on the crypto
CoinKite, the manufacturer of the Coldcard hardware portfolio, has invented a very safe prophylaxis for bitcoin investors.
The new Coldpower feature
The startup has just released Coldpower, a feature that allows users to charge their hardware wallets by connecting the USB plug to a 9 volt battery rather than a laptop. Basically, the new CoinKite feature prevents accidental data exchange when one device is connected to another to charge.
The company says that Coldpower is "like a" USB condom ", but self-powered." "We want to help protect people from attacks from" bad USB connections "by facilitating the use of their Coldcard air-gaps," said CoinKite CEO Rodolfo Novak. The use of "Air-gapped" leads not to connect a device to the Internet.
A plan to defend against cryptocurrency risks
At the same time, CoinKite launched Seedplate, a metal plate on which to engrave a recovery seed, or an emergency password to access the bitcoins. Since the seed sentence is carved in metal, there is less risk of it being lost or damaged than if it were written on a piece of paper.
Novak called it a "last resort backup". Taken together, these products highlight the idiosyncratic risks of cryptocurrency, which, although digital, probably carries risks just like physical money does.
Once a private key for the cryptocurrency is stolen, the coins are probably lost forever. The private key holder is responsible for his security and the required precautionary mindset often borders on paranoia.
Hardware wallets like Coldcard, Opendime, Ledger or Trezor are considered one of the safest ways to store bitcoin private keys (here the quotation) as they are offline archive devices and less sensitive to hacks.
But even having these specific devices, there can be ways through which your bitcoins are stolen or lost. "Our ultimate goal in Coinkite is to make all aspects of HODLing safer," Novak said, referring to the "hodl" meme, a misspelling "hold" spelling.
"There are many USB hacks"
In April, Novak gave a speech in which he expressed his "contempt" for the USB standard for connections between hardware jacks in an online meeting. The standard code is centralized, he said, and thousands of pages long, so "no one can pass them".
He then listed several attacks that can take place with this connection tool. Not even a simple power supply can be considered reliable, according to Novak. "There are a lot of USB hacks and someone could make a specially bad adapter or cable," he said. Coldpower, on the other hand, is "a" stupid "power supply, with no smart electronics to hack." The best thing after abstinence, perhaps.
