Go Hard or Go Home

I have been on the sidelines for a while now. This is my first post. I like this community very much. Very smart and "crypto educated", no pun intended. I will try to add to that. Together we can make the world a better and safer place.

About me: I have been trading cryptocurrencies for years now and forex before that. The issue with exchanges and custody of your money is not new. Forex brokers went bust before Bitcoin was even born. Scams existed as well. History repeating? Trading itself is hard enough and when a broker, exchange or even a bank goes bust.. then.. then it's just too late.

I know what I am doing in crypto but my friends and family keep asking how to "get in on it". Where to send the money, which coins to buy, can you just do this for me? And I hate to expose them to all this madness of scam coins, scam services, hacking and phishing, exchanges and generally no support. Even I cannot help them if something goes wrong. So I tried to map out the safest path possible for them to start and I will also write it here and refer others to this post when they ask.

Go to kraken.com or coinbase.com and buy the coins to HODL. Then send them to a secure, offline wallet for storage. Give it a couple years and feel like a crypto pioneer! :)

Professionally I work with computer security in my day job and long story short there is no safe computers. Because for crypto coin storage and trading you need the network connection (yeah, I know, you can sign transactions offline etc but that is not something for the average user). Now how to receive, store and send coins safely on a most likely compromised computer? Hardware wallets, baby! Hence the title. If you do not press the button, nobody can steal your coins!

Let me introduce you to Ledger Nano S Pizza Day Edition by https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/9bf1

This is what I have taught my mother to use and I can sleep at night knowing that she will not mess it up and it will not be my fault. :) :) If you wondering why suddenly the Ledger Wallet is red, it is because of Bitcoin Pizza day 8 years ago. Marking the first real life use of a bitcoin payment. It is 30-40% more expensive than the conventional black wallet without any additional functionality or improvements except the sentiment of this anniversary and being part of bitcoin early adopters, as we all are. Am I strange to want the anniversary edition even though I already have 2 black ones? :) :) The geek in me, heh.

Why Ledger Wallet and not something else? Mainly because it is a legitimate company in France whose wallet solutions have been time proven. Already more than a million Ledger Nano S wallets have been sold. None have been compromised if bought from Ledger directly (as in the links below) and transactions addresses verified on the device itself. Ledger also got $75m funding in January this year. It is not an ICO and they are not releasing a coin.. that is why I trust them. It is just a normal company getting funded and producing hardware devices. Shovels in our crypto gold rush.

Ledger Nano S (pizza day edition) https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/9bf1?path=products/ledger-nano-s-pizza-day&tracker=MY_TRACKER

Ledger Nano S (normal edition) https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/9bf1?path=/products/ledger-nano-s&tracker=MY_TRACKER

You are your own bank. Don't keep it all on the exchanges. Stay safe.