1. Send it to a hardware wallet address.
I think you’re right that it’s still simple, but what’s lacking is a “follow these exact steps” guide. People don’t want to think too much about it, they just want to throw money at crypto.
Something like:
1. Buy X hardware wallet
2. Open account at X bank, store seed phrase in the vault. If your house burns down, your money is safe.
3. Here’s exactly how to use the hardware wallet for all common operations. Do this (and nothing else), and your money is safe.
If it was wrapped up in a nice package with a pretty red bow on it, people would buy into it. But I’d say I’m more crypto-inclined than most tech people, yet I’m still nervous. I was already burned by Gox and not eager to repeat that, so Coinbase is out. Which leaves hardware wallets, which I know nothing about.
I’ve got crypto enthusiast friends who refuse to use hardware wallets because of the inconvenience.
Though to give Bitcoin some of the (marketing) credit, we get Blockchain, DEFIs, DAOs and soon CBDCs out of it. So, there's some massive innovation to be had in that sector.
Dash is already popular for payments and transactions with low fees.
Bottom line, a total miner capitulation event on any of these coins that are cheaper to mine is 100% unlikely. Computing and energy costs go lower and lower every year.
If crypto is “the way of the future”, and it some how catches on, then people are simply going to learn how it works or get locked out of future markets. Due to the seemingly large number of crypto scams, a lot of people will lose their money along the way.
Not that I think it should succeed, but if there is a truly compelling use case for everyone to switch over, I don’t think we’ll let the complexity stop us.
Having a hardware wallet solves very little for small-time investors (the 99%) as they are in this to speculate, not to keep their savings for the next several decades. With everything moving online, it's close to impossible to convince even more tech-savvy people to plug in a USB dongle every time they want to make a transaction. You could say that then it's their own fault if something goes wrong as they "don't own the keys", but historically this type of blame-game did not last. Government regulation and insurance is a much more effective way forward.
I don't expect the vast majority of ordinary people to have any interest whatsoever in crypto.
I would expect someone that has their entire net worth in paper currency to take steps similar to a bank in order to secure it -- a safe is safer than a mattress, a vault is safer than a safe -- I don't think that it's asking much for someone that is in a similar situation with cryptocurrency to take similarly large precautions.
It takes effort and study to understand how to better secure one's life, this is no different.
They would also have to avoid major exchanges for any operations, because Coinbase KYCs the crap out of you.
Everyone does it, including the most computer illiterate people. Gosh, accountants are super familiar with invoices generated as signed XMLs.
If a very inefficient and corrupt government could do it , I'm positive a private company could find the way.
It's just a matter of finding the right analogies and encapsulating the complexity for people.
As a counterargument: many more complex financial instruments existed for decades now and are not widely adopted because of both the cognitive load and the specialized software needed for participation. Adding hardware to this mix does not seem like a step in the direction of mass adoption.
Just to be clear, I am not saying we should not innovate in this space. On the contrary, the current state of hardware wallets is unacceptable. The only way to make this a viable option is drastic innovation. Just repeating "not your keys, not your crypto" and "get a hardware wallet" is disingenuous.
For the bitcoin economy to hold any significant value whatsoever, you need the people who are using exchanges and "banks".
If it works for only a handful of people, you may as well trade unsealed copies of "Zelda II" between each other.
Consider: You had to send fiat to an exchange to buy the coin. Unfortunately before you have a chance to spend it, the exchange halts all withdrawals. How did your hardware wallet help you here?
The point being: “good. not your keys not your coins” is not an appropriate response to exchange insolvency, and further makes you sound like a complete asshat. “just avoid the insolvency window!” is better advice (edit to add an explicit “/s” on this last sentence. Dunno what is with these downvotes).
My point is it’s a base trivialization of the facts, and regardless of whether you use your own wallet or not exchange insolvency is a viable risk to users of the ecosystem. There is nothing “good” about it, and further making broad generalizations like this about financial victims that are not 100% correct is, indeed, asshat-ery. But the latter is merely an opinion and precludes how one treats others.
> Also how do you propose one avoid the insolvency window?
I do not propose it can be addressed, but maybe someone else has ideas.
The first is having an organisation that can't be trusted hold "your" coins for a long period of time. It is a bad idea because you could hold the coins yourself (that is, there is a less-bad alternative).
The second is buying coins from that same organisation. This may not be a bad idea, because the risks involved in the short transaction may be very low, and you may not have a better alternative.
Again, my point is that regardless of whether either of these things is a “good idea” or “bad idea”, it is not fair to call exchange insolvency a good thing; *one* reason here being that the second “thing” “has to exist” for the ecosystem to work.
I really did not expect this to be so controversial a point, but I suppose I haven’t done the best job expressing it.
But I think the reality is you just misunderstood the original comment. The original comment was saying that it was good that people were withdrawing their crypto, not that it was good that any particular exchange had become insolvent. Only after I read your edited original comment did I realise that this is what happened.
When a crypto exchange fails I always say "That was unsurprising. Remember to hold your own coins." A lot of other people say similar things.
I do not say "This is a good thing. I'm sure that now that Failed_Exchange_1001 has failed people will finally learn to hold their own coins." I don't think I've heard many people suggest that.
Well. looks at the dozens of comments in this thread. My bad.
But seriously, write down the 12 seed words, keep it somewhere safe. Make another copy, tear it in half (6 words each) and keep one with a relative and one at work. Check them at 1, 2, 4, then every 6 months.
But for most people this is all overkill: just use a mobile wallet.
This isn't a good idea; every word an attacker knows makes the remaining words exponentially easier to brute force. if you're going to split your key into pieces, you should use something like https://linux.die.net/man/1/ssss