Cobo Wallet and Cobo Vault are requesting KYC
Cobo Vault Overview
Cobo Vault is one of the most rugged solutions available on the market. The device features "air-gap" isolation, which means that it does not come into contact with other machines at any time. It does not integrate support for 3G/4G, WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC, and therefore these cannot be used as attack vectors.
And the same goes for charging - as the battery must be removed and placed in a separate charging dock. As for updating the firmware, users must insert an SD card (loaded with the update) into the back of the device.
I was on the Cobo website today. I have a Cobo Vault and I still haven't quite figured out how to use it. I think I am pretty close. My phone just died or I assume I would have gotten them linked by now.
While I was on the website looking for a firmware upgrade I saw some interesting new stuff in the help section. As of 14 days ago there is an article about doing KYC. This is the first mention of KYC I have seen when it relates to hardware wallets. I think this is a taste of what is going to come.
Right now hardware wallets are kind of the Wild West and unregulated. When a big name like Cobo starts talking about KYC, it is time to listen. Eventually, it is going to get harder and harder to use crypto without verifying your identity. That's not such a big deal if you follow the law in regards to taxes but it is a big deal if you want to keep your finances private.
As you may know, every transaction you make with Bitcoin is permanently recorded on the blockchain. Also, at any moment someone can look up your wallet ID and see how much money you have and what types of transactions you make. If you are making transactions with a bad person, you might have consequence because it is very traceable.
If you use a hardware wallet without KYC, it is pretty hard to figure out who you are. If you buy some NFTs or get money from a known source, it probably won't be too hard to find you, but its a lot harder than if everything you do is public.
I have been using a wallet called Incognito wallet to scramble my transactions. When you send money to Incognito, it wraps the coins and makes mints a privacy token for you to hold. If you send different amounts in and our and use different wallets, it will be very hard to trace the transaction.
Another way to make transactions hard to follow would be to convert your coins into Monero and send your Monero to a new wallet. From there, it is basically like new. You just need to figure out how to safely convert your Monero back to something you like in your new wallet.
I typically use Kucoin or Kraken when I want to trade Monero but I am not trying to hide anything and I pay all of my taxes. If I wanted to hide the transaction, I would probably use something like Changelly. I would also do little amounts because I don't exactly trust a site like Changelly.
When it comes to converting I basically stick with PancakeSwap, Uniswap, Kucoin, Coinbase, or Kraken. Ethereum fees are so expensive right now that I don't tend to trade or move Ethereum much. Most of my exposure right now is to Pancake Swap token and BNB.
I think Cobo has set the standard and I wouldn't be surprised if companies like Ledger and Trezor are next. They are all trying to build out full ecosystems and they all want to have American money.
My favorite wallets right now are the SecuXv20, the Safepal, and D'cent right now. All of them can access Pancakeswap and all of my NFTs and most of my money is on Binance Smart Chain. I have a little bit at Kucoin but I am always afraid to keep money there. At some point they will probably realize that I am in the USA and close my account. In the meantime Kucoin is fucking awesome.