With recent hacks etc going on I thought it all the more important to go over what hardware wallets are and how to back them up etc.

Many of these wallets offer backup methods themselves by having a 16 word code which would be used on a similar device to access the wallets.

1 KeepKey

Keepkey was my first wallet ever. They do seem hard to come by now and out of stock most of the time. However this wallet is one of my favs for both the simplicity of it and also how well made it is.

It supports a number of crypto currencies most of the popular ones
Bitcoin
Dash
Dogecoin
Ethereum
Litecoin
ERC-20 toke support for most popular ones in a recent June 6th 2018 update

• Recovery is done with a 16 word phrase

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2 Ledger Nano S

Ledger use to have a a few wallet types but for some reason those seem to be phased out for what I consider a not so robust wallet. However it does support a number of other coins keepkey does not which might be good if your into those types of coins.

Ledger Nano S reminds me of a simple thumb drive and honestly could be somewhat easily broken which worries me with almost the same price tag as keepkey.

I also found the setup and usage of ledger to not be so user friendly so your going to spend a bit of time just figuring the thing out.

This wallet says it supports the following...

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Fideo U2F, Dogecoin, Zcash, Dash, Stratis, Ripple, Hello, Bitcoin Cash, Komodo, Ethereum Classic, POSW, Ark, Expanse, Ubiq, Pivx, Vertcoin, Viacoin, Neo, Stealth, Bitcoin Gold, Stellar, HCash, Digibyte, Peercoin, QTUM, Bitcoin Private, Zencash, Woleet, Nano and Nimiq

With more on the way.

However be warned you can only support roughly 5-10 of these wallets max at a time per ledger which totally dumbfounds me about this wallet. I would think they would build a more robust version that could hold all of them in a single wallet.

Overall its one of the top wallets for these other altcoins it does its job and does it well but it does have a few issues which I just don't like and wish they would address soon.

*recovery is done with a 16 word phrase

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3 Your Harddrive

Yup! Your own computer hard drive can support a number of wallets however it does with a pretty hefty price tag and not the most portable.

However it is one of the great ways to support massive amounts of wallets and with an external hard drive or simple a extra hard drive on your system you can legit store hundreds of wallets on them.

*** IMPORTANT ***

When using wallets you download to your system be sure to do the following

#1 - Encrypt the wallet most likely an option to do so under settings BUT WRITE IT DOWN and save it in a number of places If you lose your encryption key there is no way to recover it

#2 - Backup your wallet.dat file there is normally options on wallets to do so under the menu options at the top. It would also be a good idea to synce the wallet as often as possible and to save the wallet.dat file about once a month.

Store it on thumb drives other hard drives etc you will need it if you should need to recover the wallet.

4 Trezor

I don't have one of these so it is hard for me to write a review on it but what I do know is it is one of the first hardware wallets which if very well trusted.

It has a small size like the ledger nano s.

Supports Bitcoin, Ethereum (via myetherwallet), ZXcash and Dash

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Well there you have it some hardware options to store your crypto outside of exchanges and keep it safe. These options give you a way to store and take your cryptocurrency offline so you can avoid some of the many risks with having it on an exchange or a wallet you do not own.

Do you use a hardware wallet yourself? What one and whats your opinion of it?

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