Category: Crypto Hardware Wallets

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Bitcoin Crypto Hardware Wallets Crypto News Crypto Wallets Cryptocurrencies

Family that Invested in Bitcoin Early Keeps 74% in Secret Vaults Worldwide

The Dutch family who sold all their worldly possessions to go all-in on bitcoin are now happily living in Portugal (among other exotic places), sitting pretty on their fortune of digital gold which is being kept safely offline on multiple cold storage wallets.

Didi Taihuttu and family

Selling It All for the Bitcoin Dream

Didi Taihuttu, his wife and three children liquidated all their assets to buy as much bitcoin as they could in 2017 when the BTC price was just US$900. They won’t say exactly how much they have, but let’s do some rough maths. Say they invested just US$50,000 at $900/BTC. That’s 55.56 bitcoins multiplied by US$50,000 (approximate worth of bitcoin today), equating to about $2.8 million.

Decentralised Hidden Treasure vs Centralised Storage

The family stores almost three-quarters of its crypto fortune in secret vaults across four continents. The remaining wealth is kept liquid for more precarious bets, day trading, and risky GIGO (go-in-go-out) shorter-term investments. Taihuttu says he has two hiding spots in Europe, another two in Asia, one in South America and a sixth in Australia. The goal for the near future is to have a stash on each continent across the world. Taihuttu aims to do this so it is easier to access his holdings when and if he needs to.

There are, of course, other options for storing your cryptocurrency safely offline. Centralised vaults like Coinbase-owned Xapo offer high levels of security, but Taihuttu says it feels too centralised to him: “I prefer to live in a decentralised world where I have the responsibility to protect my capital.”

To learn more about what’s been dubbed the “Bitcoin Family”, follow them on their YouTube channel and Instagram page.

Click here to read more about why cold storage is a great solution for those with a large stash that they don’t intend to trade in the near future.

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Crypto Hardware Wallets Lisk

Lisk is No Longer Supported By Hardware Wallets

An upcoming Lisk network hard fork will remove support for hardware wallets including the Trezor Model T and Model One.

Lisk will no longer support hardware wallets. Withdraw your Lisk to a compatible software wallet.

If you currently store Lisk on your Trezor wallet, you must move your coins to a wallet compatible with the hard fork upgrade by August 21 2021. The Lisk Desktop wallet should be compatible, according to Lisk’s public communications. 

The short notice given regarding this issue is due to the fact that Lisk did not provide any notice of the incompatibility ahead of time nor did they reach out to discuss a solution or workaround. Given the nature of this hard fork, the currently implemented code will be made redundant and the codebase will be removed from Trezor products.

There are no clear paths to reinstating support at this time as resolving the compatibility issues would require extensive development efforts on both sides, which would not be productive given the lack of cooperation in this case.

We hope to hear from the Lisk development team in the coming days, and will follow up should there be any news in future. In the meantime, please immediately withdraw all Lisk tokens from your hardware wallet to a compatible wallet for safekeeping. 

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Coinstop Crypto Hardware Wallets Crypto News Ethereum

ETH Staking Now Available Directly From Your Ledger Hardware Wallet

Leading crypto hardware wallet provider Ledger has announced that customers are now able to stake Ether (ETH) directly from the Ledger Live wallet. This was made possible through a partnership with an Ethereum 2.0 liquid staking platform, Lido. 

As per the announcement, Ledger will only provide users the gateway to Lido’s Ethereum 2.0 staking service, and won’t manage users’ staked assets: “We do not manage it but rather provide you with a secure way to access it.” 

What Are the Estimated Earnings?

Ether staking is a function of the network’s transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms. As Ethereum 2.0 launches, staking will become the new approach to securing and validating transactions on the network. Users who stake their coins will be rewarded in return. 

At the time of writing, 6,956,617 ETH – equivalent to US$21.7 billion – had been staked on the deposit contract since it went live last December. The estimated annual percentage return (APR) decreases as more coins are staked on the deposit contact. 

For instance, the initial APR for validators (node operators with at least 32 ETH staked) was around 21.6 percent. However, the APR has reduced to 5.9 percent. So if you stake US$100,000 worth of ETH, your estimated annual return would be around US$5,900, assuming the price of ETH remained constant. 

Where To Get a Ledger Live Wallet?

In Australia, you can get the Ledger hardware wallet from Coinstop, one of the reputable hardware wallet stores operated in the country. Founded by Johnathan Ross, Coinstop also ships other wallets, including Trezor and CoolWallet Pro. 

You can also order the Ledger wallets directly from the website. 

What Are the Risks of Staking It With Lido?

Note that the currently staked ETH are illiquid, meaning they can’t be withdrawn from the network until a transfer function is deployed on the beacon chain. This is also what Lido intends to solve by issuing an equivalent amount of “stETH,” a tokenised ETH, in return for all coins staked with them.

While stETH is liquid, there are only a few platforms that support it, meaning it cannot be used extensively like ETH. Users should also be aware that they don’t own full control of their assets when staked with Lido, unlike running their validator node (32 ETH). Also, you will need an equal number of stETH to unlock your staked ETH.

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Crypto Hardware Wallets DeFi Hackers Scams

Trojan Hits Australia’s Android Crypto Wallets

There’s a new malware spreading across Europe and Australia – a virus targeting Android devices to harvest login credentials for online banking apps and crypto wallets in an automated way.

Vultur Wings Its Way to Australia

Vultur, a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that was being tested in Italy and Spain, is now rapidly spreading across Australia. The virus has been installed over 5000 times via Google Play Store disguised as an app called “Protection Guard”, so the number of victims should be the same.

Source: Twitter

A RAT malware is smuggled into a device to control it remotely, relying on the function of Virtual Network Computing (VNC). Through VNC, hackers try to obtain personal information to carry out online fraud on a massive scale.

For the first time we are seeing an Android banking trojan that has screen recording and keylogging as the main strategy to harvest login credentials in an automated and scalable way.

ThreatFabric researchers

Detecting Vulture

Outside of recently downloading any apps with the name of “Protection Guard”, ThreatFabric suggested that there was a way to detect the RAT:

You can also detect Vulture because when it’s transmitting data to its command-and-control server, the active “casting” icon will show up in the Android notifications. If you’re not casting something and the icon shows up anyway, that’s reason to worry.

ThreatFabric

To reduce the risk posed by RATs such as Vulture, Android users would be advised to ensure that they have a reputable antivirus app running in the background to detect any potential threats when new apps are downloaded.

Buy a Hardware Wallet

The attackers are targeting major crypto exchanges and mobile wallets including Kraken, Coinbase, Binance, CEX, eToro and more. While Android devices are the main target, users believe the virus may soon reach iOS.

Crypto users are warning others on social media, recommending they do not store their funds on exchanges and, if possible, get a hardware wallet and save most of their funds on it.

Scams, Hacks and Glitches on the Rise

As hacks and crypto scams become more common, newcomers should be wary when choosing their wallets. Rather than leave their funds in a crypto exchange, they should store them in a hardware wallet.

Roll, for instance, was a decentralised finance protocol attacked in March by a group of hackers that drained its wallet of over US$5.7 million. To this day, developers still don’t know how the platform got hacked.

As always, you can keep up to date with the many and varied scams out there by consulting Crypto News‘ comprehensive guide.