Bitcoin Forum

Just a bit of advice for the people and mostly for the newbies out there who still use exchanges as personal wallets and are careless about the safety of their funds...

If you don't want to be a victim of another inside job from exchanges or even having your personal wallets hacked (malware), I highly suggest investing in a hardware wallet. You will sleep better at night.

This is more valid than before as the price is surging...

Absolutely correct, there are observable facts that whenever the price of Bitcoin surge; there's always issues with exchanges and basically unprotected wallets(Web wallets among others). The last time i wanted to buy hardware wallets; i couldn't find that which will ship down to my country (Nigeria), will appreciate any suggestion from those who can help becasue, one need to protect her investment before be ruin by anonymous group who are stirring at the price.   

It was never a wise idea to store funds in exchanges but some (especially newbies) still do it out of convenience or that they really do not have the $ to buy a hardware wallet. They could at least use an external wallet that's convenient and free like the Equal multi-chain web wallet.

With the bull run seems to be starting, expect many exchanges to do multiple maintenance. You do not want to get your funds stuck in there.

I just checked that both Ledger and Trezor ship to Nigeria. Even Ledger has an official retailer (https://shop.ledger.com/pages/retailers) for Nigeria.

Hardware wallets are the best wallets and totally storing it to exchanges as your primary wallet is a naive idea and with the recent uptrend of bitcoin for sure many frauds, scams, phish, hacking and similar incidents will happen on exchanges.

I fully agree with this, this is something I do few years ago, and I can say I sleep somewhat better from then, but still there are certain things around which the owners of hardware wallets need to worry.

First is for sure proper backup of seed, which many actually ignore thinking it's just enough to buy HW and transfer coins to device. Second thing is to be careful with fake software (fake Ledger Live or fake Trezor sites), which aim to to steal user seeds by deceive them to enter seed in such fake software, and seed should be only entered to hardware device and nowhere else.

What also should not be ignored at this point is the fact that hardware wallets are safe today, but given the number of devices sold, and value which is store on them, we can bet that hackers working non-stop on the way to hack them. We can only wonder whether they will ever succeed, or this way of storing cryptocurrency will remain 100% safe forever.

Safety/security should be utmost on the mind of every cryptocurrency trader/enthusiast.
Just as the saying goes"Its better safe than sorry".
Some people just tend to wait till the problem pops up at their doorstep before taking precautions to prevent future further occurrences, but the wise crypto user ought to be proactive enough to prevent hacks by following all the preventive measures that we've been inundated with on so many threads.
Lol, you can say that again, scammers are hungrier at the moment, they can forsee big bucks coming their way if successful.

When I started off, the first thing I did before acquiring any crypto was read about the different kinds of wallets available for safekeeping. Hardware wallets were my primal option after reading multiple threads both on this forum and on external sources, and that was my first acquisition, even before my first Satoshis.

One thing to bear in mind though is that a hardware wallet needs to be kept pretty much up-to-date in terms of firmware. Some firmware updates may at some point have a minimum firmware version which they can update from, and versions of firmware prior to that minimum may not update, causing problems when trying to use the device from there on.

Recently, some users who han not updated their Ledger Nanos S firmware for some time (over a year or so) found out that they could not operate their device, and that Ledger Support was proceeding to replace their devices if the firmware could not be updated (see  Need help updating old Ledger Nano S firmware 1.2  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5150918.msg51367757#msg51367757)).

This is not a frequent issue, but it does remind us that a hardware device also requires being looked after, and it’s firmware updated regularly (i.e. don’t just store it in a safety deposit and leave it there for years on end – although we still have the 24 word seed if worst comes to worst – right?).

That's usually not a problem.
Updates can always be installed incremental.

If you can't update from 1.0 to 2.0 directly, update 1.0 -> 1.2 -> 1.4 -> whatever -> 2.0.
This can either be done by the user manually (if all updates are available) or be handled by the updating software (like it is the case with ledger live).



This user didn't update the firmware for roughly 2.5 years.
Also, the reason for incremental updates not to work is that they released ledger live and changed quite some things regarding the upgrade process.

And since the old update-applications (chrome apps) don't work anymore, an update isn't possible anymore if you have a version which is too old.

If you could still use the chrome apps to update the firmware, this wouldn't be a problem.

All I can advise to newbies out there is that newbies should be knowledgeable enough to keep their securities safe and strong as possible. Also newbies should be more focus on learning different information rather than earning btc while staying in this forum which is not the right thing to do.

There's nothing wrong in trying to earn BTC (or any other cryptocurrency on the forum). And they also work conversely, without learning and improving your posts, you are not likely to rank up and can not earn any BTC as such.

Eh. A lot of people including me have been saying this almost like a broken record on Reddit since forever. Unfortunately, there are those people who really take security very lightly. Pretty much only a very bad experience like the exchange they're using to store their funds getting hacked would teach these types of people their lesson.

The newbies you're talking here and the one mentioned by the OP is a bit different I think. ANyone who stores his money in exchange should be considered as "newbies", at least for the discussion here, while you're talking about the "Newbie" rank.

Anyway, I also believe that it's fine if "Newbies" member want to get BTC or crypto in this forum, as long as they don't break any rules.

This is a timely advise, the bull run seems to be running already so it could change the value of our coins that we are holding.
We should pay attention to the past hacking so we will see how big the risk in just trusting the exchange for our money,  even Binance got hack, that makes it very risky to just save our future in exchange wallet.

