and it all hinges on the individuals ability to keep a secret. Writing off a tool that can offload some risks actors face when interacting with the protocol as a grift across the board is bad practice, and neglecting the existence of commonly known attack vectors.

the whole premise of btc as a financial legder is the use of secrets to sign for proof of work. If the practice of keeping a secret stays static and falls behind in a dynamically evolving environment it undermines the very foundation of the protocol. This kind of rhetoric is borderline malicious practice and a culture that will get people rekt badly.

proper usage means controlling the keys, how a individual approaches this is up to them. Waste of money is exposing or losing the keys, regardless of the process. If a signing device is a waste of money, then that is a individual consideration based on risk, consequences and mitigation knowledge. It is dishonest to apply the same conclusion for every risk profile as they are inherently different.

in certain cases yes, but ignoring the potential benefits and technical pitfalls the average user exposes themselves to by avoiding a hw signing implementation without real concideration is sub optimal advice in general. You dont need to buy anything if you have the knowledge to create a encrypted airgapped environment that only loads in ram in a safe way. But you cannot realistically recommend that to someone who has never interfaced with their home directory in a terminal, and even then its a big ask…

satoshi was obviously a opsec expert with deep knowledge of security, operating in a relatively low threat environment compared to today. Both the incentive economically and the attack surface is bigger now than the satoshi era. Satoshis keys went cold long before they were at any risk of beeing swept, and they are not actively beeing loaded into a adversarial environment for signing on a regular basis. Dedidcated signing hardware is a risk mitigation tool that can reduce attack surface and protect the user against malware and catastrophic user error when the keys need to sign anything. It is easy to create a wallet, load funds on a fresh os install in a clean environment and burn the keys. This is likely never to be hacked, but the user has no ownership over the keys and so the entire comparison falls short

my point is the enviroment the satoshi keys were generated and stored in initially before going cold is not comparable to the average user

sathoshis signing environment on a general purpose computing device is not in any way comparable to the average user. If satoshis computer was online with hot keys and you gave it to a run of the mill above average tech literate linux users today coins would likely be swept in relatively no time id wager. The game has changed since then…

yeah… not looking good.

Should a HW device even have the binaries to produce PRNG in the production codebase, when the whole point is TRNG?

I think russia fucked up big time with the war, dont get me wrong. However there is something that feels off with your rhetoric and the dishing out judgement like ops dont find themselves in precarious situations. I am not convinced by the line drawn for «active combatant» that would justify liquidation in this manner… The collini case comes to mind.

You are losing it bro

fucking sick