 In this episode of Down the Rabbit Hole, I answer the questions that you didn't ask and for today's question, I want to ask myself. We're talking about key management and hardware wallets, but what if I can't afford a hardware wallet? What if I can't get one delivered? What if the amount of money I'm storing is not enough for a hardware wallet? What should I use instead? And that's the question I want to answer today because it's a complicated question and not everyone can afford or get access to a hardware wallet. So in terms of security, if you cannot afford a hardware wallet, your next best option after a hardware wallet is your mobile smartphone device. Your mobile device most likely has a secure element. Most modern mobile devices have a secure element and a secure element is a special security chip that is used to store parts of the phone's storage, the mobile device's storage, in such a way that they cannot be extracted unless by the authorized program. That provides isolation within the operating system. More broadly, mobile device operating systems are much more button down than your average desktop operating system, especially, you know, your average Windows machine that has all kinds of junk installed on it. A good clean installation on a mobile device with an operating system that is up to date, that is keeping up with the manufacturer software updates in order to fix vulnerabilities, is likely the most secure device you own. It also has very strong authentication in the form of pins, passphrases, fingerprints, biometrics, et cetera. I always recommend using a biometric and a pin, not only a pin. And if your operating system doesn't allow that, then use a pin. And it's okay if people think you're crazy when you're entering a 16 digit pin minus 16 digits. And then once you have a properly set up mobile operating system, you can then install a reliable and powerful mobile wallet, which is a software application. You want that wallet to be BIP39 compatible, meaning that it uses a mnemonic phrase, you own and control the keys by backing up that mnemonic phrase. Of course, you want to make a backup of that mnemonic phrase. And you also want to find out if it's using a standard derivation path, the best ones do. And you also want, preferably, a mobile wallet that also has some smart features around privacy, as well as some smart features around fee management to manage transaction fees. So you can do things like bump a fee using replaced by fee or child pays for parent, or you can manually adjust the fees depending on how urgent a transaction appears to you. These are all criteria that you might use to buy, sorry, to download the right mobile wallet. They're all free. I wish some of them would charge a subscription for support, but they don't. And you can do that even on mobile devices that are two or three generations behind the latest. It doesn't have to be an iPhone 11 Pro Max. It doesn't have to be a Google Pixel 4. It could be or Samsung 10. It could be an iPhone 7 or 8. It could be even a Nexus 5. So you can always go a few generations back. Finally, if you don't have a mobile device or if for some reason you want to run a desktop application, again, it's better than custodial, but you have to be very, very careful. Desktop operating systems are much, much less secure. My favorite desktop wallet is Electrum, which I use because of its very capable features and multi-platform support, and I've used it for a long time. But I use it with a hardware wallet for the keys, so I do not store keys on a desktop device ever. I don't trust them. On my mobile wallet, I also keep a small amount as petty cash, similar to what I would keep in my actual leather wallet in my back pocket. So think of this as a tiered solution. If you can't afford a hardware wallet, use a mobile device. If you can afford a hardware wallet, still use a mobile device so that you can have a smaller value hot wallet that you use for day-to-day small transactions, maybe a lightning wallet as well on your mobile device so you can do fast transactions, but don't store too much money on that mobile device if you have a hardware wallet, and of course, don't forget, back up both of those.