used to restore access to your crypto assets.
When you lose your hardware wallet you enter your
seed phrase on a new device to recover full access to your crypto assets. When you clone to a new
device by entering your 24 words on another device, you’ll be in possession of two hardware wallets
you can use independently. Although, it permits anyone in possession of that seed phrase to do the
same.
It’s not possible to know for sure what you’re agreeing to when viewing transaction details on a
connected device. This phenomenon plaguing the crypto world is called blind signing.
[ Paper Wallets ]
A paper wallet is a printed piece of paper with your private keys, public keys and QR codes along with
their respective alphanumeric strings to facilitate your bitcoin transactions. A paper wallet's address
that holds the bitcoins that hasn't been connected to the live blockchain isn't active and is in cold
storage. You can always check the balance of any bitcoin address by searching the blockchain, but to
spend it you would need to associate the bitcoin address of the paper wallet to a wallet that is online.
Paper wallets are classed as the most secure method of holding your bitcoins if you do not intend to
spend them initially. When you send bitcoins to an address, they are stored in the blockchain,
however, spending them will need the private key, and when linked to a bitcoin wallet, any coins
associated will be accessible to spend via that wallet. When you print your keys, they are removed
from the bitcoin network, but the tokens remain; however, they are inaccessible without your keys.
Paper wallets still remain a valid way to store keys in certain circumstances. Paper wallet applications
can—and should—be used when your device is disconnected from the internet and devoid of viruses
and malware before using them to make a printable version of your keys and QR codes. If you are
connected, there’s a chance that malware could intercept your data, record your private key, and
have access to any coins held in your bitcoin address at a later date. If you do lose your paper wallet,
you'll not be able to gain access to those bitcoins again hence make sure to create a seed phrase if
you're removing the keys from your digital wallet. They are susceptible to environmental factors, can
degrade with time, be misplaced, or otherwise be damaged, and are considered safer in a bank vault.
After a paper wallet is generated, its owner can receive cryptocurrency transactions by sharing their
address with others. Transactions can be made by either manually inputting the keys or by scanning
the QR codes with a smartphone. Some paper wallet providers give users the option to generate new
addresses and keys while being offline. To do so, users are required to download the wallet generator
as an HTML file and execute it while being disconnected from the Internet. Due to the possibility of
generating addresses offline, paper wallets are often considered as an alternative for cold storage.
Their security is also related to the fact that they present a completely analog format, and are immune
to bad actors present only within a digital environment. Another danger of using paper wallets comes
from the misconception that funds can be sent multiple times from the same address.
Another danger of using paper wallets comes from the misconception that funds can be sent multiple
times from the same address. For instance, if you have 3 BTC on a paper wallet and want to send 1
BTC to a friend while keeping the remaining 2 BTC. If you send 1 BTC to a friend from your paper
wallet, the remaining 2 BTC will be, by default, transferred to another address (known as the change
address). Your paper wallet won’t have any balance left and you won’t be able to access the
remaining 2 BTC since they were transferred to a change address that is not in your possession. You
could manually set the outputs of your transaction to include both your friend's address and another
address that you control to send the change back to yourself but this would require some technical
knowledge. If you fail to create a change output for yourself, the remaining 2 BTC could be taken by
the miner that validates that transaction’s block. Therefore, you would be better off sending the entire
