Crypto Winter Freezes Turned Investors Into Hardware Wallets

There has been no shortage of crypto casualties this summer.

August 8, Singapore Hodlnaut join other lenders Vault and Celsius and Singaporean exchange Zipmex by suspending crypto withdrawals from users due to “recent market conditions”.

The move was apparently taken to ‘stabilize liquidity’, a phrase also used in Celsius’s withdrawal freeze announcement.

With little warning, investors were struck by the news that the bulk of their digital wealth had effectively been seized while companies hammered out a stimulus package. Many have been affected in varying degrees of severity and the human cost is often painful to read.

Left hanging, the recent liquidity crisis reminded many of the industry’s wise words: Not your keys, not your coins. And new evidence now shows many are taking those words to heart this time around.

As crypto companies file for bankruptcy or receive bailouts; while Coinbase, Gemini and blockchain.com have all announced collective redundancies; while Solana and Nomad are left in shock after another multi-million dollar attackone sub-sector is flourishing: hardware wallets.

Cryptographic security takes center stage

Hardware wallets are often touted as the ideal option for storing crypto for the long term.

They keep users’ private keys stored securely offline. Unlike software wallets, they are mostly immune to online attacks, although they have been targeted by phishing attacks, the most recent of which occurred this year when a Mailchimp newsletter database containing Trezor user emails has been compromised.

So they are not invulnerable, but if you are careful and attentive, hardware wallets can be a much better alternative than their software counterparts.

The top models from Ledger or Trezor are also resistant to physical tampering, making them a safe bet for anyone looking for long-term digital asset storage.

A feat in Slope Mobile Wallet Appsfor example, led to Solana users’ private keys being “inadvertently transmittedto a “third party,” according to Solana developers. The striker got away with $4.5 million in SOL and USDC.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao then tweeted that those concerned could send their funds to a hardware wallet.

Amid the wave of insolvencies, freezes and hacks, sales of hardware wallets have soared.

Philip Costigan, senior account manager at Ledger, said people will always end up thinking about security. At Ledger Op3n conference in June, the company announced that it had sold over 5 million units. According to Costigan, “Recent issues with lenders, bridge hacks, Solana wallet exploits, etc. have only increased demand and sales.”

He said Decrypt that ledger sales jumped “4.5x” after The bankruptcy of Celsius.

Ledger isn’t alone either. Trezor and SafePal have also seen a surge in sales lately.

Users are “waking up”

Decrypt emailed representatives from Ledger, Trezor and the Shenzhen-based hardware wallet maker Safe Pal to ask if they saw an increase in sales over the last crypto winter, and all three unanimously said so.

SafePal responded that it had experienced “substantial growth” in both product and asset management, attributing it “to the collapse of centralized financial institutions and liquidity crises affecting the crypto industry.” .

SafePal did not provide specific sales information, but CEO Veronica Wong said her company believes “growth will continue” as crypto continues to gain traction among newcomers.

A Trezor representative also confirmed that they have seen “increased interest in self-custody solutions over the past few months, although the effects of the ongoing bear market are also being felt.”

The company said crypto users “realize that they could lose access to their assets at any time,” adding, “We believe this is a good development that should ensure that user losses are not as widespread and significant as they were part of the recent cascade of bankruptcies.

Costigan reiterated that sentiment, telling Decrypt that “it almost had to happen for people to realize how important security is to storing people’s assets”.

On the day of the Solana wallet exploits, sales of Ledger hardware wallets had “more than tripled” before Ledger announced the “MOVESOL2LEDGERdiscount code, which lasted until August 7, offering new buyers 10% off Nano X and Nano S Plus models.

Ledger reported “a larger increase” after the announcement and said both models were “noticing similar interest.”

“While it’s really disappointing and sad for a lot of people to have lost, something like this was going to happen. I think people now realize why they need to focus more on safety, and I think we’ve seen that. be reflected in sales,” Costigan said.

Unfortunate and inevitable sacrifices have been made, experts say, but it is clear that the spotlight is turning away from yield and coin farming. Now, cryptographic security takes center stage.