I guess hard wallet is not that expensive if we have a decent amount of holding, we have to spend to invest in hard wallet to minimize the risk.

I believe that running a full node with a protected wallet is a good alternative. This is especially true if you are accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. It provides real time monitoring of transactions.

dbshck already answered but in case you were interested in other wallets that don't ship to your country, you could use Shipito (they accept BTC) and reship the item to your country.

Nope i am not talking about newbie ranks instead I am talking about a person who lacks knowledge that is why they store their money in an exchange that is why I stated that newbies (not rank) should be focus on securities or don't take security very lightly. Newbies can still earn by trading or having a service that can be beneficial to other and that person is paid depends on what crypto he/she like to received as payment.

I would add its only valid for bigger amounts. If you invest $100 its good to store it in mobile wallet also. Hardware wallet would be overkill here.
Read about security also, many guides here.

Its not a must to get hardware wallets and not all newbies can afford one ,just make sure you know how to safe keep private keys and you will be in good hands ,hardware wallets use private keys as well so you have to keep the private keys safe too

aside from that buying hardware wallets may be better but one should not only focus on having one wallet to put all eggs. Cold wallets or online wallets may still be vulnerable to hacks but these cold wallets are better than exchange wallets.

Well OP, how much does a cold or hardware wallets costs? I am interestes to buy one. LOL.

Great suggestion, these advices is not only for newbie. Its been two years here in bitcointalk since I registered and I dont have hardware wallet yet, I will consider buying soon. I store my funds outside of exchanges on some trusted wallets and I own the private keys.

A cold storage wallet (offline) such as paper wallets are free basically (just printing) but fragile obviously, they're also not that convenient to spend from. If you're interested in spending on a regular basis, a hardware wallet would be a better solution (Trezor one cost 69 EUR while Ledger is 70$). These wallets are pretty safe and the only way someone could have access is by you giving away your PIN or seed (or by not hiding it well).

I just wonder that such hardware wallets are strong enough over time, because USB can be broken some time, and data stored in USB can (or can not) be recovered. So, that is nearly the same with hard ware wallet, in my understanding. I imagine that if someone decide to use hardware wallet, they should use at least two hardware wallets. One for main use, and one for preventive cases when the first one broken. Basically, it is what we should do with whatever backup, not only in crypto and wallet backup.

Strictly speaking, you do not need a physical backup of your hardware wallet in a hardware format. That is what the 24 word seed is for. Although it is initially on a piece of paper (which you have to hide and/or encrypt and/or reshuffle), it can be used to restore the content on any BIP39/BIP44 hard/soft compatible wallet, were your hardware wallet to break down (or the firmware become obsolete to the point of not being able to upgrade it for usage).

I do personally have mine cloned though, using the same seed, but it is not strictly necessary. Cloning the hardware wallet onto another hardware wallet does provide the advantage of being able to store it elsewhere, knowing that it is PIN protected in case anyone should get hold of it (unlike a copy of the 24 word seed). Of course 3 failed attempts and it’s a goner (it deleted the content of the hardware device on a Ledger Nanos S), so a copy of the original seed, with all the necessary precautions, is also rather much paramount.

Keeping all the funds in hardware wallet might not be possible in all cases. As there are some of the open orders that are set at exchanges but, yes, It is required to keep max chunk of the funds in hardware wallet or a paper wallet.

We want to save funds without any risks. That's why hardware wallet is extremely important. But to exchange, exchange is needed. We can get a lot of protection from malware by trusted exchanges. If newbie look into these two issues, he/she will be able to save the capital and sleep in peace at night. They must be kept in mind

Hello everyone, please advise me how to write to the user if he has restricted sending messages from new users?

Do you? If your computer and phone are infected, there is nothing keeping the hacker from getting access to your accounts/wallets.


You will have to rank up, start by reading this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178608.0

Your question is off topic though, please make sure to ask in relevant threads or make a new topic next time.

Users have to protect their accounts and their balances themselves by maintaining healthy behaviour.
I mentioned about it here:

Good thing here in the Philippines is that theres coins.ph that is well-trusted when it comes to bitcoin wallet. I just hope that it will continue to be secured and prevent the users to be scammed or hacked.

It's not a wallet unless you control your private keys and that's not the case for the site/app you mentioned, it's more of an exchange.

There are many exchanges just like coins.ph which also implements strict security standards only to be compromised sooner or later. The fact that OP has suggested other alternatives of cryptocurrency storage other than exchanges e.g. ( hardware wallet) is actually practical and a good advice since exchanges which are most often online have high risk from intrusion and are also inherently unsafe for storage purposes of our digital assets. 

If we cannot afford hardware wallets then we have to apply best security practices to further safeguard our assets and based on my experience, this includes but not limited to:

a) use of virtual machines for storage purposes of digital assets - e.g. VMware / Virtualbox
b) application of encryption tech to storage units
c) use of a robust password manager e.g. keepass password manager (also used for seed phrases, private keys, etc)
d) doing regular backup of our wallets
e) installing intrusion detection systems and other security products on our computers ( firewall, antivirus, anti-malware)
f) avoid any unsolicited emails and any unexpected use of credentials (trick used for phishing sites)
g) being up to date with latest security news and best practices
h) be vigilant and security conscious always.