“You should not have a favorite weapon, nor likes and dislikes. To become over-familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well.” — Miyamoto Musashi

Somewhere, out in a theoretical world…

It’s on a card-shaped, stainless steel form, ready for an on-the-spot QR drop. It’s on a browser extension icon’d with a familiar orange fox. It’s also on what the average joe might think is a handy pocket-sized calculator. Or how about swiveling under a brushed, stainless steel protector engraved with the phrase “vires in numeris”. Care to have its letters stacked in a 304 grade, German-made steel capsule? Or simply have it accessible in the palm of your trusty hands. Rather dare to open-carry, ready to be passed along at the drop of a dime?

Clicking now?

It’s imperious to stick with one type of wallet and proclaim it to be the end all be all to wallet solutions. There is no optimally secure wallet on the market. Any wallet solution purporting to be the most secure probably has passed the point of diminishing returns when it comes to practical usage. Bonafide security and great UX are both diametrically opposing concepts when it comes to wallets. Adding more complexity is the enemy of security.

Let’s ponder…how many people are performing point addition and point doubling by hand to generate big P from small p?

Being wallet agnostic (a term used by no one ever except for this very moment) means to fulfill your personal bitcoin or crypto needs on multiple wallets rather than relying on just one wallet. It’s a corollary play to being blockchain agnostic: having your different business solutions being operated or built on different underlying blockchain networks. Jargon aside, being siloed in one is not only precarious to your opsec, but also to your infosec.

Because at the end of the day, having just one type of decentralized digital asset on multiple wallets is far superior than having multiple types on just one wallet. Wallet diversification outweighing crypto diversification personifies the popular investing strategy of not putting all your eggs in one basket. With basket here meaning storage option rather than asset type.

Best way to contextualize this is by asking yourself: Would you rather have all your doge on a 1 wallet with 1 backup setup or 5 wallets with no backup?

So why shun other wallet tech when in fact deepening the gamut obviates the reliance on just a few. Hardcore privacy folks tend to disparage anything less than abc, but doing so inadvertently centralizes the wallet market. It’s second nature for most experienced users to recommend A or B when asked…but the letters of the alphabet do not stop at B.

So how many is too many one would ask? Well, let’s just say the phrase “a woman can never have enough shoes” can be cringe-ly applied here as: A man can never have enough wallets.

No shame.

A fluid understanding of how different wallets work is obligatory in understanding the ethos of the proverbial Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins.

Unequivocally, I’d say use a web wallet. Use a mobile wallet. Definitely use multiple cold wallets. And hell, try out a brain wallet if you’re daring enough. But please do be sure your starting entropy key isn’t “call me Ishmael”. That’d be the fastest lesson learned you’ll ever experience.

Be versatile in your private key obfuscation. Be wallet agnostic.