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Comment by kmfrk | Hacker News Reader

Getting a wallet always felt like the biggest issue. I looked at Ethereum very early on before it caught on, but the wallet situation for that and zcash is so overwhelming and confusing, especially since a multiplier of 0 for a hacked wallet defeats the purpose.

At this point, a wallet for my iPhone that I can back up to say iCloud (accepting the risk that comes with that) and that isn't going to get wiped by accident due to a patch would probably be ideal.

I remember trying to get into bitcoin by signing up for Mt Gox, and we all know how that went. "iPhone-hosted" seems like the ideal thing, but I don't know if there's something like that?

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Hardware wallets like TREZOR are pretty cool for enhancing security (it can also act as a U2F key). A seed is generated in the device and represented by a list of 24 words; your private key never leaves the device.

However using the same word list (which you back up on paper) you can recreate the seed and derived keys on software that uses the same key derivation standard.

https://doc.satoshilabs.com/trezor-apps/index.html#recoverin...

Actually now that I’ve typed that all up, I agree with your initial point. For the average person setting something like this up is still a huge hurdle. It does offer some protection against a hack for the more technically comfortable.

I’m in the process of writing up an article that explains what I think is the best way currently: using a wallet supporting BIP32, 39 and 44.

A hardware wallet like Trezor or Ledger are the most user friendly ways to do this right now, but yes, to the average user it’s a steep learning curve.

Bought a Trezor. Wish I could reverse my decision. While secure and works great, their dev team is not the most responsive and they are showing no inclination of supporting other ALT coins / crypto platforms like NEO. At least, Ledger Nano has supporting NEO and is looking to add support to other ALT coins.

Not fun when you plunk down a hundred dollars to realize that you have to buy another device once you start getting interested in other ALT coins.

What is stopping you from using a mobile wallet like MyCelium or Coinomi? Using these wallets you can back up your private keys by using a passphrase. The backup is stored in the cloud and can be easily recovered if you ever lose your phone (just make sure you remember your passphrase).

Why hosted on one very specific platform? Smartphone-hosted is ideal. If anything Android should be the platform of choice for smartphone-hosted since it's more ubiquitous.

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