REVIEW: Ballet Pro & Real (Bitcoin Wallets)

Ballet offers the simplest kind of Bitcoin wallet – one which is essentially a paper wallet that's made of stainless steel and comes with a basic watch-only app to manage your bitcoins.

As long as you know how to protect a piece of metal and scan QR codes, you can easily receive BTC. And if you want to move your coins to another wallet, you're going to have to peel off the private key on the Ballet Real device or sweep the funds with the mnemonics that you used to generate the Ballet Pro.

The Ballet Real and the Ballet Pro are identical in feeling and design. But the most significant difference is found in the amount of trust you put in Ballet: the Real version comes with a BIP38 private key which gets printed in two separate parts of the world (USA and China) to avoid matching the two entries, and has a security which very much resembles that of the Casascius coins (or BTCC Mint, a previous project of Bobby Lee's). This means that you must trust in the manufacturer's honesty.

On the other hand, the more expensive Ballet Pro is trustless in its key generation. You create your own private key by using the BIP39 dictionary, you encrypt the 12 or 24 words by using the BIP38 standard, and you send the encrypted hash to Ballet so they can print it on your card. This way, nobody will ever get the chance to know any part of your private key.

The target audience for these devices is very clear: older people who don't have the patience or disposition to learn how to use an electronic device, but understand the way credit cards work. Ballet is a skewmorphism which creates a familiar onboarding experience for those who otherwise would think that Bitcoin is too difficult for them to use.

Due to the trusted setup, I can't really recommend the $35 Ballet Real. But if you're going to offer a Bitcoin gift to somebody who is older than 50 and has trouble using new electronic devices (such as hardware wallets), then the $99 Ballet Pro is a good choice which offers you complete control over the private keys.

Also, keep in mind that the Ballet wallets are not hardware wallets.

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Read the review: https://bitcoin-takeover.com/review-ballet-pro-and-real-bitcoin-wallets/

This is my guide in how to set up your Ballet Pro by using the BIP38 encryption standard: https://youtu.be/brmkcnzGUH8

Also, here's a download link for the song you can hear in the background, "Down the Rabbit Hole": https://soundcloud.com/user-87506791-304532072/down-the-rabbit-hole

My interview with Bobby Lee, in S5 E1 of the Bitcoin Takeover Podcast: https://bitcoin-takeover.com/s5-e1-bobby-lee-on-ballet-cold-storage-returning-to-the-real-bitcoin/

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