alt Hacker NewsLOL why would anyone want a hardware wallet when you can just store your Bitcoins on your own encrypted hard disk or USB stick? Bitcoin is merely a file.
These people are being suckered into a false sense of security with hardware cryptowallets. I mean, it would be very tempting to sell a hardware wallet with a backdoor inside of it to steal everyone's cryptocurrency, wouldn't it?
You can use FDE all you want but you're still vulnerable to that file being stolen. Do you install programs from outside your package manager? Do you personally verify and compile everything? Do you pirate stuff? Use npm? Have an AI agent? Do you fully trust the browser sandbox? Click on email attachments? Even if you are Better Than Most, judging by the amount of youtubers that get hacked through stolen cookies, it's clear to me that even above-average people are susceptible to having files stolen.
Keeping your wallet file on a USB stick (or encrypting it) merely reduces the window of time an attacker can get the information. The attacker with local access could simply replace your wallet software. Or make use of a keylogger, screen capture, memory capture, etc.
In that context a dedicated device is the safer approach, and a hardware key is a minimalist device to do that whilst also being less inconvenient than an airgapped dedicated crypto laptop.