A Beginner’s Guide to Hardware Cryptocurrency Wallets ft. JuBiter Blade
Plus in today's Sunday Assorted links #4: Resources for Product Management, becoming a Web 3.0 developer and more!
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A Beginner’s Guide to Hardware Cryptocurrency Wallets ft. JuBiter Blade
Its been a crazy week for cryptocurrency traders. This picture perfectly summarizes it:
According to the cyrpto-subculture, the best strategy for making some money off of crypto is simple¹: buy the dip + HODL (hold on for dear life)²
Lets look at the 2nd part of the equation: HODLing. Where should one hold their crypto assets? Definitely not in exchanges. Unless you want to be like Bob here.
Cryptocurrency exchanges are super unsafe. They are not meant for holding assets; they merely facilitate trading of assets. So where should you hold them? In wallets.
Cold Wallets
There are various types of cryptocurrency wallets. The safest is a cold-wallet i.e a wallet that is not connected to the internet. If it is connected to internet, then there is a non-negligible chance of your monies getting stolen. Consider getting a cold wallet if you are planning to HODL or if you have a large amount of crypto assets.
There are different types of cold wallets: paper wallets, brain wallets and hardware wallets.
Paper wallets are dangerous. Avoid them.
You do not need a brain wallet (you remember the seed in your brain) unless you are trying to flee a country where the annual inflation rate is 1.7 million percent and the military personnel at the border seize any money that you have.
For most people, a hardware wallet is the best option. JuBiter Blade is one such hardware wallet.
Lets see how it works.
Getting Started
Before you begin, power on the device and make sure there is sufficient battery left. If not, use a 5V adapter to charge the Blade.
Once you have charged the device, you can get started with creation of the private key i.e the actual wallet on the blockchain. In this process, you will be asked to setup a PIN and you will be given a recovery phrase. You can choose the length of the recovery phrase: 12/18/24 words.
Write these words down carefully in a piece of paper. JuBiter Blade comes with 2 recovery cards for you to write this phrase on. Write the recovery phrase down in both the cards.
Note: The numbers are in a horizontal fashion on these cards! Do not start writing the words down one below the other, its one beside the other.
The importance of physical and non-digital copy of the seed cannot be stressed enough. The Jubiter website says “Consider your recovery phrase compromised once you make a digital copy of it, even if you do it on an offline device such as a copy machine or a digital camera.”
Once you have noted them down, JuBiter Blade will ask you to confirm the words in the phrase. Post that, give it around 30s and your wallet will be ready to use! But there is one more thing you need to do before you can actually use this hardware wallet.
Pairing with the companion app
Download the companion JuBiter Wallet App from App Store/Play Store. (Link).
You can find the steps to pair with the app here.
Turn on the JuBiter Blade and turn on bluetooth on your mobile device. Pair your JuBiter Blade with your mobile phone.
Now, open the app and choose ‘Hardware Wallet’ and proceed with the steps on screen. The app will start looking for a Blade device. Once found, tap on it and it will connect with the Wallet.
At this point, the app will ask you to choose the cryptocurrencies that you want to create a wallet for. The Blade only supports the following cryptocurrencies so you will only see these options:
Choose as per your need, give it a few seconds and you’re done!
You can see the wallet address for each of the cryptocurrency in the app.
Transferring money to the wallet
You now have everything setup to move your crypto assets from the Exchange to the wallet.
The destination address will be the Wallet address that you see in the mobile app. You can also view it in the JuBiter Blade directly.
Take caution if you are using the Wallet address shown in the app. Since your mobile is susceptible to attacks (as it is connected to the internet), again, there is a non-zero probability that the wallet address in the mobile app has been manipulated to the attacker’s desired wallet address.
Hence, it is better to verify that the address displayed in the app is the same as the address shown in the JuBiter Blade. You can either manually verify this or you can connect your Jubiter blade to the app via BT and then let the app verify it for you.
Note: Whenever you try to connect the Blade to the mobile app, do not try to connect it via the BT settings in the mobile device. Assuming you have already paired the Blade before, simply turn on the Blade and turn on BT in your phone. Now open the app -> choose the cryptocurrency you want to transfer to the Blade -> tap on ‘Receive’ -> click on ‘Check the address’. The app will automatically connect with the Blade and verify the address as in the above picture.
On your exchange, go to the holdings section and click Withdraw or Transfer. It will ask you for the destination address. In there, you can enter the address that you see in the mobile app or on Blade for the corresponding cryptocurrency.
Note: You need to pay a withdrawal fee for this to be processed.
Transferring Money from Wallet
Unlike the previous step of transferring money to the wallet, you cannot do this without the mobile app.
First connect the Blade with the mobile app via BT. Open the app and enter the recipient’s address, amount to be sent and the miner fee.
You will need to authorize the payment on the Blade. Verify that the address being displayed in the blade is the correct address. If it looks ok, press OK on the Blade and your transaction will be processed in a few minutes.
Restoring the Wallet
Say you forgot the PIN or your Blade gets damaged or stolen or lost. What now?
