Trezor sales have skyrocketed by 900% in the past week, despite warnings from Reddit users about fake Trezor phishing websites being promoted across social media.
The spike in sales comes in the wake of Ledger, Trezor’s major hardware wallet rival, proposing a new feature that has given some cryptocurrency investors the jitters.
Ledger’s proposed feature, called Recover, would allow users to export their wallet’s private keys to Ledger in order to help them recover their crypto if they lose their private keys.
Private keys, which are sometimes referred to as seed phrases, are a series of random words that provide access to a user’s crypto wallet (and therefore their crypto) and should be kept secret.
The proposed feature thus unnerved Ledger wallet owners who feared that Ledger might all of a sudden gain access to their private keys, compromising their crypto’s security.
Indeed, under the wallet makers’ proposal, the private keys would be exported to three separate parties and involve a user providing their identification.
“The crypto community has spoken loudly and clearly on their insistence for uncompromised security of hardware wallets and this is echoed in an extraordinary bounce in our sales over the past week,” Trezor CEO Matej Zak said in a statement shared with crypto news outlets.
But Trezor Has Its Own Issues
Ledger has clearly stuck its foot in its mouth with its latest proposed update, with some Ledger wallet owners have interpreted as signaling that the security of their private keys is compromised.
But anyone thinking about making the switch to a Trezor wallet should bear in mind that Trezor wallet security isn’t perfect either.
Back in 2020, crypto exchange Kraken identified a critical flaw in Trezor T and One models.
The cryptocurrency exchanges security arm developed a way to extract a user’s private keys from both wallets with only 15 minutes of physical access to the device.
Meanwhile, less than one week ago, digital asset recovery firm Unciphered released a video on YouTube claiming to demonstrate how to gain access to a private key on a Trezor T wallet.
Hardware Wallets Remain Most Secure Option
Hardware wallets such as those made by Trezor and Ledger are clearly not impenetrable.
That means, wherever crypto owners chose to store their assets (hot wallet, cold wallet, with a centralized custodian), there will always be some risk.
But analysts still view hardware wallets as the most secure.
The fact that private keys are stored offline means that it is significantly more difficult for malware, phishing attempts, and other online threats to gain access to them.
Hardware wallets are often built with tamper-resistant and tamper-evident features, making it difficult for anyone aside from seasoned experts to hack into them.
Most hardware wallets also require a PIN or passphrase for access to the device, which adds a further layer of security.
