by It’s bizarre how people still continue to ask why they can’t store their bitcoins and altcoins on Binance, Coinbase or any other in-built exchange wallet for a long term!
Repeated questions helped me understand the gravity of the situation and I realized the distorted views people have in the crypto space just because of lack of education and basic awareness.
One needs to learn and apply the best practices of the crypto industry to safeguard their crypto investments. Needless to say, your investments are as safe as your crypto wallets.
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How To Keep Your Cryptocurrency Wallet Secure
Use the best and safest Wallets
Using the best wallets available in the market for storing your cryptocurrencies is the easiest way to secure your wallet. These secure wallets provide you with the extra security features such as passphrase feature, PIN code feature, and 2-FA authentication features too.
The more security features you have in your wallet, the better it is. Also, don’t forget to analyze the development team behind the wallet. Here are some of the factors on which you can analyze a good wallet:
- Private keys: Wallets where you control your private keys.
- Ease of use: Elegant UI for ease of use.
- Development community: Active development community.
- Backup & security: Backup and restore features.
- Compatibility: Compatible with different operating systems.
Now that you know about the criteria for judging a wallet, here are a few suggestions from CoinSutra.
- Ledger Nano X: This is what we use and most of CoinSutra readers are using.
- Trezor (Hardware Wallet)
- Exodus (Desktop Wallet)
- Mycelium (Mobile Wallet)
Always Have Multiple Backups
Privacy and safety is an illusion in the 21st century.
In the 21st century, we keep backups of everything we use, whether it be WhatsApp, music, photos, or documents. Why not keep a backup of our digital money, i.e. cryptocurrencies?
But keeping the backup of cryptocurrencies is slightly tricky because you can’t trust centralized services or cloud services to keep your backup. And this is a big NO from our side too because in this case, your cryptos are only safe as long as that service doesn’t get hacked.
Moreover, cryptos like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero were made to give the power back in the hands of people so a decision on giving the power back to some centralized party is a no-brainer.
Therefore, you must always keep an offline backup of your private keys at a location that only you know and trust. Also, if your crypto wallet is an HD wallet, store your seed or mnemonic phrase at two or even three places that only you know of.
You can enhance your security by keeping the backup of mnemonic phrase and mnemonic passphrase at two different locations. This way the attacker cannot access your crypto wallet with just two things.
You should also keep a backup of PIN code, username, and password as some wallets provide all these three features. Just in case it has been long enough for you to forget these things, you will have a source to refer if you have their backups.
Apply The Best Practices Of Digital World
In the digital world, there are bots, trojans, malware etc everywhere and the crypto world is no different from it.
As the majority of users use online wallets such as mobile wallets, desktop wallets, and web wallets it becomes of paramount importance for them to use the best security standard practice in the digital world.
Some suggestions from our side to secure your crypto wallets are:
- Use antivirus and anti-malware software on your desktop or laptop.
- Have a strong and secure firewall installed.
- Don’t get phished and always check the URL twice before accessing your web-wallets.
- Use 2-FA authentication in case you have stored crypto for a day or two on exchanges.
- Avoid accessing your crypto wallet from a public wifi.
- Never install unverified softwares or apps on your device.
- Use only trusted wallets and always update them ASAP.
- Don’t use brain wallets and keep your passwords very hard to guess or brute-force.
By doing all these you can be assured that your crypto wallet is one of the most difficult wallets to get hacked.
What’s Next For You?
Pretty much that’s it. If you learn and follow these three ways, hackers will have a hard time hacking. Always remember, crypto gives great power into the hand of ordinary people, and with great power comes greater responsibility.
Therefore, it is the responsibility of each one of us to learn as well as teach others if we want to make this revolution inclusive for all.
There are some more security guides that you can find links to below:
- Security Risks of Mobile, Web & Desktop Bitcoin Wallets [Must Know]
- How To Keep Your Recovery Seed Safe And Secure
For now, enjoy this post as well the above-linked posts and let me know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Do share this post with your network on Twitter & Facebook!
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According to Coinbase, I don’t need a wallet because they provide all the security I need for my bitcoins. In fact, I don’t believe they allow transfer of coins to a wallet. Enlighten me please.
They allow the transfer out of their account. They provide a hosted wallet where you don’t own your private keys. It is better to have a self-hosted wallet. You may choose one from here-https://coinsutra.com/best-bitcoin-wallets/
Hi, what do you think of paper wallets? I’m a neophyte in the crypto world and I’m not sure about all this.
They are good if you know how to use them properly otherwise Ledger Nano S should be the best for you.