Remember the recovery phrases you wrote down? Yeah, that is to save your ass when something like this should happen.
Remember: The money itself is not in the Blade. Blade only hold the private key to the address on the blockchain that holds your money.
To restore the wallet, simply enter these recovery phrases in your new Blade.
If you do not want to purchase another one, you can even restore the wallet using hot-wallets (software based) like Electrum. Since the recovery seed generated by the Blade is compliant with BIP39 standard, you can use it to recover your assets using any other BIP39 compliant wallet service.
Best Practices
Since we are talking about money that is mined, stored and traded virtually, we need to take some extra precautions.
Keep the PIN hard to crack/non-easily guessable. If you lose the wallet, the PIN is the only thing protecting your assets. The wallet/device gets automatically locked after 5 incorrect entries of the PIN.
Use a pencil instead of a pen to write down the recovery phrase on paper
Keep the 2 copies of your recovery cards in two different places for redundancy. One in the locker in your house and another in a safety vault in your bank or in your office for example.
Thoughts on JuBiter Blade
Software
The app is really simple and intuitive. The creation of the hardware wallet is easy; the usage of the wallet is also easy.
The walkthrough in the mobile app and the guides on FEITIAN’s website are easy to understand and sufficiently illustrated.
Hardware
The Blade’s 4 buttons and 0.96 inch OLED display teaches us a lesson in resourcefulness. Its pretty amazing how much can be done with just these.
The JuBiter Blade feels premium af. The alloy metal casing gives it such a dense, sturdy feel. The buttons are tactile and click-ey.
Summary
Do not HODL your cryptocurrency in the exchange. Use a hardware wallet.
For a hardware wallet, I recommend the JuBiter Blade (note the limited cryptocurrency support before purchasing). You can purchase it here.
Use the code Raghul-20 to get 20% off on your purchase!
Footnotes
[1] Simple does not mean easy. Plus, timing the market is one of the worst investment strategies because it is impossible. Unless, of course, you’re Elon.
[2] I am unqualified to give investment advice. I am not responsible for any losses you incur. Please consult with your investment advisor.
Thanks to Subasini for reading drafts of this.
This Week’s Interesting Reads
Buckle up for this week’s journey!
Rabbit Hole of the Week: Product Management (PM)
How To Get Into Product Management (And Thrive) By Lenny: Start here if you are an aspiring PM. Lenny was one of the first few PMs in Airbnb and this is a massive beginner’s guide to Product Management. Practical, informative and thorough.
Flywheels - The Unstoppable Force of Growth by Deepak Singh: Deepak is currently working as a PM in Flipkart and his newsletter is one of the best in the Indian product management space. A must subscribe for beginners and experts alike.
Launching Gojek Singapore, agile product management & more with Vikrama Dhiman, Head of Mobility Products, Gojek by Use Case Podcast: I am a huge fan of this podcast. I love the hosts Ravish and JPK - they are laid back and fun; they have fascinating conversations with their guests. They frequently interview Product Managers and I have learnt a lot about how PMs think, how their day looks like and the challenges they tackle. You know what they say “if you are thinking about doing something new but are unsure if its for you, then ask the people who are already doing it to understand what how things are”. This podcast helps you do that. Start with this episode on Gojek’s hyper-growth story.
Top 100 resources for PMs by Sachin Rekhi: An encyclopedic compilation of resources on PM.
Product management super-thread by Shreyas Doshi: I am a huge fanboy of Shreyas. He was the head of products in Yahoo, Google, Twitter and was the 4th PM in Stripe. He frequently tweets insightful twitter threads about PM. Follow him and check out this super-thread below.
Building something no one else can measure by Sriram K: Sriram is another legend. He lead Product previously at Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook.
Upraised by Mona Gandhi: Upraised is a start up that helps PM aspirants land their first PM job via a paid mentorship program. The best part? The money you pay will be refunded to you if you do not land a PM related job at the end of the mentorship period. They have tie ups with some pretty big brands like Unacademy, Swiggy and the likes. Plus, Mona Gandhi, the founder, is a badass - she was the first female engineer in Airbnb and she was head of Growth there.
Other Interesting Reads
The Big Lessons of Last Year
By Morgan Housel
Blog | 9 minute read | Tags: Financial Markets, Economy, Human Psychology
What we should learn from COVID-19 is what we should have learnt from dot com bubble, housing bubble, 9/11 and pearl harbor attack. The lesson learnt is that we should be prepared for surprises, not for another pandemic and not for another 9/11. Those too. But more broadly, be prepared for surprises.
How to Break into Ethereum, Crypto, and Web3 as a Developer
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Blog | 13 minute read | Tags: Coding, Blockchain. Cryptocurrency, Software development
Web 3.0 is the “next big thing”. This is an encyclopedic list of resources: learning resources, people to follow, companies to follow, landing a job in the decentralized space, cons of working in the decentralized space and more. If you are curious about how you can make the switch to building on decentralized technologies, start here.
Quote of the week
He who can handle the quickest rate of change survives - John Boyd
That’s all for this week!
All views expressed are mine.
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