Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: Can Ledger Prevent you from accessing your Hardware wallet?
by
bob123
on 10/01/2021, 13:48:01 UTC
So Hardware wallets are supposed to be the safest way to store crypto, but my question is  when using them  for example Ledger , are we still putting our trust in them because we still need to use their software etc.

If lets say they get orders from the government  etc can they prevent us from being able to access or move our crypto  directly or by blocking access to their software.

Hardware wallets are not the safest way to store keys.
They are a pretty secure method which is a trade-off between security and convenience.
A completely air-gapped setup with two isolated computers would be more secure.. but way less usable for every-day spendings.

And no, you don't need to use ledger software to access your coins.
You can use ledger live, but any other software which supports HW wallets is fine (e.g. electrum, wasabi, mycelium, ...).



I also read that it is possible to  get access to our private key ourselves , but we would need to use another 3rd party software to do that.
[...] so using recovery phrase we can get access to all BIP39  supported wallets, I read that Electeum  uses other coding language but with a help of 3rd party software we can use BIP39  coding with BIP32,  can this 3rd party software be trusted and also can we actually find out our Private key that is held on ledger or is that too risky?

The private keys are derived from the mnemonic code (the 24 words you have).
Yes, you can do that without the device. But it is recommended to regard the mnemonic code as compromised after entering it anywhere else than your hardware wallet.

You should only do that if it is absolutely necessary (e.g. device broken and you don't want to buy a second one or want to access your coins without it).