Hey this might be a stupid question but what is the difference between a hardware wallet and a seed signer?
This is not at all a stupid question, is quite good question.
All "wallets" are improper named wallets. Are more "key-chains" than wallets because are storing only keys to your bitcoins and use those keys to sign the transactions.
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I prefer the term "signing devices" rather than wallets
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Sliding into your post to share this, not totally unrelated though:
80% will be donated to the Seedsigner Team!
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Seedsigner is a do it yourself bitcoin signing and private key generation device. It’s fairly cheap and it’s stateless meaning it doesn’t store any data once the power is disconnected.
Just keep in mind all these devices are an attempted solution to the private key storage problem. Each one has its pros and cons. It’s up to the individual to find which one is the best fit for themselves.
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"Hardware Wallets" are not Bitcoin wallets, they are signing devices. A device to store and manage private keys securely. Bitcoin wallets have chain state (access to the blockchain/ledger) and are capable of creating transactions. With the term "Signing Device" or "Bitcoin Signer" we hope to disambiguate.
This is a better term because it frames the process in terms of speech/action. "This is my signature", "using my signing device". It also help show how non-signing wallets (ie "hosted" or "web" wallets) take away your capacity to trully own, sign.
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Wallets store private keys and allow you to transact your related UTXOs. I thought that seed signers usually do not store any information and your private keys need to be created each use through seed words/passphrase or QR codes containing the required information.
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Good for you for asking @x
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I would say that wallets do not store bitcoin; all bitcoin is stored in transaction s on the blockchain. Wallets really just store keys to spending those transactions.
I agree that all wallets are really a keychain device, but we call it a wallet for some reason.
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