How to make my own Hardware Wallet? – Cicero J4c0b1
Everyone is asking about hardware wallets and every day we saw more and more news about Scams and hacking into Company websites, exchanges and even the most famous hardware wallets in the market that you normally should pay from $ 59 to $ 199 or more.
But WHY I should pay for a hardware wallets and what are the real differences between this and a hand made one ?
The mos important question is : How secure is a wallet, a webwallet, a software wallet, a paper wallet and a hard wallet ?
Remembering that for Crypto your real coins are always in the #Blockchain, not in your “wallet”. The wallet itself is just a peace of software that deal with your KEYS!
The private key is you most valuable information asset, that will give the power to SIGN a transaction and then expend your coins from your records on the #Blockchain.
For me, particularly, a better word to describe will be “PORTAL” and not “Wallet”.
So lest just be quick and differentiate each one :
Each one of the wallets need a peace of SOFTWARE to follow the procedures and protocols established by your underling crypto project. So, calling something as a Software Wallet is a complete redundancy. As an examples we can use the wallets listed on the Bitcoin.org project
This one is a way to give you access to the blockchain using a web portal from a company like #Coinbase or #Blockchain. There are thousands of options and this is the less recommended portal to be used to store any values.
A specialized hardware that follow all the protocols rules and should be completely isolated from the outside world or being more simplistic, the internet. In fact the development of this solutions bring this technique to the CPU manufactures Companies and now in the new computers and cell phones you already have access to the CPU and memory protected technology, that should keep everything away from the information and process you run inside this particular space.
To have a paper wallet you need a SOFTWARE to run and create the image that you will PRINT with your KEYS (public and private). As you can print in paper, you can also save as a image, a PDF or any other electronic means. The goal for safety is to not use nothing connected to internet when you are running the software or printing your paper wallet. Here are some options to generate you own paper wallet.
Now that you are more familiar with the PORTAL thing, lets create or own android, secure wallet.
- a working Android phone, any type, any size, any version.
- a minimum 2 GB SD memory card (optional)
- wallet software binaries. For this one you can choose anyone from the recommended ones from bitcoin.org or any one that you already use. For our examples we will use Mycelium wallet, that is one of the best and open source.
1 — Remove any SIM chip or memory card from your phone
2 — Erase and Factor reset the phone
- In the Settings menu, find Backup & reset, then tap Factory data reset and Reset phone.
- You’ll be prompted to enter your passcode and then to Erase everything.
- Once that is done, select the option to reboot your phone.
3 — Now that you have your clean phone waiting to configure your account, just SKIP and DO NOT configure any google account.
4 — Turn airplane mode ON
reserve the phone for a second and lets get the software.
5 — on another clean phone or computer download the Mycelium binaries from the official web site : https://wallet.mycelium.com/contact.html
Chose the direct download and save to the sd card that you will use on the cold phone.
6 — insert the sd card with the binaries on the cold phone.
7 — search for the file manager and locate the software on the SD card
8 — Run the software and install on the new phone.
9 — Follow the normal procedures to use your new wallet.
This is a good guide to start https://coinsutra.com/mycelium/
The only difference s that you will not download from Google Play Store because you are offline.
As an optional step but highly recommended, you should encrypt your phone AND the SD card.
You can do this on the android configuration.
Appreciate your new, safe, and cheap, cold and hot wallet.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
Published at Sun, 02 Feb 2020 19:58:43 +0000
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