"...you can never go wrong with a cold storage wallet like Trezor or Ledger."
We might have to "agree to disagree" on this one. I've had a hardware wallet fail. Fortunately, there was nothing in it or else I would have irrevocably lost it all. After that, I do not trust hardware wallets and it is frightening how many people do. 😣
2FA is a good thing, but I have had that fail, too. I lost access to my Bittrex account because my phone died last year and my new phone won't sync with the required Authenticator app. Fortunately, I had nothing stored in Bittrex.
Paper wallets are probably the safest, as long as the ink doesn't fade over time (like thermal ink does) or you don't spill coffee on the paper. Maybe we should chisel our QR codes into rocks. 😆
Anyway, UPVOTED, and will probably send some liquid to KrazyPoet! Good of you to do this! 💜
When you discuss a hardware wallet fail, do you mean the hardware failed alone or the hardware failed AND you could not recover from keys? Before reading your words, I felt like the safest storage (albeit not the most convenient) was a hardware wallet with the recovery keys stored on paper in a second, secure location.
The hardware wallet (on a USB stick) failed AND I could not recover from keys. I had set a custom passphrase that probably looked odd to anyone but me yet was super-easy for me to remember. I had it written down, too, just in case I ever forgot it.
After the wallet failed to open the first couple of times, I looked at the written-down passphrase and entered it slowly and carefully but still received an error. Then I inserted the microSD card "backup wallet" into the USB stick to recover the corrupted wallet on the stick, but experienced more "failed passphrase attempts." After a certain number of failed attempts, the wallet locks permanently.
This was not long after I'd come to the Steem blockchain, before Hive launched. The only crypto I had was the STEEM, and I only bought the hardware wallet because "everyone" kept talking about how good they were and that everyone should have one. I never put anything on it, but occasionally "played" with it, logging into it and going thru all the settings, etc. to see what was there and trying to understand it all. That was $100 I will certainly miss, as I could have bought a nice chunk of crypto with it instead of a device that eventually failed. 🙁
That sounds really frustrating. I thought you could use the recovery keys to access it from another site, and I probably need to learn more! At least it sounds like it was not a major loss. Any loss is a loss, but when I hear about people losing thousands or more, it seems like it would be hard to take.
By all accounts, there is no 100% sure guaranteed method. Your fiat bank could go belly up tomorrow and you'd lose all your savings too or maybe the market megacrashes and your stocks plummet or maybe a fire would break out and there goes your silver and whatever you had in paper. (all hypothetical of course)
Bittrex...ugh. They gave me the biggest headache ever before so I feel ya on that mess.
I have seen QRs in some odd places like bottoms of feet and other places in that black light ink. Nobody would know it was there unless - they knew it was there. Might be a killer option!
All hardware fails sooner or later. That's why You have to keep a backup of your keys/passpharse. Even if you have a paper wallet, it is advisable to have more than one copy. You never know what might happen.
Yea I feel you, its hard to trust this things, sometimes the simplest way is the safest. Thank you