Shownotes
In today's episode I finish the discussion of securing your crypto. We cover the benefits of using hardware wallets and several of the most common hardware wallets.
News
Bitcoin Conference 2022 in Miami April 6-9
Strike -- another cryptic twitter post --- jack mallers will speak at 4.35 eastern time on April 7
https://twitter.com/Strike/status/1511859572398604290?s=20&t=yLDR5EuyhmvMyUOIwXqB1w
UK government announces plan to adopt stablecoins as legal tender
https://watcher.guru/news/uk-government-announces-its-plan-to-adopt-stablecoins-as-legal-tender
Taro protocol proof of concept on Lightning Layer
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/how-bitcoin-taro-protocol-works
Hardware wallet links
Trezor
Ledger
Ellipal (Titan)
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I can be reached by email at mcintosh@genwealthcrypto.com and on twitter at @McIntoshFinTech. My mastodon handle is @mcintosh@podcastindex.social. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Website
Music Credits
Protofunk by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4247-protofunk
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Ethernight Club by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://incompetech.com
Transcripts
Hey, everyone.
Speaker:No one on this podcast is a financial advisor.
Speaker:All information presented on this podcast is for informational purposes only.
Speaker:Now that we have the legal stuff out of the way, let's jump on in.
Speaker:Welcome to the Generational Wealth with Cryptocurrency podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, McIntosh.
Speaker:And today we're going to be talking about storing your investments safely.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Welcome to the first Thursday episode of Generational Wealth with Cryptocurrency.
Speaker:I hope it's been a good week so far.
Speaker:We're going to start off with the news and there has been a good amount of news actually
Speaker:since Monday.
Speaker:So we'll jump right on in to that and then we'll be covering the remainder of our discussion
Speaker:about storing your wealth, storing your investments.
Speaker:So to begin, I wanted to mention that I believe this is the first case of a government announcing
Speaker:that they would allow stablecoins to be legal tender.
Speaker:So the UK government, Great Britain, has announced that it will plan, well, they're in the planning
Speaker:stages of this, but they're going to adopt stablecoins as legal tender.
Speaker:Stablecoins, something like Tether, USD, these digital assets that are pegged to a currency,
Speaker:whether that's the US dollar or maybe in their case a British pound, something like that.
Speaker:So again, more governmental regulation, more governmental moving into the process.
Speaker:This is a weekly thing that we hear and I don't want to belabor this, but this is what
Speaker:we're going to see this year.
Speaker:And probably for a few years coming.
Speaker:So that's pretty major news in my opinion.
Speaker:I think that will be followed suit by other countries around the world.
Speaker:As we move through this process, I will be including a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker:Now the second thing I want to talk about was Lightning Labs, who is one of the large
Speaker:companies that are involved in the Lightning network, the Lightning Bitcoin network, announced
Speaker:what they would call like a proof of concept for a new protocol, technically on the Lightning
Speaker:network called Tarot.
Speaker:So Tarot is the name of the protocol.
Speaker:And the idea behind it, and we're not going to go into a lot of detail about this, but
Speaker:the idea behind it is that it would actually allow you to send, wait for it, not Bitcoin,
Speaker:other digital assets.
Speaker:I want to talk about this for just a second.
Speaker:I actually think this is super important.
Speaker:As I've stated a number of times on the show, I find the Lightning network intriguing.
Speaker:I do believe that it's maybe not ready for prime time, but there are certainly a lot
Speaker:of activity going on on it and a lot of flow of money into it.
Speaker:And I think it's got a very good chance of becoming a major asset or whatever you want
Speaker:to call it.
Speaker:So I always keep my eye on the Lightning network, but basically this will be able to do something
Speaker:like you can send like stable coins, US digital dollars around the world without a bank, which
Speaker:frankly enough would actually kind of replace what XRP is doing.
Speaker:That was their idea about Ripple with banks, you know, sending money back and forth between
Speaker:the different institutions, but this is kind of a play on that that would certainly be
Speaker:extremely low cost, extremely fast.
