Kevin Bell, CFAFounder, Cadena Bitcoin · Founder, Cadena Bitcoin (developing Bitcoin credit markets and helping clients generate fiat yield or leverage Bitcoin exposure with full self-custody)

How SeedSigner Sparked the Bitcoin Hardware Store #howtoearnmoneyfromusstockmarket #bitcoin

24 Jul 2026 · 2 min

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1:33

In this first-person narrative, the speaker introduces the open‑source Seed Signer air‑gapped Bitcoin hardware wallet, recounting how they learned to use it at the Adopting Bitcoin conference in El Salvador. They contrast this positive experience with a prior, frustrating encounter using a Ledger hardware wallet, highlighting the importance of open‑source code, self‑custody, decentralization, and non‑KYC principles. The speaker explains that the lack of a physical retail outlet for Bitcoin wallets, nodes, and miners inspired them to create the Bitcoin Hardware Store, aiming to provide an in‑person experience for crypto hardware. They also reference their personal background—graduating from Ryerson and working at Sherwin‑Williams, a major paint retailer—to illustrate how their retail experience shaped the store concept.

Chapters

If you guys don't know about the Seed Signer project, it is an awesome, fantastic open source Bitcoin self-custody project, right? And so the Seed Signer team was down here in El Salvador for the very first Adopting Bitcoin conference, and that's where I got to learn how to use a Seed Signer device. So as I'm going through the Seed Signer, learning how to use an air-gapped, an air-gapped hardware wallet, because the very first hardware wallet that I got, I'm not going to mention the name, it starts with an L, ends with an R, and it says Ledger in between, was an absolutely terrible hardware wallet to use for security. So I started using the Seed Signer, and that's when I started learning about really the importance of open source projects, the ethos of Bitcoin, decentralization, non-KYC, like all these terms that we hear a lot of these days. That's where the journey of the Bitcoin Hardware Store started, because there was nowhere that I could go on a, on just like a random Wednesday like today. There was nowhere that I could go to go pick up a wallet or pick up a node or grab a miner. And I said to myself, man, you know, I, after I finished Ryerson, I started working with a company called Sherwin-Williams, and they're one of the largest one of the biggest retail brands in the world, at least for paint-wise. And I said to myself, it'd be really cool if there was an experience, you know, most people don't know about paint and they don't really care.