Ledger Nano S - A Swiss bank account in your pocket
The Ledger Nano S makes it easy for people to securely take control of their own money without relying on any third party service to sign transactions. When you use the Ledger Nano S, you have your own Swiss bank account in your pocket.
Background
There's a number of software-based user controlled wallets in Bitcoin. Blockchain.info is probably the most well-known, and there are others like Copay and Airbitz. These are relatively convenient, but have the downside of not giving users full control and being more vulnerable to security breaches.
For Blockchain.info, the keys are stored on Blockchain.info's server, encrypted and the users password decrypts the private key to sign the transactions. For Copay and Airbitz, the keys are stored locally on the device, and are susceptible to device vulnerabilities.
Ledger Nano is a hardware device built solely for storing private keys and signing transactions.
Why would you want to use it?
If you own Bitcoin or Ethereum and want to store it securely without relying on any third-party service, you should check out the Ledger Nano S. It's dead simple for a non-technical user to setup and gives you control of your money that you've never had before.
Just plug the device into your computer, write the seed down and make sure you hang on to it (for wallet recovery in case you lose the device), and create a PIN to access the device. Then when plugged in, you can send BTC and ETC from other wallets to the device to secure them better than ever before!
What are some new products that you love? Hunt them with the tag #steemit-hunt
I completely agree. I have several different app-based BTC wallets that I use or have used in the past for transactional ease: Coinbase, Jaxx, Aribitz, Xapo, Blockchain.info. However, for my main BTC stash that I'm holding until Doomsday, I've decided hardware wallet is the way to go, with backup keys securely stored in a physical vault.
do you use a safety deposit box at a bank for the physical vault?
NO! (emphasis intentional)... Same goes for my gold & silver coins and emergency hoard of Federal Reserve Notes, i.e. American paper money.
I think that Cryptosteel is the best for storing your backups. No matter what, you do NOT want to leave them in a safety deposit box, in my opinion.
http://cryptosteel.com/
nice thanks i'm going to check out cyptosteel
Intriguing, I had never considered hardware storage before but the bit where you said it was easy got me! I will check it out!
I have a couple Trezors, Ledger Nano, Ledger HW.1, and the Piper paper wallet printer, and after using them all for a while I feel that the Trezor is far and away the best. Do you think that the Nano S is better, or on the same level? Also, have you looked into keepkey? Their shapeshift integration certainly seems interesting. Thanks in advance!
I haven't researched the market as thoroughly as you, that's for sure!
The reasons I like the Ledger Nano S compared to the others:
I don't have a strong view on the other players though simply because I haven't tried the products yet.
The Ledger Team certainly is awesome. They're a big part of what's going to make people feel safer with their bits.
Paul Puey, @paullinator, from AirBitz mentioned this:
very interesting. i'd guess that demand from existing Ledger, Trezor etc customers is pretty low for Steem but will be cool to see Airbitz add it and maybe others will follow!