re sending tokens from your hardware wallet, your pin would be used to authenticate the transaction

• Then wait for confirmation of the transaction.