Ledger Nano S Review: Did I just waste $150!? Are There Better Options!?

Anyone who holds cryptocurrency knows that the most important thing is protecting your waller from loss or theft. We can lose all of our coins forever in a number of ways other than being hacked, and so there are a few steps you can take to prevent this. The Achilles Heel of all private wallets, and even the Ledger Wallet, is that you must keep your master private key somewhere in-case your laptop gets fried, or you lose it etc. This means making a personal choice as to whether you write it down, or store it digitally somewhere.

The security of the Ledger Nano S is impressive within itself. It is tamper proof (more or less), and keeps your private keys within the Ledger at all times. That is a great improvement to storing your public key on a computer right!? Ledger also have a long list of alt coins that are supported, so you can hold all of your alt-coins in one place with a great peace of mind. That is the theory at least, let's see how it worked out from the start with my brand new Ledger Nano S.

I ordered my Ledger on Amazon, with a slight price hike, but seeing as I live very remotely that was my only option. Besides what's a few Pounds when you can have security and peace of mind? The setup process was relatively OK, but I must say that as a seasoned web developer and computer techie I was also not overly impressed with the operating system. The screen is tiny, which is OK but as a 44 year old my eyes are not as good as they use to be. I had to wear some magnifying specs to be sure that I had seen the words correctly. After double checking there was ONE that I had wrong just because that screen and resolution is SO low. So be careful, because Ledger only validates THREE of your private backup key words, so if you get one wrong and didn't realise you are going to be in for a shock when the time comes! I think a slightly larger screen and better resolution wouldn't be too much to ask for a state of the art cryptocurrency wallet!

Once set up, and with my 24 word private key words backed up it was time to plug it in and connect it with the chrome app, there doesn't seem to be a desktop program for this. I plugged it in, and waited but the app didn't want to recognise or find the ledger. I tried changing the USB cable, and tried connecting it many times but it really didn't seem to work. I had to keep reopening the ledger app on my mac, which Google for some reason make it very hard to find. I basically can not find or get to the app without going to the reinstall page and opening it from there. Very strange! I did some Google searches and tried all the options. You need to close all other wallets that you may have open, as they seem to conflict and prevent the ledger from working. That didn't help, nor did any of the solutions that I found both on the Ledger Nano S website and general user posts. In the end I solved the problem by testing it on a windows virtual machine, and it worked straight away. There must be something on my (standard) Mac Book Pro preventing it from launching, but I didn't yet figure out what it is.

So finally I had my Ledger up and running, and via this chrome app i could add more alt coins! I started adding a few and it went quite quickly and painlessly. On the fourth one, however, I got a system message that the Ledger was full, and it couldn't add a fourth one. That was strange! Surely an error!? Back to Google, and the answer revealed itself immediately. YOU CAN ONLY STORE UP TO 4 CRYPTOCURRENCY'S AT A TIME on the ledger! Oops. I didn't do my due diligence, mainly because i would have never imagined that this high tech wizardry would present a huge list of coins, only to be limited to 3! I say three and not four because you need to keep the authentication app on it so that you can send and receive coins. Shit! If this thing was going to be of any use I would need a few of them, and suddenly things are looking less than peachy!

It was at about this point that I realised that I had totally wasted my money. This thing was of almost no use to me. Better I keep my Bitcoin in several private wallets or even with Coinbase or other exchange that are Insured and have two factor authentication to login (careful with GDAX folks as it leaves you logged in indefinitely!). That to my mind is much safer because someone needs to have my phone and my login information in order to do anything. Even then IF they login I will get an email notifying me of the event so I can take action if necessary. The rabbit hole gets deeper though.. If your private Ledger keys are compromised then someone can have access to ALL your coins, without any kind of verification, notification or secondary authentication! If those 24 words get out then its all gone! Compare that to having you alt coins on separate and private wallets, each with their own keys, and even BIP38 Encrypted so EVEN if someone finds your private key they still need a password to see it. It would be MUCH harder and unlikely to have all your wallets broken into in that way.

So, in conclusion I would say that this Ledger would be a great idea IF they can solve the Achilles Heel. Writing your password down on a very obvious piece of card in plain English sounds pretty crazy to me after ALL the technical efforts to secure it on the hardware side. I'm sure one day someone will figure out how to solve this problem, and so for now I present you with two options that I recommend and have posted about:

1. Go buy a UV permanent marker and hand-held UV torch ($20) and write your secret keys on something like a wedding invitation or a page of a book. That book can be hidden safely so that EVEN if someone gets their hands on it they would need both a UV torch and the page number of the book to find the keys.

How To Protect Your Hardware Wallet Recovery Key (Ledger, Trezor) and Private Wallets (Exodus, Electrum etc) for $15 - A novel approach to securing your paper wallet and protecting the weakest link
https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@eco-alex/how-to-protect-your-hardware-wallet-recovery-key-ledger-trezor-and-private-wallets-exodus-electrum-etc-for-usd15-a-novel

2. Use Lastpass.com to store all your keys. This approach is VERy safe, and has two Factor Authentication. IT also has the AMAZING advantage of allowing you to delegate access to a trusted person in the event of your disappearance or death. This is probably the main reason I use lastpass.com!

The best way I know of to be secure, safe, protected, and give access to your accounts in the event of emergencies or death: LastPass
https://steemit.com/steemit/@eco-alex/the-best-way-i-know-of-to-be-secure-safe-protected-and-give-access-to-your-accounts-in-the-event-of-emergencies-or-death

I hope this has been useful to you, and if you were about to buy one of these perhaps consider the limitations and alternatives. If you have any other ideas please do let us know in the comments! As for me, if anyone want's my Ledger Nano S let me know! ;-)

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