Speaker:Now at this point, it is certainly just proof of concept.
Speaker:It has not been accepted basically into the core of the Lightning network.
Speaker:I do believe it probably will happen, however.
Speaker:Lightning Labs is no joke.
Speaker:I've listened.
Speaker:The CEO of Lightning Labs is a woman named Elizabeth Stark and I've heard a number of
Speaker:talks of hers.
Speaker:They've got a lot of money behind them and they are serious about Lightning.
Speaker:So more good news there for Lightning.
Speaker:Again, I'll have actually I'll have a couple of links in the show notes for that one for
Speaker:kind of a little bit more technical article and the one that kind of gives an overview.
Speaker:I mentioned this I believe last Monday.
Speaker:The Bitcoin Conference actually started today.
Speaker:So Bitcoin Conference 2022 down in Miami.
Speaker:I talked about how I believe that, oh, well, the conference runs between, well, April 6
Speaker:through 9.
Speaker:So yesterday, Wednesday, I should say, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Speaker:Today was Wednesday.
Speaker:Today was more of the industrial, institutional kind of side of things.
Speaker:Not really open for the general public.
Speaker:It was actually streamed on YouTube.
Speaker:There was a YouTube stream of it and I watched a bit of it.
Speaker:It's interesting information, interesting stuff.
Speaker:Tomorrow, though, kicks off kind of the main part of the conference.
Speaker:And our friend Jack Mollers, CEO of Strike, again, Lightning, they worked with the El
Speaker:Salvador Project, for example, had or has a talk at 435 Eastern Time on Thursday, tomorrow
Speaker:as I'm recording this.
Speaker:And if there's going to be any announcement about an Apple integration with Lightning,
Speaker:like I speculated, that would be when it is.
Speaker:And funny thing, a couple hours ago on Strike's Twitter account, they posted the date tomorrow.
Speaker:So 4-7-2022 and then 435 EST, Eastern Standard Time, completely referencing the time that
Speaker:Jack is talking tomorrow.
Speaker:So another kind of cryptic little note, more speculation.
Speaker:It's crazy.
Speaker:I hope he has something really good.
Speaker:I hope I'm not disappointed.
Speaker:I mean, I would be frankly over the moon if it was Apple, this integration.
Speaker:I think in terms of retail, I think that will bring a lot of people to the table.
Speaker:But we'll see.
Speaker:Maybe something completely different, who knows?
Speaker:You might want to check your Twitter feed or your, I don't know, coin telegraph or something
Speaker:like that around 5 o'clock Eastern Time tomorrow.
Speaker:Or check the Bitcoin price and see if it's spiked.
Speaker:Unfortunately, it did not spike today.
Speaker:It actually went down.
Speaker:We're at 43,300, which is pretty much the bottom, at least I hope.
Speaker:It went down to 43,100 or so, I believe, and it slowly crept back for the last few, maybe
Speaker:the last couple hours.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Ethereum is at 3,200 roughly, 3,194 actually.
Speaker:So it's not been a good day.
Speaker:It was all related to the stock market and the Federal Reserve meeting notes were released
Speaker:earlier today, which, you know, this kills me.
Speaker:I was talking to somebody earlier.
Speaker:So a month ago, they had the meeting and then they came out and everybody knew kind of how
Speaker:things were.
Speaker:And then they come out and release the notes.
Speaker:The notes are the same as what they said and, you know, so we panicked twice.
Speaker:It's great.
Speaker:It's good stuff.
Speaker:Unfortunately, at this point, Bitcoin still is fairly correlated to the stock market.
Speaker:And so, you know, it took a dip.
Speaker:Now, we're not underwater.
Speaker:I'm not ready to call it a bear market, but we were looking much better a few days ago.
Speaker:I did some work tonight charting and it is conceivable that where we reached was a bounce,
Speaker:you know, kind of the inflection point.
Speaker:We'll see.
Speaker:That remains to be seen, where at least we'll temporarily bounce back.
Speaker:We'll of course just keep having to monitor that over the coming weeks.
