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Comment by AlienRobot

14 hours ago

The words you are using are very confusing.

You can't "move money into an offline crypto wallet that is not online at all."

If "money" i.e. crypto "currency" is in a crypto "wallet" then it is online. Anyone with the key and an Internet connection can transfer it at any time.

The wording is confusing because to someone who doesn't know how cryptocurrencies work it sounds like you can simply "take the crypto offline and put it into a physical device" as if it was a file. But that's not how it works. The physical key merely contains the actual key for the always-online wallet.

It's true that anyone with the key and an Internet connection can move money out of a crypto wallet at any time, but the point of the cold wallet is that they don't get the key because it's kept on a computer (or other storage medium) that is physically offline and disconnected from the Internet. Same reason government intelligence agencies use a SCIF for any important information work: you keep the information physically disconnected from the Internet.

of course you can move crypto currency to an offline wallet and by offline I mean its private key is held in some physical form/device that is not connected to the network.

Only spending from that wallet needs online access to private key - depositing to it does not.