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who is JWW?
JW Weatherman (JWWeatherman_ on X) aka the wookie
He has long been an advocate of only using bitcoin core and avoiding hardware wallets. he is also someone who makes very confident statements that obliterate nuance and in general does not have a great reputation among bitcoiners. I saw this while acknowledging that I think he is right about a lot of stuff: I don't think bitcoin specific devices are necessarily safer than generic hardware and I do think Bitcoin Core has way more review and eyes on it than any other bitcoin software. And these are pretty strong points.
I forgot about the Weatherman
Thank you
I don't follow him or know what he's on about these days, but I lean anti-HWW myself.
I don't think they're all criminals, but HWW's inherently present new surface risk.
- No software is better reviewed than Core
- Any software you add beyond core to make a HWW work is more surface risk that's less reviewed than Core alone
- When you buy a HWW there's usually a paper trail
- HWW's are a painted target and the supply chain also has less eyes on than for example a Dell laptop. Dell/HP etc has to take supply chain seriously since so much of their business is government procurement.
- The #1 cause of lost coin is lost/stolen/phish'd seed phrases, and afaik every HWW relies on seed phrases
- If you're buying a HWW, you're either someone looking for a shortcut and/or don't have the knowledge to construct a system of your own. I'd guess 90% of HWW sales are to people that would honestly be better served by an ETF, very few people use them in a multi-vendor setup and have the know how to manage with that complexity.
That last point is to say they do have their uses so I'm not fully against them, but I don't think I've ever recommended one to anybody and can't imagine a scenario in which I would. Someone even asking for a recommendation precludes being able to recommend one to them specifically.
I've had large firms approach me for consulting on their custody infrastructure that would make Liquid look like peanuts, and when you map that out end-to-end you realize HWW's introduce more problems than they solve.
Not wholly related but I'm curious what your take is on JWW's recent (renewed) crusade against HWWs wholesale, core wallet only philosophy and general argument that anything else is part of a criminal/mafia global rug pull industrial complex?