Over the years I think I've owned ~10-12. Most of these were gathering dust so I disposed of them. These days my collection is down to 3 (for multi-sig).
That counts as a hardware wallet in my mind though...
Maybe a DYI hardware wallet, but it's kinda the same anyway.
And you're kinda shilling your own favorite hardware as well. You can also for example use a Raspberry Pi Zero with Electrum to make your own hardware wallet...
Lmao not shilling. You can call it a HWW but most people already have a PC and a spare USB. Most people do not already have a dedicated signing device made by some company that pays an inflooencor like jimmy to promote.
There is no profit in educating bitcoiners to use the tools they already have. Easier and more profit in selling them overpriced hardware.
Hardware wallet companies are honeypots. They leak data about bitcoiners. Owning a hardware wallet or being seen with one identifies you as a bitcoin holder to anyone who knows what a HWW looks like.
I agree with you, but also I think there is a niche for people that don't want to deal with a DIY wallet and just want to buy a ready-to-go, purpose-built device.
Even if you boot a PC with a live distro you cannot be sure it is full airgapped because you cannot phisically detach the WiFi/BT modules and you cannot control if a potentially malicious software writes the main storage leaking data.
Btw a such system is a really good way to learn how to manage a cold storage and actually has a good security if you proper setup it (ex. full disk encryption for the main disk).
Older laptops have removable wifi cards and no bluetooth. But I understand the limitation. Personally, having a record that I puchased a "Bitcoin Product" is a bigger threat than someone sniffing my bluetooths for private keys or some shit.
Of course you don't need them. The problem here is that storage and WiFi are actually connected and you cannot prove that a malicious software on the live distro don't use them somehow.
Many! I even collect some. If bitcoin really does change humanity over the next 50 to 100 years it will be cool to look at the old hardware that came out and possibly develop an antique market around bitcoin tech.
SeedSigner is all you need. I don't trust hardware wallet from companys. Just build your own SeedSigner with Raspberry Pi and flash the open-source software.