If you are serious In terms of owning digital currencies, you need a hardware wallet. Just like a wallet in your pocket stores physical currency, a cryptocurrency wallet stores your digital currency. It keeps it safe from hackers but always available for your convenience when you need it. For wallets, Ledger Nano X strikes a good balance between simplicity and security. Although beginner-friendly, it offers a high level of security in an offline wallet.
When you buy digital currency, you are not buying a physical item. No coins or bills, like you get with traditional currencies. When you buy a cryptocurrency, you are actually buying a pair of public and private keys, both cryptographically generated on the blockchain. These keys are unique. The private key unlocks your publicly stored portion of the blockchain, which you can then spend anywhere using the currency.
This is difficult for most of us, so we tend to buy and store our digital currencies on exchanges like Coinbase. But the problem is that we don’t have the private key of that money. Without the private key, you don’t really have control over it. Also, if you have keys, you need to lock them securely and not just store them on your hard drive. That’s where the Nano X comes in.
What you really own
If you buy cryptocurrency through an exchange or broker, like Coinbase or Kraken, it will store your private keys for you. Cryptocurrency brokers are conceptually similar to banks, but there are some very important differences — most notably that your crypto brokerage is not insured by the federal government.
In this case, you are in favor of the exchange. If an exchange is hacked and your private key is stolen, you’re out of luck (and money). Exchanges also sometimes disappear overnight, whether they declare bankruptcy or the founders decide to skip town with everyone’s digital currency. All of this and more happened, over and over again. The simple truth is that if you don’t store your private key on a hardware device under your control, you don’t actually own any cryptocurrency.
Ledger Nano X is a secure hardware wallet that stores your private keys. It looks like a rotating USB stick, with a small screen on the front, mainly because it To be a USB stick with a display on the front panel.
Only buy your Nano X directly from Ledger. Any other source can be compromised. The Nano X is available on Amazon, looks like a legit Ledger store, but I highly recommend buying it directly from Ledger. The company offers free shipping, so you gain absolutely nothing when you buy from Amazon, and you take significant risks in doing so.
When it first appears, the first thing your Ledger Nano X will do is instruct you to download the companion app, Ledger Live. There are versions for every platform and I have tested it on Linux. Once you’ve installed the app, connect your Nano X and the app will run you through a number of questions designed to make sure your device hasn’t been tampered with on its way to you. If anything seems confusing, stop and contact Ledger.
Assuming everything is checked, the next step is to generate a 24-word “seed” phrase, which is really just some random words. This is what Nano X uses to protect and lock down your crypto private keys. The Ledger app makes it simple to generate a seed phrase and even forces you to double-check and verify it. This is the most important part of the Nano X. Don’t lose that phrase. If you’re holding a substantial amount of money on your Nano X, I highly recommend placing a copy of this seed phrase in a safe deposit box or similar safe location.
Back and forth
Photo: Ledger
Once your Nano is set up, it’s time to move your crypto out of whatever exchange account you’re using. To do this, you will use the Ledger Live app to set up “accounts” for each currency you own. This generates a public key to send your cryptocurrency to.
