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> Neither is expensive and both are widely known. I'd say that ~97%-99% of the people in the US and Europe have no idea how to use a hardware wallet. The vast

> Neither is expensive and both are widely known. I'd say that ~97%-99% of the people in the US and Europe have no idea how to use a hardware wallet. The vast majority have no idea what a hardware wallet is. You're very far off the mark in your estimate. Bitcoin is at the adoption stage where the general public is only beginning to use services like Coinbase. They do not know how to use a hardware wallet, most of them do not know that such a thing exists.

hanniabu 5y ago
The vast majority of people in crypto know what a hardware wallet is
- spiderice 5y ago
  Not really sure how this is relevant, seeing how the original comment said > what hope is that for regular folks could make safe use of said value store
  - DennisP 5y ago
    I just googled "how to safely store bitcoin" and a bunch of articles with good, simple advice came up.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      But is it foolproof? "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt" was published decades ago. With this stuff you cannot make any mistake. PGP advice appeared to be good and simple, yet people made errors all the time. I wouldn't expect this to be different.
      - DennisP 5y ago
        Hardware wallets are considerably simpler than PGP. I can only think of two ways to screw up: 1) Lose the passphrase. The device does quiz the user on words of the passphrase upon setup, to be sure the user at least wrote it down. Hopefully this reinforces its importance. Ledger provides a card to write the words, with prominent instructions to save it somewhere safe. 2) When sending, don't verify on the device's display that you're sending the money where you think. But the display is right there on the device, and displays the destination address while waiting for you to push a button right next to it. For smart contracts it helps to get a larger device that shows all the contract parameters, but for simple sends that's all there is to it.
darkwater 5y ago
> Bitcoin is at the adoption stage where the general public is only beginning to use services like Coinbase. They do not know how to use a hardware wallet, most of them do not know that such a thing exists. You are creating a persona tailored to back up your argument. It is not that strange that a good chunk of "common people" buying right now bitcoins know what an hardware wallet is, at least as a concept (not the tech implementation obviously).
UncleMeat 5y ago
I think you should increase that by an order of magnitude. I'd be very surprised if more than 1/1000 could describe how to safely use a hardware wallet properly.

hanniabu 5y ago

The vast majority of people in crypto know what a hardware wallet is

spiderice 5y ago
Not really sure how this is relevant, seeing how the original comment said > what hope is that for regular folks could make safe use of said value store
- DennisP 5y ago
  I just googled "how to safely store bitcoin" and a bunch of articles with good, simple advice came up.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    But is it foolproof? "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt" was published decades ago. With this stuff you cannot make any mistake. PGP advice appeared to be good and simple, yet people made errors all the time. I wouldn't expect this to be different.
    - DennisP 5y ago
      Hardware wallets are considerably simpler than PGP. I can only think of two ways to screw up: 1) Lose the passphrase. The device does quiz the user on words of the passphrase upon setup, to be sure the user at least wrote it down. Hopefully this reinforces its importance. Ledger provides a card to write the words, with prominent instructions to save it somewhere safe. 2) When sending, don't verify on the device's display that you're sending the money where you think. But the display is right there on the device, and displays the destination address while waiting for you to push a button right next to it. For smart contracts it helps to get a larger device that shows all the contract parameters, but for simple sends that's all there is to it.

darkwater 5y ago

> Bitcoin is at the adoption stage where the general public is only beginning to use services like Coinbase. They do not know how to use a hardware wallet, most of them do not know that such a thing exists. You are creating a persona tailored to back up your argument. It is not that strange that a good chunk of "common people" buying right now bitcoins know what an hardware wallet is, at least as a concept (not the tech implementation obviously).

UncleMeat 5y ago

I think you should increase that by an order of magnitude. I'd be very surprised if more than 1/1000 could describe how to safely use a hardware wallet properly.