Most people I talk to are convinced that a hardware wallet is the safest place to hold your Bitcoins. But I'm not so sure if it's not safer if I create offline on a non compromised fresh system the keys and write it down on a paper (two copies at two safe places). Of course somebody could steal the keys. But looking on hardware wallets, I see those risks:
- Seed words have to be written down - subject to theft
- If I or anybody else wants to use the stick in 10 or 15 years the firmware will be outdated, the solution might be hacked or I could run into the problem not finding a safe computer with USB port or accepting the stick. This remembers me when I want to get the films from the 20 years old cameras.
- The stick itself plus seed is more difficult to hide than a seed/key alone. If a criminal finds the stick he could force me to hand out the seed.
- If not open source I need to trust the manufacturer. E.g. the selection of keys could be not random. If the manufacturer selects just out of fix selection of 10 Mio private keys I wouldn't realise but he could take over all Bitcoin credits from the clients after a few years.
What do you think, what's the best hodl strategy to store the coins safe?