Why Trezor Is the Pokeball for your Coins
By Vlad Costea — External Contributor to Trezor Blog
What do Trezor hardware wallets and Pokeballs have in common? They’re both light, portable, affordable, and very useful in the process of securing your valuable and scarce digital assets. Both of them guide you through and beyond your journey to become a Bitcoin and Pokemon master, respectively.
And while you could travel across the land without them, it would be too risky and impractical — you never know when and where a Team Rocket member is going to show up to make you prepare for trouble, so it’s better to use a device that grants you security and plausible deniability.
In this article, you will learn more about the special connection between Bitcoin and Pokemon, and see why Trezor devices and Pokeballs are so much alike. By the end of it, you will hopefully understand that one’s childhood journey to become a Pokemon master is actually helpful in the process of becoming financially sovereign with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin and Pokemon
“Why is Bitcoin being compared to the Pokemon universe?”, you might ask. Well, Pokemon is a popular show and video game franchise that introduced to millions of fans worldwide some of the most fundamental principles of Bitcoin. After attempting to explain Bitcoin to children, now it’s time to address the 1990s kids who understand the scarcity of Mews and the importance of the Pokedex as a validator, but may be intimidated by Bitcoin’s complexity.
If anything, the Pokemon universe is a useful parallel to draw whenever explanations about Bitcoin become overly complicated. Yes, you can talk about the importance of a full node and explain to them the cryptographic and economic principles involved. But if you refer to it as a Pokedex that’s connected to a large database of Pokemons to explain the origins of each creature and protect trainers against inflation with fake unrecognized Pokemons, it’s going to be easier to understand.
And there is a lot more to be said about the common elements that the two universes share: for starters, both Bitcoin and Pokemon were created by people named Satoshi. Also, both Bitcoin and Pokemon use popular computer networks to generate and facilitate the trading of virtual assets: 1990s kids could establish P2P connections between their Gameboys to exchange creatures between players.
They did not require any third party’s permission to do it, the Pokemons could not be duplicated or “double-spent”, and the transaction was verified by their own devices. The Bitcoin network functions very similarly in principle, except that it operates on the global permissionless network known as the internet and offers many more features and options.
Trezor and Pokeballs
In the Pokemon universe, trainers use Pokeballs to keep their otherwise sizable monsters in portable and convenient devices. These devices grant them portability, convenience, security, and plausible deniability.
For instance, the smallest Lapras is about 2.5 meters (8 foot 2 inches) tall and is only efficient on water and ice. Such a creature is hard to drag across the land, and carrying it along with other Pokemons can become a burdensome task. But if the Lapras is allowed to rest inside a Pokeball, then you can simply carry it in your pocket or attach it to your belt.
Sounds familiar? Well, Trezor hardware wallets are also lightweight, durable, and ideal for making you the master of your bitcoins. But there’s definitely more to the picture than meets the eye, so let’s carry on with the Pokemon comparison.
Pokeballs are also great for privacy and security. You can carry any Pokemon inside, but no other trainer will know who it is and how valuable or rare it can be. If everybody carries Pokeballs throughout their quests, then it’s hard to tell who is worth attacking unless the owners themselves expose their assets. In the Pokemon cartoons, Ash Ketchum (who is conveniently named “Satoshi” in the original Japanese version) only becomes a constant victim of Team Rocket’s attacks because he keeps his Pikachu outside a Pokeball — and therefore turns himself into a target for walking around with a strong and interesting creature.
Similarly, Trezor devices facilitate the storage and carriage of multiple cryptocurrencies with great plausible deniability. When somebody sees your Trezor, they’re not going to know how many bitcoins you own and from where you acquired them. You’re the only person who can reveal such information to the world, by creating an association between the cryptographic data on the public blockchain and your identity. Otherwise, you can cross national borders with millions in your pocket, and others can see how wealthy you are.
Last but not least, it’s worth noting that both Pokeballs and Trezors can be physically stolen without changing ownership of the assets stored inside. As seen in the series, Pokemons are faithful to their owners and don’t accept somebody else’s orders unless they are clearly abandoned or banished. So if somebody steals a Pokemon trainer’s Pokeballs, they won’t make the Pokemons inside listen to their orders.
Likewise, Trezor hardware wallets are protected by a numeric PIN, a passphrase, a recovery seed, and optionally a Shamir backup and a multisig setup. Furthermore, every line of code that goes into the device is a piece of open-source software that can be verified by anybody. This way, you don’t have to trust in the manufacturer’s promises and benefit from the verifications of security experts and hackers worldwide.
Just like the monsters in your Pokeballs won’t leave you unless you give them permission, the coins in your Trezor hardware wallet belong to you until you sign a transaction with your keys.
Using Pokemon to Explain Bitcoin to Newbies
Bitcoin can oftentimes be difficult to explain to newbies — especially if they’re millennials for whom the “digital gold” metaphor has very little meaning because they never regarded gold as money. This is why educational tools must be adapted to fit the cultural references and popular memes of every generation.
There are millions of people who grew up watching Pokemon on Saturday mornings. During the past two decades, they have very likely played the video games, experimented with trading cards, bought merchandise, and had their first Augmented Reality experience with Pokemon Go. For most of their lives, Pokemon has been a constant cultural phenomenon.
Correspondingly, concepts such as digital scarcity, valuable virtual assets, and digital money custody are easier to explain by drawing parallels to Pokemons, Pokedexes, and Pokeballs. And as soon as they understand the need for financial sovereignty via full nodes and Trezor hardware wallets, the entire Bitcoin space becomes better and safer.
With the security of Trezor devices, traveling across the land, searching far and wide just keeps on getting better.
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