Mr_Bob_Ferguson back again for some Crypto 101. It's always fun to dispel a common crypto misconception.

Many a time there has been a post in the sub about building your own hardware wallet out of an old computer.

Almost without fail there will be at least one comment in the post along the lines of "this is stupid, if the old computer dies you lose your crypto". Well, no, that's completely untrue. Your crypto is just fine.

It highlights that there is a knowledge gap around what a wallet does.

Your crypto is not stored in a wallet.

Let's Use An Analogy

We will explain this as though we are dealing with email. Because pretty much everyone understands the concept of email, and they are quite similar.

The Address

Now start imagining:

• You have an email address.
• Anyone can send you emails.
• Everyone in the whole world has read-only access to your email account. They can view everything that sits in your inbox, they can see everything that goes to/from your account as well, but they can't move those emails at all.
• Only you have the password for the admin account which has permissions to send email.
• All of the emails are stored out on the internet by a wide group of magical email enthusiasts.

Now just swap the email address for a crypto address, and your email password for a private key / seed phrase.

Now swap the emails for crypto, and swap the word internet for "blockchain".

OK, we're already half way to understanding.

The Wallet

Next we need to understand how we can access our email account:

• There are plenty of different ways which you can view the contents of your email address. You could use a web browser on a desktop computer, you could use a "mail" app on your phone, you could have an iPad that is set up to do nothing other than access your emails via a dedicated internet connection. They each have pros and cons.
• All you need is the secret password for your email address.
• You aren't limited to just being able to access one email address either, you can access as many as you want.

Now swap those email readers for crypto wallets; it could be Metamask or any number of other wallet solutions including a dedicated hardware wallet.

And If You Lose Your Wallet Or It Dies?

By now, hopefully, the pieces are coming together.

Just because you open your emails on a web browser doesn't mean you can't then also open them on a mobile app, or even just in a different web browser.

All you need is your password.

Your wallet is just the tool/app/software used to view what is stored on the blockchain.

So the next time you see someone in the sub worried about damaging their wallet and losing their crypto, send them Mr_Bob_Ferguson's way for some Crypto 101.

And if you don't know, now you know.