How to keep your cryptocurrency safe

These are a few very basic safety measures I personally take and not intended as security advice. Enjoy, stay safe!

PASSWORDS, PASSPHRASES AND SEEDS  

Never store passwords, passphrases or seeds on a device, but write them down and store copies in multiple places. Try to make it look like something unimportant, like an old grocery list or a phone number you quickly wrote down. Don’t keep passwords next to the e-mailaddresses you use for logging in. 

If you have 12/24 words seeds, try to memorize them. If you can’t, break them up and write each set of words on a different numbered piece of paper and keep those separately. Hiding seeds and passwords “in plain sight” might work the best; be creative.  

2FA  

Enable 2FA everywhere. Don’t use SMS verification. If you use a single phone for everything, get a new phone before your current one breaks.   

Follow these steps to transfer your 2FA to another phone:

1. disable current 2FA with old phone
2. enable new 2FA with new phone 
3. write down the seeds (never store on a device)  

For better safety it is recommendable to get a separate phone just for 2FA. It does not need to be online for 2FA to work. It needs a working camera though.  

SPREADING RISK  

No matter how big or small your crypto bags are, keep your assets on several exchanges if you trade them. This greatly reduces the chance of losing your coins. Should your account  get hacked or the exchange go down - even for maintenance - you still have other places where you can continue trading. 

HARDWARE WALLETS

Get one or more hardware wallets, like a Trezor or a Ledger Nano S and store coins you are holding for a longer period of time. You can use these as a piggy bank too: you can deposit while the devices are offline. Keep them in the safest place you can find, like  a safe or vault that you can bolt to the floor. 

SOME COMMON SENSE  

Don’t tell the world that you are a cryptocurrency trader, but keep it to yourself as much  as you can. Don’t talk about profits or losses in public. Update yourself on security.