As I get more involved in crypto, my concerns regarding the safety of my assets are raised and because of that, I'm looking into ways to mitigate the risks of losing my crypto due to robbery, hacking or any other kind of malicious activity.
This is my first time doing an "AskLeo" type of post. I hope @acesontop doesn't mind that I'm using his "tag". I don't have nearly as much reach as he does so I don't know if it will even work as intended, but it's worth a shot anyway.
Anyway, back on topic, I'm by no means a rich person and I don't have a lot of money invested in crypto assets, at least not for now, but I got to a point where I would be very upset if anything happened to my crypto. Of course, losing any amount of money sucks but I'm at a point where I wouldn't be completely broke if I lost all the money that I have invested in crypto but it would be a major setback in my life.
On top of that, I've seen an increasing number of incidents involving crypto-assets being stolen through hacking, rug-pulls, security exploits and even armed robbery, which is the case of a Brazilian journalist who got his phone taken from him and lost 200,000 BRL (roughly 40,000 USD) in cryptocurrencies when the robbers cleaned out his Binance account.
How do you keep your crypto assets safe?
This is what I want to know. I've seen some ideas and initiatives that people have to try and protect their crypto assets but it's always good to learn from others because the people who are after our money get more creative every day and so we must do the same.
Let me share some of the things I've heard and some follow up questions to try and get the discussion rolling:
Hardware wallets
This is probably the first answer you get if you search online for ways to prevent losing your crypto to hackers. I don't own a hardware wallet yet but I'm seriously considering getting one.
The "downsides" I see here is that they aren't compatible with every single crypto out there and also if you store your crypto in them, you can't, for example, earn passive income on DeFi platforms so I guess one needs to balance the risk/reward accordingly. Am I right in making those assumptions? Do you think a hardware wallet is a good idea?
Having multiple Hive wallets
This is something I've seen recently and it looks like some people have multiple Hive wallets and split their HIVE among them so if one gets hacked, the impact is not as big.
The downside I see here is that you will need to be very organized and take real good care of your keys or it can have the opposite effects and you may find your crypto locked in forever.
Having devices dedicated to crypto operations
I don't see this one as much, but some people told me that they have a computer that they use exclusively for crypto operations. They don't access any websites, don't download any programs and don't do anything that's not related to crypto on those machines.
It sounds like a good idea and I have an old computer that I could dedicate to that end so maybe this is something I feel like trying.
A couple of follow-up questions on this, though: does this really reduce the odds of a hacking event? Is one OS better than the others for this purpose? I mean, should I use Linux instead of Windows, for example, or it doesn't matter?
Don't keep bank/exchange apps on your mobile devices
This actually can be applied to your assets on the legacy system as well, not crypto only. As the case with the journalist that I mentioned above shows, there is a possibility that this will become standard practice for robbers. As crypto goes mainstream, they might be aware of this and try to pull off that kind of crap. I also heard reports of other people who got robbed and were forced to unlock their phones and open their banking apps for the robbers who then stole all their money.
This may not be very practical especially if you don't have another device where you can store your apps, but it might be the safest way to go.
Your thoughts
Well, now that I shared a little bit of what I heard and researched, I want to know what are the things you do to keep your crypto assets safe?
Do you agree or disagree with the things I listed? Is there anything missing?
I appreciate your input ver much!