1 sat \ 0 replies \ @gbks 12 Jan \ on: Are we in the "Era of Ferment" with Bitcoin hardware? bitcoin
I am not sure I buy this concept.
For the American cars, the image on the left shows cars in many different colors at various angles. On the right, all cars are white and shown at identical angles. It also only includes cars of a certain category. Throw in a mini cooper, VW bus, or a Porsche and things look different. The inside of cars is drastically changing with electric vehicles and endless sensors and software.
Phones are interesting because they used to be just phones, and now they are computers (that we sometimes use to make calls). The screen took over. The most experimental stuff might be foldable screens and new ideas like the Rabbit R1(which might not even be a phone anymore). Cars are still cars, but phones are not just phones anymore (of course you can argue differently here).
As for hardware wallets, I hope we get to keep diversity and different types of devices with their own personalities and optimizations for different use cases. A DIY seed signer relies on cheap parts that can somewhat easily be put together by hobbyists. Quite different from a Bitkey. I like how different they feel as well. Since they are much simpler than cars and phones, maybe that will persist, like we have a ton of different alarm clocks, toasters, speakers, and other smaller electronic devices? Overall, I hope that people continue to feel that bitcoin is something special, and maybe they will then also want well-crafted devices that reflect that.
Or maybe, if software eats the world, we won't need them anymore, and every device we have will be a key - multisig making up for each individual key being less secure? We'll see.