What happened yesterday was a wake up call for many.

It was never about implementing a new functionality. It's about nobody being able to verify anything due to hardware being closed source.

Thus, I compared a few of the industry-standard hardware wallets and below are my conclusions.

Requirements

First of all, my requirements:

1. Only BIP39 compatible wallets
2. 24 words seed phrases, not 12
3. No devices that can be stolen and used immediately
4. I don't care about diversity of coin support
5. The less fancy the device is, the better
6. Must support passphrases (25th word)
7. Everything must be open source - software and firmware

As you can see, the whole fiasco happened because the 7th isn't true for some.

The final trilemma was between:

• Trezor One
• BitBox02
• Coldcard

The last one being Bitcoin only and not applicable for you BTC/ETH maxis, I'll leave it out and compare the other two.

Trezor One

Pros:

• Cheaper (around $70) - although the price is irrelevant for a one-time purchase
• Fully open source
• Not many things that can go wrong
• Same user-experience as whatever you're used to, easy onboarding

Cons:

• Passphrases have to be entered on the connected device (PC), not on the Trezor itself
• Non-encrypted communication between the device and the PC (not a big deal, it's common)
• Can be hacked with physical access to the device (but if you use passphrases, you're safe)

BitBox02

Pros:

• Secure against people with physical access to the device
• Fully open source
• Encrypted communication between devices
• Passphrase is written on the device itself

Cons:

• More expensive (around $130) - but it's fine for a one-time purchase
• Touch screen
• Must be backed up on an SD card during initialization (which you can destroy afterwards)

Conclusion

It's a hard call.

At the end, the writing of passphrases on PC was the strongest con for Trezor so I'll probably choose BitBox02.

Although I'm still considering getting both, as BitBox02 is "fancier" and there are multiple hardware components that can break in the worst possible time (touch screen not working when BTC hits $100k, etc.) Thus, I'd like to have a plan B and the Trezor would fit this purpose.

There are also other alternatives (Jade, Passport, Ellipal, KeepKey, etc.), but due to various reasons, Trezor and BitBox02 entered the final draw.

Interested in your thoughts as well!