"Hot", "Cold" & "Warm" Storage Wallets? I've seen a number of sites advertise they support &quot;hot&quot;, &quot;warm&quot; and &quot;cold&quot; wallet storage solutions (the only thing I haven't seen so far are &quot;frozen&quot; wallets).
What's the difference between the three? I think the difference between &quot;hot&quot; and &quot;cold&quot; wallets are pretty clear. But what makes a wallet &quot;warm&quot; instead of &quot;hot&quot; or &quot;cold&quot;?
P.S
I understand that at some level &quot;warm&quot; wallets are obviously more accessible than cold wallets (hence the name &quot;warm&quot;) but how would they differ from a tech perspective - at what point is something hot and at what point is something warm?
In general terms, &quot;hot&quot; wallets store both the wallet address(es) and the private key(s) on a network-connected machine, readily accessible so you can spend your balance any time, with very little effort (and lower security).
Meanwhile, &quot;cold&quot; wallets store your private key(s) in an isolated &quot;hardware wallet,&quot; on external storage media (which is a lot less secure, and I would consider a &quot;warm&quot; wallet), or on a piece of paper (search &quot;bitcoin paper wallet&quot;). In this way, the funds are &quot;frozen,&quot; because no internet-connected device has the private key. This gives you great security, but is less convenient because you have to transfer the private key to a connected device (or use a connected device to send transaction info to a hardware wallet for off-network signing) before you can spend your balance.
As for &quot;warm&quot; wallets, I've seen descriptions of putting private keys in a separate HDD partition, or an encrypted archive file as &quot;warm&quot; wallets.