Whats up everyone its Austin over here at the crypto playhouse and i have another hardware
wallet review for you.
And i have to say I think this one might actually by my favorite to date.
Were looking at the Ellipal today, which is kind of a whole new breed of hardware wallet.
It is a little bit larger of a device which is probably my one single gripe with it.
But this thing is killer.
It’s got a touchscreen, you’ve got you’re charge port up here, it actually has a camera;
were gonna dive in and take a look at why it has that.
And this device is, so far, just phenomenal.
It supports bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, a number of other small cap coins and erc 20
transactions.
It has a very very unique kind of interaction method for signing transactions.
It’s the first device I’ve seen that kind of takes this route and its really really
an interesting device.
The build quality is incredible it’s very sturdy it’s got an aluminum unibody.
It actually does have a removable back for, you have your SD card here for updates and
it does have a removable and replaceable battery.
This is definitely the most effort I've seen put into a crypto hardware wallet to date,
and it was actually crowdfunded through kickstarter, that's another kind of interesting factor.
So people were definitely all about the idea and now that the product has been delivered
I have to say, you know they really came through.
So we’re gonna dive in, get up close, take a look at the device, see how the transactions
work and yeah!
Okay, so you do have your app and the device itself so this is where you come from the
setup.
I did already run through the basics of this just putting in the account name and password.
So my big gripe with the last device that i reviewed, the Temexe was that the keys were
generated on the phone apparently instead of the device and your mnemonic phrase showed
up which just kind of completely negates your security.
And luckily we do not have that issue with the Ellipal here.
So were just going to create the account on the device itself.
Give it a moment to do that, and its generating your keys.
I am doing this as a test so I’m just going to show these mnemonics here.
It’s going to ask you to confirm that you understand that your mnemonic phrase is them
end all be all to your crypto assets.
And here we are.
So you’ve got your mnemonic phrase here, and just going to hit next and its actually
going to make me verify, so give me one moment I'm going to verify this and well come back
to the video.
Okay, so as you can see, backup successful.
We backed up our mnemonic, and here you will see your different choices for the coins to
add, were just going to add them all right now, because why not.
Alright so now we want to of course connect the actual app so that we can send transactions
and whatnot..
So were going to connect to cold wallet.
And this is where i think it is very kind of different and cool.
So we’re going to connect here.
And you’ll see here that it has six different QR codes.
Now they don’t give any specific explanations for this but my assumption is that when you
log into the cold wallet you’re basically signing a QR codes for each of the different
blockchain types.
So although we have more than six coins, bitcoin and bitcoin cash obviously are off the same
chain, Ethereum and Erc20s are off the same chain, so we get six codes.
So anyways, were gonna go, connect to cold wallet, and here we are.
So we’re gonna scan...And six.
Now obviously if you’re only using it for bitcoin or Ethereum you only have to go through
one or two of those.
So anyway here is the general layout.
You can see on the device itself, you’ve got access to all these.
And this is where you do your signing from.
You have to enter your password in there.
And over here is where you really make the transactions and kind of set things up.
So let’s take a look at bitcoin cash, so you can see there, you have the address itself,
you have the price and you can receive.
And there you go, you get your QR code and anyone can send to you via the QR code.
And you can also send, obviously you have your amount, recipient address.
And one of the things that i really really like about this is it lets you choose your
transaction fee.
Its seems like a minor thing but with most of the wallets I’ve used if that feature
is available its a little bit complicated, not really available to the average user.
And it really, you know it’s something that in 2018 we didn’t see as much of but towards
the end of 2017 it was really obvious that in high traffic periods, upping that transaction
fee can really make a huge difference in when you’re transaction arrives so i think that’s
a great little feature.
But, anyways let’s back out here.
One of the other things that i do really like about the ellipal app is it does have a market
watch so you can kind of eye this down here.
And it also has news which feeds in from cointelegraph a couple of other different providers so that
is a nice little feature of the app.
Now another thing with this that i think is a great little feature is that you of course
can create a new wallet here; or you can backup or restore via mnemonic phrase or private
key, but you can also actually restore via a QR code.
Which is a feature i haven’t seen before but really is a great little feature because
it just speeds the process up a lot and yeah, it’s just something interesting i haven’t
seen before.
And also, with coin support; of course within Ethereum, so we can actually come in here
and it does have automated support for a huge number of ERC 20s which is great, because
I'm telling you if your sending Ethereum transactions, Erc20s are just a no-brainer to have access
to.
And amazingly I’ve seen a number of different devices that don’t actually have that.
So anyways were gonna pull back here and kind of go over some pros and cons, and yeah!
Okay, just because i know this questions going to come up in the comments, let me run through
real quick so in terms of total coin support we’ve got Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash,
Dash, Litecoin, Ethereum Classic, Digibyte, Ripple, and CMT.
Now mind you, it does also support Erc20s so I’m not gonna list off all those, there’s
way too many Erc20s to actually go through that.
But all in all This is the first device I’ve reviewed in quite a while, really since the
Trezor that I just fully say this is a great device.
I love it, it is, the build, quality is incredible, it does seem to have the security that I’m
looking for in a hardware wallet and the nice thing is that it’s not a USB connected.
It is kind of a hybrid with the way they do the signature transactions through the camera.
I really really just, i love the device.
Obviously i think the biggest cons are going to be the device size.
In a world where things are getting smaller and were already carrying your iphone or your
android phone or whatever...it is a bit big, there’s no if’s and’s or but’s about
that.
But in the end i really think it’s worth the extra size.
The only other gripe i would have with it is the device updates are done via a micro
SD card.
And you actually install the update on this and then put it in the device.
Now its not particularly difficult but it’s not the most intuitive things, and i think
one of the things with crypto is trying to take it mainstream.
So in the future I’d maybe like to see something where you can update directly through a usb
plug, butt you know, it is what it is; and i think the device really really kind of hits
all the nails on the head.
I really think the Ellipal guys just absolutely killed it with this.
Anyways I hope you guys enjoyed the video.
If you’ve got another hardware device you want us to check out leave us a comment, were
always looking for new and cool things in the crypto world to check out.
If you liked the video, give us a like, subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.