> There were no hardware wallets in the days of MtGox, which meant that it was extremely hard to secure Bitcoins.
It was never difficult to hold bitcoins. All you had to do was send them to an address you control with a long passphrase.
It was never difficult to hold bitcoins. All you had to do was send them to an address you control with a long passphrase.
You invoke side channels -- what about these side channels: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/trezor-power-analysis/
If you insist that one should err on the side of being paranoid when handling money, you can argue that hardware wallets are secure iff you manufacture your own hardware.
Want true security without going into hardware manufacturing?
Pick a private key and write it down on a piece of paper (ideally you'd do it in your head) along with the corresponding public key. Then send bitcoin to an address that's controlled by the keypair you just created. If you did all the calculations in your head while wearing a tin-foil hat your bitcoin should be reasonably secure.