Amid the FTX collapse, cold wallet makers Ledger and Trezor are having record sales

After one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges collapsed and began bankruptcy proceedings, sales of stablecoins (Digital currencies whose price is pegged to fiat, that is, bank currency.) skyrocketed. Especially those whose value is backed by real assets (securities, currency, etc.).

Most likely, investors who did not have time to withdraw their funds from the FTX will be left with nothing.

For example, only Genesis Trading, a market maker and credit subsidiary of Digital Currency Group has about 175 million dollars blocked in the trading account at FTX.

As part of our goal in providing transparency around this week’s market events, the Genesis derivatives business currently has ~$175M in locked funds in our FTX trading account. This does not impact our market-making activities.

— Genesis (@GenesisTrading) November 10, 2022

Moreover, several other big crypto companies have been on the verge of closure, like BlockFi. Crypto.com and others are downsizing. Genesis Global Capital is suspending withdrawals.

There’s the general mood of panic and a high risk of finding yourself without savings. Investors rushed to withdraw their funds in full, cashing out, or saving in the so-called cold wallets. These are hardware solutions allowing users to securely store private keys offline.

Ledger and Trezor, the biggest makers of cold purses, have reported record sales amid the collapse of FTX. By the way, you can read about the pros and cons and features of different crypto wallets here.

Ledger and Trezor’s success

Ledger had its highest sales week ever last week. This was reported by the Director of Experience at the company, Ian Rogers.

Yesterday was another ATH for @Ledger sales — the past 7 days were nearly 7x the previous 7. Thank you to everyone who is joining us on this journey. Some updates and (hopefully) useful information in this thread:👇🪡🧵

— ian c rogers (@iancr) November 15, 2022

A Bitcoin Analyst at Trezor, Josef Tetek, says that hardware wallets producer has “indeed seen an exponential increase in sales since November 7.”

DEXs rise

According to Dune statistics, the trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) for the last 7 days was $25 billion, and trailing ordersA trailing stop order allows you to place an order when a certain percentage of the market price is reached in conditions of increased market volatility. rose by 41%.

The top five are:

1. Uniswap
2. Curve
3. DODO
4. Balancer
5. Sushiswap

How can I make money on this?

A cold wallet allows only its owner to manage cryptocurrency. That is, your savings are always with you (which also does not give a 100% guarantee of safety). And you should be prepared for the fact that cold purses don’t come cheap. So for small investors, this is hardly the most suitable option.

As a rule, such cryptocurrency wallets are represented by physical (hardware) devices, similar to a flash drive. You can transfer coins to them to store them without access to the network.

Developers often offer a system to restore access to assets in case the physical device is damaged or lost. To do this, you need to know the seed phrase (you can choose from ready-made phrases or create one yourself when you start working with a cold wallet). With its help, you can restore access to cryptocurrency. So don’t lose your seed phrase! The best vaults for it we describe here.

For small crypto traders, a DEX is more suitable. With DEX, you own a private key. That is, you retain full control over your cryptocurrency. Also, DEX has no single point of failure as everyone keeps their own keys, and funds are completely distributed.

BTW, here are the main differences between DEX and centralized exchanges (CEXs).