Steemit's First TREZOR! Paid For With Steem Dollars!!

(TREZOR is one of several excellent options for securely storing your Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in a hardware wallet. Another fantastic option is the Ledger Nano, which @repholder reviewed in a previous post you can find here.)

I earned a few Steem Dollars over the past few weeks, and I wanted somewhere safe to keep some Bitcoin. As we saw just the other day with Bitfinex, keeping piles of Bitcoin on centralized exchanges is a risky proposition. A hardware wallet is one of the best solutions for securely keeping Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in a way that is still accessible.

I ordered my TREZOR a couple weeks ago, but unfortunately it was on back order. They offered to refund the cost of shipping, since the ship date listed on the site turned out to be inaccurate. Very happy with their customer service.

It arrived today, and here's how the setup went.

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The box containing the TREZOR itself was a little ridiculous. It was not designed to be opened, it seems.

Apparently you just have to tear it open like a 5 year old on Christmas.

Aside from the TREZOR itself, the box contains a few stickers, a card for recording a recovery seed, some basic instructions, and some kind of keychain.

When you plug in the TREZOR, it instructs you to go to the website mytrezor.com.

The site will prompt you to install the software bridge that will allow your computer to communicate with the TREZOR. In my case this was the Linux package, which installed without any problems.

After the installation, the website may decide to test your resolve by throwing up an error message like this:

I simply unplugged the device, refreshed the page, and then plugged it back in. That did the trick.

Then you get to name it, if you'd like.

Then you must select a PIN for your TREZOR.

You must refer to the device in order to determine where the numbers are located on the keypad.

The location of the numbers changes when you are prompted for confirmation.

Then you are instructed to start recording your recovery seed on the provided card. It's shown on your device, rather than the screen.

The dialogue on the screen changes to reflect which word is currently being displayed.

When you have finished recording the seed, it repeats the list of words so that you can verify you recorded them correctly.

You are prompted to enter your pin once more.

And that's it. Your TREZOR is set up.

I wanted to test out loading some funds onto it, so I got a Bitcoin address.

I sent a test transaction from my Electrum wallet.

And it worked!

I'm really happy with the purchase. It is very well designed, and the installation and setup process was straightforward.