I recently bought a Ledger cold storage wallet. The company happened to be the first one to appear in my Twitter feed while I was researching cold storage devices. So I bought one.
I appreciate the simplicity, lightness of the design as well.
I own only a little crypto. Not much. But, you could say it’s a secure and diversified food ration for a rainy day. Or, better yet, I’ll wait to experiment with it on a unique project when the time is right.
The thing is, I’ve finally come around to the fact that holding any crypto in a centralized exchange is basically no different than holding some other currency in a large bank. In both instances, you’re trusting your funds with someone or something else. They may have great marketing, branding, and Tom Brady as a spokesperson, but at the end of each night, you literally have no idea what they’re doing with your funds, the risks they’re taking, and randomness of financial markets.
The second your funds are given to a centralized partner, they become equivalents based on identical banking risks. It could be apples vs. bananas or Bitcoin vs. Dollars, once you’ve given them to a centralized place, yes, the assets are slightly different, but the risks are no different. They both could go “poof” overnight.
It’s easy to forget about cold storage with markets and innovation moving as fast as it is today, but storing your crypto funds in the palm of your hand, the dynamic nature of what you can then do, bringing your crypto offline or online at your disposal, is what made crypto so fascinating in the first place. It seems like a lifetime ago when cold storage was the core ethos of cryptocurrency.
And if the zombie apocalypse comes and all the world shuts down, your crypto, your keys, will still exist right there in your hand, cold, but stored nearly and safely on its respective device. How much that crypto will be worth is a different question.
So that’s that. I’m officially a cold storage permabull. If you have any other tips or use cases that I should consider with cold storage, please give me a shout out on Twitter – @scheplick.
Note: if you enjoyed this post by the time you finish reading, check out a Ledger here with my special referral link – we both get a little money back. Cheers!