You're missing one very important aspect of the hardware wallet: transactions are signed on the device and not on the computer/endpoint like a software wallet.
Your private keys never get touched, written, displayed, put on RAM/disk, etc with a hardware device.
Also, Metamask which is a popular extension for use with DeFi has the ability to integrate with hardware wallets so you get the best of both worlds.
Hardware wallets are not for 'novices' as you suggest, they are for people who are truly serious about their security.
Your private keys never get touched, written, displayed, put on RAM/disk, etc with a hardware device.
Except, you are trusting these startup companies did not do any tampering with their hardware like a backdoor for instance. If I was building a company like that, I would be very very very tempted to "accidentally" leave a small debugging backdoor for someday in future.
Personally this is what I do, which I consider to be the most secure way to save your crypto. I wrote a small script on my macbook from early 2000s that I dont use for anything else. This script generated the addresses and the corresponding BIP passphrase, and displayed the address on screen. I transferred the crypto I am hodling to these addresses. This wallet exists only on a couple pieces of paper as BIP phrase and nowhere else. Far far more secure than a hardware wallet which you dont know what is really inside it.
You're missing one very important aspect of the hardware wallet: transactions are signed on the device and not on the computer/endpoint like a software wallet.
Your private keys never get touched, written, displayed, put on RAM/disk, etc with a hardware device.
Also, Metamask which is a popular extension for use with DeFi has the ability to integrate with hardware wallets so you get the best of both worlds.
Hardware wallets are not for 'novices' as you suggest, they are for people who are truly serious about their security.
Except, you are trusting these startup companies did not do any tampering with their hardware like a backdoor for instance. If I was building a company like that, I would be very very very tempted to "accidentally" leave a small debugging backdoor for someday in future.
Personally this is what I do, which I consider to be the most secure way to save your crypto. I wrote a small script on my macbook from early 2000s that I dont use for anything else. This script generated the addresses and the corresponding BIP passphrase, and displayed the address on screen. I transferred the crypto I am hodling to these addresses. This wallet exists only on a couple pieces of paper as BIP phrase and nowhere else. Far far more secure than a hardware wallet which you dont know what is really inside it.