If you’re new to the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain, it can be overwhelming trying to understand all the different terms and concepts. Public and private keys, addresses, self-storage – it’s a lot to take in.
In this article, I am going to help you understand the relationship between the Ledger Live application and your hardware wallet, and explain what you can and can’t do with each one. For those that are looking for quick answers:
You can open and use Ledger Live to keep track of your assets and portfolio balance without connecting your Ledger hardware wallet. If you know your wallet address, you can also receive crypto transfers without connecting the device. However, sending funds requires that you connect your wallet to sign and authorize the transfer.
Let’s look at the topic in a bit more detail and clarify each of the points mentioned.
Note! Many people have been concerned about the security of Ledger Live and whether their personal information is being misused and/or exposed. If you are interested, I have explained this and how you can use your wallet without Ledger Live in my previous article.
Can You Use Ledger Live Without Connecting Hardware Wallet?
So, can you use Ledger Live without connecting your hardware wallet? The short answer is yes. You can install and use Ledger Live on your computer or phone without having to connect your hardware wallet.
However, unless you have previously connected your wallet and set up accounts, there isn’t much to do. You can view general information about different cryptocurrencies and get the real-time and historical prices (and price graphs for different time periods) but that’s about it.
If you only want to get information and track different crypto assets, there are better tools out there for that purpose (e.g CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, etc.).
If you have previously connected your wallet, configured accounts, and received or sent funds, then you can view the assets in your portfolio and see real-time and historical portfolio values.
This is something that I personally quite often do. It is exciting to see how the crypto assets in my cold storage are doing price-wise and also check from time to time that my recovery phrase has not been compromised and the assets are still actually there.
You Can Receive Funds without Connecting Your Ledger Device
Another thing you can do without connecting your Ledger device is to receive funds. If you know your wallet address for a specific cryptocurrency, you can receive transfers without having to connect your Ledger wallet.
Note! If you don’t know your crypto wallet address and use the “Receive” functionality of Ledger Live to generate the address where funds need to be transferred, then this requires connecting the wallet.
Think of your wallet address as a bank account number – if the other party knows it, they can send you funds without your consent. You can also send funds from a crypto exchange to your cold storage or receive them directly from another person.
Once the transaction is processed on the blockchain, Ledger Live will automatically synchronize with the data on the blockchain and update your portfolio balance accordingly.
You Can NOT Send Crypto from Ledger Live Without The Wallet
Even though you can receive funds without connecting your hardware wallet, the opposite is not true. You can’t send funds from Ledger Live without connecting your hardware wallet first.
What you should understand here is that your Ledger hardware wallet doesn’t actually hold any crypto on it. Your crypto is stored on the blockchain at a specific public address, and in order to use the funds at that address, you need the private key (think of this as the password) for the address.
Your Ledger wallet holds this private key, so in order to send funds from the account, you need to connect your Ledger device to “unlock” the account and sign the crypto transfer with the private key that is safely stored on the Ledger hardware device.
That’s all from me for now. Hopefully, this article helped to clarify and help you better understand how the Ledger Live application and the Ledger hardware wallet work together and what you can’t and can do by connecting your wallet