Bitcoin Forum

Many people get their crypto stolen through hackers, thieves, scammers, keyloggers, viruses and more - here are some quick things you can do to make your Bitcoin and crypto bags much more safe.

• Handle your crypto on a burner laptop which is only used for handling crypto wallets, this eliminates getting your crypto stolen by a trojan you may of downloaded.
• Use mobile app 2fa to login to your centralized exchange accounts, NOT SMS 2fa which is vulnerable to sim swap attacks.
• Store your seed phrase PHYSICALLY in a hiding place, write the seed phrase in code that only you understand so a thief can't do anything if he comes into contact with a copy
• Don't tell randos you don't absolutely trust that you have x amount in crypto. Some loudmouths have gotten their crypto stolen from them at gunpoint by telling the wrong people they have crypto.
• Install antivirus software on all of your devices - generally good practice anyway
• Have backup devices of/and including your mobile device with 2fa apps
• Split your crypto portfolio across multiple sources (cold wallet, web3, CEX, etc) that way if one source gets compromised you aren't ruined like people who had their life savings on FTX.
• Cold wallets are your friend.

This should keep you safer than most people in cryptocurrency.  :)

Good topics on security and privacy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5239098.0)

Some people do not have all their coins on FTX, but it would still be painful that what was laboured for was lost within a short period of time. Any amount of money you can not afford to lose should not be left on exchanges.

Do not keep bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that you are having on CEXes there will always be the inconveniences of not being your key not your coin on blockchain as you are having no full control over your coins, the centralized exchange has the full control. Keep coins using noncustodial wallet, cold wallet are the safest while open source hardware are recommendable as well.

I legit saw someone on Twitter that lost $7m on FTX which was his entire portfolio. How he got to a 7 figure portfolio making such a rookie mistake is beyond me, but brutal regardless.

A slightly more complete list: https://cryptosec.info/checklist


Or to make things far more simple — just purchase a Ledger/Trezor hardware wallet. A burner laptop alone isn't enough, as you need to run a more secure Linux OS like Qubes, and not mess things up.

This is a good suggestion. Actually its better to spread it on mostly non custodial sources. Its okay to have funds on cex but those funds should be smaller than your non custodial and maybe funds that are gonna be use for trading purposes. Having life savings on FTX is a grave mistake. Yes its a big exchange but compromise can be suprising sometime.

There's absolutely more advanced things to do for sure.


Yeah, there is always an additional point of failure with custodial sources - you and/or the custodian can both screw things up and lose the crypto as we've seen with FTX overleveraging customer funds.

If cold wallets are your friend, hot wallets aren't; centralized exchanges aren't. Cold wallets are highly recommended precisely because they are cold. So if you intend to split your crypto portfolio across multiple storages, why don't you split it in different cold wallets? Why does it have to include centralized exchanges and web3 wallets? You're only increasing the risk. If the only risk in keeping funds in a hardware wallet, for example, is when you connect it online or in the way you keep your seed phrase, it is multiplied a number of times when you're keeping it in Binance, for example.

It should be an air-gap system not just any laptop that you only use for cryptocurrency wallets. That means no internet, network cable, Bluetooth, USB disks,...
That means for beginners it is best if they buy a hardware wallet if they know they can't create a secure cold storage on their own.

Nobody should have a "crypto portfolio" since that makes no sense to buy things that are useless, get dumped in long term and are guaranteed to dump each time bitcoin has a major fall or rise.
This is specially true for beginners who you want to target, they should not buy any altcoins at all!

We frequently talked about how to secure our asset from getting hacked or scammed but we didn't know that most of this attempts on us were as a result our of weaknesses in securing them against any form of attack, what we don't know can actually hunt us down to be it's victim because we don't plan ahead in preparation against it coming, we also in some cases invest on what is nit regarded as an asset or digital coin than a shitcoin for an investment which eventually turn to be the scam we have all been talking about, cryptocurrency is profitable and also risky if you've not yet developed the thicker skin for the risk.