Investments in the 20th century have seen humanity experiment with things that would even surprise Isaac Newton if he were to wake up today. The emergence of bitcoin on the world scene has taken the global market by storm to unimaginable heights in trade. If you want to invest in cryptocurrency, including bitcoin, learn what might be the best for you at Instant Loan.
However, you will realize that many things can go amiss on the digital market if one does not proceed with caution. Worse of it all, losing the assets you have invested. This article reviews seven tips to help you avoid mishaps with your bitcoins on the crypto trade platform.
- Keep your bitcoins in more than one wallet.
An easy example to help you understand this idea is the traditional adage of not carrying all your eggs in one basket.
The risk that comes with carrying all your eggs in one place is fundamentally similar to storing bitcoins in one digital wallet.
Cybercrimes are a plague of the entire globe, and they occur daily. Choosing the right cryptocurrency wallet to store your bitcoins should be taken seriously.
The wallets come in different forms, below are just a sample;
- Ledger
- Hot wallets, e.g., blockchain.info, electrum, mycelium, et cetera
- Cold wallets, e.g., paper wallets and hardware wallets
- Trezor
The Trezor and Ledger wallets are easy to use as beginners since they have clear and straightforward layouts that you can smoothly sail through without much difficulty.
One good thing is that you can opt for the kind of wallets that best suit your situational demands.
Whether you will prefer keeping your bitcoins offline or online, in hardware or paper format, as long as you achieve the assets’ security, it is up to you.
- Use a strong password for your digital wallet.
Cybercrimes flourish whenever people use weak passwords for their bitcoins wallets. Thieves hack millions of dollars worth of bitcoins almost every year.
If you are working with multiple accounts, you do well not to use the same passwords for your digital treasury chests.
For instance, using one password for your Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, bank, etc. -accounts make you the most vulnerable target for hackers.
If your information leaks in the public domain, hackers will access your crypto wallets and sweep out your investments.
How should you deal with such crimes? Use a strong password with unique characters for each of the accounts you hold.
- Clear all the bitcoins from the exchange platform
Once you are through with the platform’s transactions, it is advisable to move your money to a safer place. When you leave bitcoins on an exchange, they are open for all to see and admire.
If hackers are spying by and realize the coins have stayed for long, they might try to reach them. Moreover, third-party involvement with them on an exchange gives more room for hackers to access your coins.
To increase the coins’ security, you would want to keep them away from online crypto wallets altogether.
Free bitcoin wallets add to the risk of losing your assets to cybercrime.
- Use Two Factor Authentication (2FA) to secure your account(s)
When it comes to securing your money and critical assets, there is nothing ever wrong with adding another layer of security to the existing one.
The 2FA is an additional wall that offers security to your crypto wallet. Ensure to activate the authentication factor across all your exchange accounts.
2FA works in two verification steps. First, enter your password and input the OTP (One Time Passcode) as a confirmatory.
Any hacker who beats you on this strategy is a super-criminal. Fortunately, you might never come across one in your bitcoin investment sojourn.
- Resort to a hardware wallet for savings
Offline hardware, like Ledger Nano, etc., is the best security-tight wallet to hold. You can be sure that the hardware will always be safe and the password unreachable by hackers unless you lose your memory.
Online wallets are full of theft stories. Millions of dollars have gone missing from crypto-accounts. On the contrary, no report has come to the crypto trade’s attention on theft from hardware wallets.
Not unless you are buying a second-hand hardware wallet, you can trust that no outsider can access your bitcoin savings.
- Enhance your security by use of a Bitcoin Mixer
Since all transactions you make on the crypto trade platform are recorded and available for all to see, hackers might be doing their follow-up on your transactions.
To beat them on their game, you should confuse them regularly to get them lost on the tracking pattern. That is what the bitcoin mixer is here to achieve.
The coin mixer breaks the connection between an address that sends and that which receives the cryptocurrency. As such, even the smartest cyber thief will have it hard trying to trace your transactions based on the transactions you make.
- Secure your internet sources and computer
It is vital that the source that ferries you to the digital platform be secure.
Your smartphone or computer that access your trading activities should have maximum security to avoid hackers hacking into your system.
How should you proceed in this respect? Ensure the following;
- Your computer or phone should have an authentic antivirus to protect it from malware and virus attacks. Additionally, ensure that you regularly update your antivirus application.
- Avoid accessing your wallets from public Wi-Fi networks and computers.
- Shun the urge of clicking on links you are not sure of their security.
- Whenever you visit any web from your computer or phone, make sure it is secure by verifying its authenticity address- https://…,-. It is then that you can proceed.
- Do not download suspicious files and programs, for they might be a product of cybercrime.
Conclusion
Securing your valuable bitcoins from hackers is essential to protect your investment. Cybercriminals have extorted bitcoins from non-cautious account holders before, and they are still working out new tricks. To be at par with security measures currently in an application, you will need to continue updating your security codes and systems. If you are new in the trade, you must be knowledgeable of critical steps in bitcoin trading before you click on any transaction. A single click might mean the loss of your investment or its security.