Guide on how to protect your crypto
Preface
Once upon a time there lived a young boy called Bobby. Bobby had some Bitcoins in a custodial wallet. The greedy Custodian kept Bobby’s private keys and controlled all the cryptos the boy earned so hard. One day, The Custodian was relentlessly hacked by frauds who stole Bobby’s Bitcoins. By the time Bobby realized that, the funds were long gone and lost in the dark deep forest of the Blockchain. Poor boy! Don’t be like Bobby and read this article to learn how to protect your funds from hacking and stealing ???? Because in the crypto world, security is everything!
Who stores my private keys?
When choosing between an exchange account and a wallet, you must know the difference between custodial and non-custodial wallets , since the custodial one is pretty much the same as having an exchange account. It means that you don’t fully control your funds and may lose them in case the wallet (or exchange account) is hacked.To keep your funds safe, you must be the owner of your private keys.
Cold Wallet and Light Wallets
Light non-custodial wallets, like Atomic Wallet, deserve your attention as an easy and secure method to protect your funds from fraud. Such wallets represent an application that encrypts the private key in your computer and/or smartphone. Once initiated, your transaction is automatically signed with that key.
You can also use the cold wallet to protect your crypto from frauds. Cold wallets represent an offline storage of your private keys. To make a transaction, you must connect the device to your computer and sign a transaction with that keys. It is a secure and time-proven tool to keep all your cryptos safe, like a mammoth in the ice❄️
Both wallets use a mnemonic seed phrase to generate private keys. Never ever tell it anyone! Losing the seed phrase has quite severe consequences.
How to protect your mnemonic seed phrase?
Bank safes
You can print your private keys and/or seed phrase as a banknote and put it into a safe deposit box in your bank.
On the other hand, there is always a risk that someone is gonna rob your bank, so you might want to stick with BYOB (be your own bank) principles and store the seed somewhere else. Yet, that risk is way too small in comparison with crypto exchanges ☠️
Pieces of paper
Store two copies of the seed on two pieces paper hidden in different places. You can also store three pieces of paper containing the words in a particular sequence.
Give one piece to someone of your friends or family. Make sure you to put on a tinfoil hat trust the people you are sharing the seed with.
Metal plates
Engrave the most important part the seed phrase on a metal plate. You can’t tear it, you can’t break it. They won’t burn in hell, since they’re fireproof ???? Awesome!
Multisig solutions
Multisig (multisignature) is additional security measures for cryptocurrency transactions. Multisignature addresses require another user to sign a transaction before it is broadcasted to the blockchain. When you create an multisig address, you’ll be able to set a required number of signatures.
Tattoos
You can make a tattoo of the QR code of your private keys. Although we don’t recommend to you doing something like this, even if you trust your tattoo artist.
Rock bunker (seriously?)
Need more safety? Then how about storing your Bitcoin in the rock! There are some companies who provide you with the bunker in a rock!⚔️ The vaults are located deep underground and geographically dispersed on three continents. All data are physically stored on offline servers and never have access to the internet.
Best ways to protect crypto
Unless you are a conspiracy theorist, we suggest you using simple methods to store your mnemonic phrase and private keys.
- Create a non-custodial Atomic Wallet
- Keep your mnemonic seed in two different places
- Save your private keys on paper (optional)
These three and simple steps are safe enough so that you can never lose your money. Even if your device is broken, lost or stolen, you can restore access to your assets on any other device by importing your mnemonic phrase or private keys ????
“I’m not scared on Halloween, because I know I have Atomic Wallet to make me safe”
