Buying a Bitcoin Wallet - My Experience

Last time I said I'd be looking at how to buy Ethereum, but I made a stop on the way there.

I figured I had to have a plan to keep assets safe, so I found myself looking at offline wallets this morning.

There are a ton of explanations and comparisons out there already by people who know heaps more than me, so I'll just keep this to a record of my own path.

First, I considered paper wallets. All of the paranoia about taking your computer offline before you make it seemed a bit over the top. I know, I know, there's always the possibility that you're compromised - I don't discount that, but crossing the street is also dangerous. I figured that I would probably have done a half-arsed job, neglecting the more complicated safeguards, especially if I was doing it repeatedly as I made more purchases. Also worrying is the possibility of the paper being lost, stolen or destroyed.

So, I looked at hardware wallets. I saw some reviews for Trezor and Ledger Nano S. The reviews I read were:

One of my concerns was, what would happen if the device stopped working? It appears that this isn't a problem because the information is safely backed up and recoverable. There are also safeguards to prevent unauthorised persons from accessing your keys, even if they get the device.

Both appear to be excellent products. I decided to go with the Ledger. Heeding the warning on the news.bitcoin.com review, not to buy a wallet off Ebay or similar, I headed to Ledger's list of official retailers and found a few options in Australia.

The Ledger has been popular in Australia, though, and are currently only available on pre-order, estimated to be filled some time between late September and November.

I ended up putting an order in with coinstop.com.au. They were slightly cheaper than IP Hardware. It was worth looking around, because there was significant variation in the price: BTC Wallets were charging approx $25 more than the other two: $131.95, vs $107 and $108 respectively.

Now, there's nothing to do but wait. It looks like it will be a month or more before my new Ledger wallet comes through.

!originalworks