New Toy for Myself and a Word of Caution with Recovery Seeds
So I ordered a Ledger months ago. Think it was clear back in June. It finally arrived a week ago Friday. Didn't have time to open in until Thursday. Here's some unboxing pics:
So now for that word or words of caution for recovery seeds. Due to typing everything for the last 30+ years my hand writing is atrocious (not that it was ever good). So I read off my seed words to my Mom to write down. I had her make 2 copies one to put in the safe. While she was doing that I had her do a second copy for my Trezor as well. This is when I noticed an issue. One of the words she wrote down for the Trezor wasn't a word. So now I was stuck needing to upgrade firmware on my Trezor without a good recovery seed. Well since I had nothing on my Ledger yet I decided to try something. I wiped it and tried importing the recovery seed from the Trezor. Luckily I guessed the word correctly and now have a good recovery seed.
So when you setup a new wallet with a recovery seed I suggest you make sure the recovery seed works. Before you put any coins on your wallet make a receiving address, wipe it and restore from the seed and see if you have the same address. That way you know your seed is good. As soon as I update my Trezor and split my bitcoin cash I'm going to wipe my Ledger and restore from the first seed it made to make sure that seed works.
Thanks for the heads up im still waiting for mine
Great advice @fubar-bdhr and it's so important, and so obvious, yet I bet it's the minority of people who buy hardware wallets that take the time to test out their recovery seed to be absolutely confident that it works.
I know I have, and I even authored a now ancient @steemit post about it:
https://steemit.com/recovery/@cognoscere/testing-recovery-of-a-hierarchical-deterministic-hd-hardware-cryptocurrency-wallet
One more thing, if your Ledger Nano S is running a firmware version prior to 1.3.x, then when you update the firmware (which you would need to do to, say, to split BCH into a separate wallet from BTC) the Nano S will erase all your configuration and applications and you will be forced to do a recovery and re-instatement using your seed words.
I believe that from firmware version 1.3.0 and forward, you will no longer lose your configuration and applications during a subsequent Nano S firmware upgrade.
It came with updated firmware. Checked say no updates available.
That's good! But folks who bought their Nano S a while ago and never updated the firmware will find that their device configuration and wallet choices get wiped as a result of the upgrade. This isn't a big deal if you have your recovery seed words and you copied them down correctly.
I feel sorry for anyone who made any mistakes when copying down their seed words and didn't bother to try out the recovery procedure before putting lots of crypto in their hardware wallets.
True. Having a similar issue with my Trezor. Trying to upgrade firmware but it won't update. Think I had the same issue last time. Just have to try it on the bar computer tomorrow.
Congrats on getting the hardware wallet! I got mine a short while ago too and am pretty happy with it, despite that I thought it looked/felt a bit flimsy. I discarded the supplied card and just wrote the words down in a little notebook. Then I wiped the device and reset it using the words, and then I took a second notebook and wrote the recovery seed in there as well. That second copy now rests securely and safely in another location.
I also tested if I could recover the wallet if I lost the ledger and luckily you can. The ethereum wallet is pretty easy I've found, but I had trouble recovering the Bitcoin address. The problem, it turned out, was that I selected a Segwit address. I did not find any way to recover a Segwit address from the Ledger, if I lost the device. So I opted for a Bitcoin Legacy (I think it's called) address, because that one I was able to recover. So keep that in mind.. I'm paranoid so I want backup possibilities in case I spill coffee on the device and ruin it.
Also, for kicks you should give trading on Etherdelta a try. You can log in there securely and super easy with your ledger, and trade. I wrote a guide on how to, because it's confusing because it's so different and slow and has a steep learning curve, but it's kind of cool to actually use the ethereum blockchain. My guide can be found here