Speaker:If my dreams come true and Jack releases something that has to do with Apple, like I said, we
Speaker:may see an immediate boost and then a long-term trend of an upgrade.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So that's it for the news.
Speaker:We will be jumping on into our topic for this Thursday, which is a continuation of our discussion
Speaker:about, you know, how to manage your assets offline or out of centralized exchanges.
Speaker:I'm going to be talking about hardware wallets this week.
Speaker:To start with, I'm going to give a very brief summary for those who missed Monday's episode
Speaker:about what we talked about.
Speaker:And then this episode, we're going to continue talking about hardware wallets.
Speaker:So we're talking about ways that you can store your investments in crypto.
Speaker:Probably not the safest thing in the world to leave a large amount of money up on the
Speaker:centralized exchanges.
Speaker:Last week, we talked about software wallets.
Speaker:I would say, you know, if you have a moderate amount of money, you probably want to start
Speaker:keeping some off of the centralized exchanges or minimally at least spread them around several
Speaker:exchanges.
Speaker:If you cannot afford to buy a hardware wallet, which we'll be discussing prices and that
Speaker:type thing here in a minute, then use a software wallet because at least the majority of them
Speaker:are free.
Speaker:I'm sure there's probably some that charge, but wallets like Metamask, wallets like the
Speaker:two Cardano wallets, Dale Dulles and Yori, the Bitcoin Electrum wallet, all of those
Speaker:are free and you can set them up on your computer.
Speaker:You can store your assets in those wallets and most importantly, you control those private
Speaker:keys to those wallets.
Speaker:That's what we talked about last week.
Speaker:This week, we're going to talk about hardware wallets.
Speaker:Now what's the difference?
Speaker:Well, it is literally hardware versus code that's running on a laptop or mobile device.
Speaker:These typically are some type of USB type device.
Speaker:In fact, the first two that we're going to talk about, three specific hardware wallets
Speaker:and to be clear, these are not the only hardware wallets that are out there.
Speaker:These are just the three that I'm going to cover in detail.
Speaker:The first two brands are USB type devices.
Speaker:The third one actually is not.
Speaker:We're going to talk about, first of all, about the two most common manufacturers of hardware
Speaker:wallets and then we're also going to talk about one that's maybe not as common, but
Speaker:I think might actually provide a better, more secure storage solution and certainly supports
Speaker:a massive amount of tokens.
Speaker:All right, so the first two companies that we're going to talk about and they are somewhat
Speaker:similar, we're going to talk about Trezor, T-R-E-Z-O-R.
Speaker:They are actually the first company to manufacture hardware wallets for basically everybody,
Speaker:for the retail market.
Speaker:It is a very famous and very popular wallet.
Speaker:One of the defining features of Trezor is that they do operate on open source software,
Speaker:so the code is literally out there available on GitHub.
Speaker:What that does mean is, first of all, it's basically harder to find a bug in the code
Speaker:because more people are looking at it, but one of the benefits of that is that there's
Speaker:an official Trezor app, but there's other people who have built apps that interact with
Speaker:Trezor so that there's more choice there because that code is available and they can interact
Speaker:with it.
Speaker:They can use it to develop their code.
Speaker:Trezors use a USB cable to connect to the PC to carry out transactions.
Speaker:You can buy, sell, trade, stake, manage NFTs, but not dApps.
Speaker:DApps are decentralized applications, so they can cover a wide variety of services.
Speaker:Now, they have two models.
Speaker:The Model 1, which is kind of their entry-level model, it's about $80, and Model T, which
Speaker:is $260.
Speaker:It's more expensive.
Speaker:It's got a few more features.
Speaker:It's got a bigger screen.
Speaker:The next company, which has been out for quite a while and is also very popular, probably
Speaker:equally as popular as Trezor, is called Ledger.
Speaker:They claim that they're the most popular hardware wallet, actually, in the world.
Speaker:It looks like a USB stick.
Speaker:They have slightly more affordable pricing on their upper end.
Speaker:They have a Nano X that's $200.
