No, not even a passphrase for entropy or encrypting the wallet file. Nothing Satoshi ever shipped had a password. The client created a wallet.dat plaintext Berkeley DB records of serialized keys for every address you created.
I guess his whole PC was the hardware wallet
"Hardware wallet" is a marketing term. Nothing about creating a bitcoin key is "hard" (in that it requires special hardware). Hardware wallets are just expensive low-power computers.
There was also much fewer attacks. Bitcoin wasn't worth much of anything. There wasn't much incentive to try cracking keys. Besides, you could mine on your laptop for a few days and earn 50BTC. Even still, people would stop mining because their laptops got too hot.
Of course, the incentive to crack satoshi's keys is higher than ever so the fact they remain safe is evidence that hardware wallets are not necessary.
No, not even a passphrase for entropy or encrypting the wallet file. Nothing Satoshi ever shipped had a password. The client created a wallet.dat plaintext Berkeley DB records of serialized keys for every address you created.
"Hardware wallet" is a marketing term. Nothing about creating a bitcoin key is "hard" (in that it requires special hardware). Hardware wallets are just expensive low-power computers.
There was also much fewer attacks. Bitcoin wasn't worth much of anything. There wasn't much incentive to try cracking keys. Besides, you could mine on your laptop for a few days and earn 50BTC. Even still, people would stop mining because their laptops got too hot.
Of course, the incentive to crack satoshi's keys is higher than ever so the fact they remain safe is evidence that hardware wallets are not necessary.