wouldn't the hardware wallet open up potential avenues for fraud where the fraudulent 'card' or hardware wallet looks legitimate at face-value, and people only realize that they've been defrauded when they go and try to initialize the wallet and it does not work?
The balance can be verified using an NFC enabled smartphone. That's why you don't need trust, you can verify the card you have been given is funded.
The smartphone app verifies the card is real and funded.
This is what happens when you don't read the thread.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3535973.msg36355447#msg36355447I'm just playing Devil's advocate here, because there's surely a way for people to get scammed. It's been happening for as long has humans have been around. For example, if someone sells one of these wallets online and 3 people reply and say they want to buy it, the seller can say, "I need the payment before couriering it to you." The seller can then collect multiple payments for the same wallet, and send fake ones to the buyers. If that happens, the only way for the buyer to know if he/she was scammed would be to check the package when it arrives, but by that time it would be too late as he/she has already paid money to the scammer. I'm not saying that this WILL happen, I'm just asking, wouldn't the potential for it to happen open up in this case?