Speaker:They have a Nano S, which is $90 on their website, or roughly those prices.
Speaker:Some of the differences, again, you're going to have a bigger little screen to interact
Speaker:with on the Nano X.
Speaker:It also has Bluetooth, so you can interact with your smartphone.
Speaker:Just like the Trezor, it supports buying, selling, trading, actually accessing dApps,
Speaker:in this case, and managing NFTs.
Speaker:It does support a wide range of things.
Speaker:What you don't see with these is, oh, I only support Bitcoin, or I only support Ethereum.
Speaker:That's nice, because you can quite typically have all of your different crypto in one place.
Speaker:Now, you should check to make sure.
Speaker:I know some of these, maybe they don't support Cardano, or I don't know, Ripple, or whatever.
Speaker:Let's say you have a big percentage of your portfolio on Cardano.
Speaker:You certainly would want to make sure that the ADA token is supported on that device.
Speaker:If you're looking at these two products, the Trezor or the Ledger, I'm not going to tell
Speaker:you to buy one versus the other.
Speaker:Now, if you're buying the entry-level device, it will support basically everything that
Speaker:most people would need.
Speaker:Maybe you don't want to spend that extra money.
Speaker:I would offer that there's a third option.
Speaker:One of the things that you need to know about both of these hardware wallets, Ledger and
Speaker:Trezor, is they are not what are actually called cold storage.
Speaker:Another word for that is actually air-gapped.
Speaker:Now, these wallets have better security, in my opinion, than software wallets that, anytime
Speaker:you're online, they're online.
Speaker:However, they do not support true air-gapping, meaning your storage, your vault, stays completely
Speaker:offline.
Speaker:And there's technical ways that they do that, but it does work.
Speaker:It's very, very secure.
Speaker:But neither one of these supports that.
Speaker:Now, one as an example that does, which I would recommend as kind of the ultimate form
Speaker:of security, is called Elipal.
Speaker:So it's Elipal Titan.
Speaker:It costs about $200.
Speaker:I'll have a link to it, just like the others in the show notes.
Speaker:It's at elipal.com.
Speaker:But it is designed to be able to be air-gapped.
Speaker:So I do not have to connect this wallet to my computer or to my smartphone via some app
Speaker:or whatever to make it work.
Speaker:And the way that this works is you actually use a QR code.
Speaker:So your wallet has a camera that will be used to scan a QR code.
Speaker:There's no physical connection via like a USB cable.
Speaker:There's no NFC, near field communication.
Speaker:There's no Bluetooth.
Speaker:There's no, I don't know, Wi-Fi connection, whatever.
Speaker:It's strictly you use the camera on the wallet to scan a QR code, which is generated from
Speaker:the app that runs on your phone.
Speaker:And then that actually is used to make the transaction.
Speaker:So this is actually kind of like the ultimate security.
Speaker:You don't ever want to say anything is unhackable.
Speaker:If I had a huge amount of money, I might consider splitting it up over multiple wallets.
Speaker:I mean, we're talking about a $200 device here.
Speaker:And if I've got multiple millions of dollars, what's $200 out of all of that, right?
Speaker:So I might split it up.
Speaker:Now one thing that you don't have to worry about, people who are first time they hear
Speaker:about this, they're like, well, what if it gets destroyed?
Speaker:What if my house catches on fire?
Speaker:Great question.
Speaker:And these are all recoverable basically in the same way.
Speaker:It's through what they call mnemonics.
Speaker:It's a series of words that's used to recover your device history or whatever you want to
Speaker:call it on a new one.
Speaker:And so I can keep my mnemonics in a separate place than my wallet as my recovery mechanism.
Speaker:Now you need to be careful about that because you can recover your wallet.
Speaker:But say for example, I'm an adult, I'm off of my own, I've got my crypto going and I've
Speaker:got quite a bit of money in there.
Speaker:I might want to keep my mnemonics in my parents' house in a safe box, hopefully.
Speaker:And the chances of both of those things being destroyed at the same time is very negligible.
Speaker:So you're providing even another layer of security there.
