A new report from South Korea by Kim In-soon focused on the security of cryptocurrencies indicates the residents of the Asian country are increasingly looking to Bitcoin hardware wallets as a way to protect their BTC.
Due to the numerous security issues faced by exchanges, chiefly hacking, many locals in South Korea are showing less trust in crypto exchanges when it comes to storing their cryptocurrencies.
Recently, even the largest crypto exchange in the country Bithumb has experienced security issues and looking at all the exchanges that exist today, only a handful haven’t experienced some sort of security breaches.
The problem with centralized crypto exchanges and wallet platforms is that they are vulnerable to all sorts of cyber-attacks and hacking due to their reliance on a single point of access. Their databases, servers and other infrastructure are all centrally managed by a group of administrators within the company.
This centralization of several components is a key problem as it provides hackers with an opportunity to break into the exchanges system and steal sensitive user financial information, user data and in the worst case scenario transfer funds from the accounts of users.
With the obvious limitations presented by centralized crypto exchanges and centralized wallets, a growing number of users in South Korea are showing a preference for cold wallets and hardware wallets over the centralized hot wallets.
In the past year alone, there have been at least three major crypto hardware wallets that have come up targeting the local market with their bitcoin hardware wallets. The three include KeyPair, Penta Cryptowallet, and TouchxWallet.
Also, other major global hardware wallet providers like Ledger of France have been quick to notice the rising appetite in hardware wallets and have decided to enter the South Korean market too.
This shift in trend from easy to use centralized wallets to secure hardware wallets shows users are developing an awareness when it comes to the security of their digital assets.
Source : https://crypto-lines.com/2018/03/19/bitcoin-hardware-wallets/