With the collapse of numerous supposedly secure cryptocurrency financial companies
– Celsius, Three Arrows and Voyager to name a few – it has become starkly apparent
that the ‘not your keys, not your coins’ mantra has a great deal of validity to it.
Coupled with the increasingly invasive KYC that some companies are obliged to
request to provide services, having your own hardware wallet is quite an attractive idea.
A hardware wallet provides the user with the security of a cold wallet, but
with many useful features in terms of viewing coins and moving them around.
This article will briefly look at Trezor, one of the older and more
established hardware (offline) wallets that has stood the test of time.
Trezor – A Brief History.
The first generation of was released in July 2014.
It was developed by Satoshi a company based in Prague.
Both Trezors software and hardware are open source, giving access to
all who wish to view the programming.
Since its inception it has not been hacked, except by a ‘white hat’ which exposed
a flaw to be corrected, and it was.
However, quite unforgivably, it did suffer leak of its users’ email addresses.
Many users, over 100 000 suffered phishing.
Given that it prides itself on security, perhaps it would have been wiser not to give
details of users emails to a third party.
Nonetheless, in terms of funds being stolen, to my knowledge nobody has
successfully done anything of the kind.
Trezor remains one of the choices as a hardware wallet.
Getting Your Trezor.
To acquire a Trezor it is very to only buy it at source.
Buying a Trezor from any other source you to risks of losing your crypto.
Go to https://trezor.io/ then to: Get your Trezor 2.
You will be taken to a choice Trezor One and Model T.
We will go with Trezor One.
Currently, a Trezor One cost you about US$70-100.
3.
‘Add to Cart’, on the screen and continue on.
You might like to buy two or three as it is quite useful to have
one as a backup in case of loss.
Funds can be recovered AS LONG AS REMEMBER YOUR KEY PHRASE AND PIN NUMBER.
4.
Press continue and provide all details in terms of address etc.
You will be offered a variety of ways to pay.
It is encouraging to see that and Litecoin are two of them.
5.
Once you have placed an order and successfully transferred your bitcoin
or other funds, the Trezor company will give you a tracing number and inform
you that the Trezor has been dispatched.
Installation and Use.
You will need to get the Trezor App run your Trezor once you receive it.
1.
This is done by going to: https://trezor.io/ and then pressing Suite – the button
next to Home on the top of the screen.
2.
Download the app and then, with your Trezor, wait for the screen to
invite you to connect your Trezor.
I had trouble with the cable had to get another one.
This may occur.
Don’t panic, just check all your connections.
3.
Once you have connected your Trezor you will invited to write down the seed phrase.
This consists of twenty four words MUST be kept in a safe place.
It enables whoever has it to access your funds – assuming they also know your
PIN (personal identification number).
4.
The PIN also has to be put into the app.
Trezor has an interesting way to do this which does not require you
to touch the keys on your computer except your mouse / touchpad.
If you have a keystroke monitor spying on you, they will not be
able to gain access to your PIN.
5.
Once you have set everything up and copied down all your codes it is time
for you to start filling your wallet.
This is easy enough to do and can be done from the Lightning Network (see our
article about Lightning) or other wallets.
6.
The Trezor application is quite sophisticated, unlike the actual
Trezor which is rather like something you might have got as a toy in
a cornflake packet 40 years ago.
To access the app, once you have connected your Trezor via the port,
you will have to key in your pin.
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Summary.
Sending and receiving bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies with Trezor is a fairly
simple process and a very nice feature is you are in control of how much you
want to spend sending it, That is to say you can control the fee structure.
It is interesting to note how little it actually costs to send bitcoin
if you do it in this manner.
Exchanges must be making quite a lot of money from the fees they charge
customers to move Bitcoin around.
I sent 19 dollars worth bitcoin for 3 cents.
It took a long time to arrive – around 4 hours – but it is very,
very cheap compared with exchanges.
In addition, you don’t have to go through KYC, permission to send or any danger of
being cut off from your funds, Trezor gives you true freedom to move your money around.
Trezor offers true believers in permission-less, seamless, movement
of money/bitcoin a real choice.
Trezor has a YouTube channel filled useful resources, including this one:.