Speaker:I probably would not keep them both say in the same safe in case you had an intense fire
Speaker:or God forbid, maybe, I don't know, somebody broke in your house and stole the entire safe.
Speaker:That probably would not be a safe way to do it.
Speaker:Maybe you could keep it in a lock box at a, what do they call that, a safety deposit box
Speaker:at a bank.
Speaker:There's a number of ways that you can handle that or you can memorize them.
Speaker:I don't necessarily recommend that at least over the long term because some of us will
Speaker:forget and it's a terrible thing when you have hundreds of thousands or millions of
Speaker:dollars in a crypto device and then you forget the mnemonics to recover it or the passphrase.
Speaker:All right, so to me, this cold storage, this air gapping is a reason that I would use this
Speaker:versus one of these other devices.
Speaker:This is about $200.
Speaker:If we go back and look at the prices of the other ones, it's actually cheaper than the
Speaker:Traser Model T at $260 and it's the same price basically as the Nano X at $200.
Speaker:So to me, I would buy that.
Speaker:That would be the one that I would do at that price level.
Speaker:So you know your own situation, you know how much you can spend and you can make your choices
Speaker:based on that.
Speaker:But as you move up these levels of crypto, if I've got $1,000 in crypto, I'm probably
Speaker:not going to buy an air gap device like this.
Speaker:I don't really feel like that's necessary to spend a couple hundred dollars to secure
Speaker:that.
Speaker:But if I had $10,000, it's probably something I should start thinking about.
Speaker:If I had $100,000, I definitely need to be thinking about it or other mitigation techniques,
Speaker:right?
Speaker:Spreading it across multiple software wallets or whatever.
Speaker:Okay, so very cool.
Speaker:Highly recommend that you look into these if you have a significant amount of assets
Speaker:that are just sitting there.
Speaker:Now, one thing, do not, repeat after me, do not go to Amazon and order a Trasor or a Ledger.
Speaker:Why would I say that?
Speaker:It is certainly theoretically possible and in fact, probably will happen at some point
Speaker:if it's not already happened.
Speaker:That somebody will buy a Ledger off the website, off the Ledger website, take it apart, get
Speaker:the mnemonics password recovery phrase, which is in your device packaging, and then put
Speaker:it back up for sale, repackage it, put it back up for sale on Amazon.
Speaker:And then you buy it, you put your money on there and then they can simply reconstitute
Speaker:that device the same way you would if you lost it in a fire or I don't know, a tornado
Speaker:or flooding or whatever and take your money because they control it at that point, even
Speaker:though there's two copies of it.
Speaker:I hope that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker:I highly recommend that you buy these devices even if it's a few dollars more.
Speaker:This is not a place you need to be skimping on.
Speaker:Even if it's a few dollars more.
Speaker:Pay for it at the Ledger site, the Treasurer site, Elipal or however they say their name
Speaker:or whoever it is that you decide to use for your hardware device.
Speaker:And again, same thing as last week, I mentioned this last week or earlier this week, be very
Speaker:careful about your keys.
Speaker:Your keys, it's access to those software wallets, hardware wallets.
Speaker:Don't ever give out your private keys to anybody.
Speaker:Be very careful about these phishing attacks and you see stuff on telegram groups, Facebook,
Speaker:everywhere across all this social media, Twitter, whatever.
Speaker:People are, I mean, I don't know, it's just the world.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:And you just have to be careful.
Speaker:Remember, you're the bank.
Speaker:You're responsible for this and you can be.
Speaker:You just have to be careful.
Speaker:All right, and we'll wrap things up.
Speaker:The Generational Wealth Cryptocurrency Podcast supports Podcasting 2.0.
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Speaker:Thanks for being here.
Speaker:I hope this has been helpful and I would love to hear from you.
Speaker:I'm on Twitter at McIntosh Fintech and you can reach me by email at mcintosh at genwealthcrypto.com.
Speaker:Of course, the Generational Wealth website is at genwealthcrypto.com and go out and make
Speaker:it a great week.
Speaker:Thanks for watching.