Readthisplease & NiftyPhill Talk 'Securing Your Crypto'

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hey there, frens!

I hope you're having a fantastic day so far. I cannot contain my excitement to be doing another collaboration post with @readthisplease! Being that I live in the U.S. and he's in Nigeria, it's a little challenging with the time difference mainly because I'm an insomniac. So happy to have met this incredible dude here on Hive. That's one of the beautiful things about this place. The community. Anyway - we were talking on Discord and we had both written posts about hacks related to Bitmart [links to both posts here] and decided that we should talk security. A topic that seems cliche to even talk about because it's common sense, right? Not so much, apparently...

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Securing your crypto

So this is a topic that I feel really needs to be talked about on a daily basis. It seems like every day we read about some DeFi website or exchange being hacked. What we don't hear about is the small crypto thefts that happen every day. I've been the victim of it, and it sucks. I had 200 BNT siphoned from my ETH wallet a couple years ago because I had mistakenly copied and pasted my recovery phrase into a public file (I was doing some blockchain development). This was a pretty stupid fuck up that cost me $600 at today's prices. To some that may be a small amount but to me that is a pretty substantial amount of money. I'm sure @readthisplease would agree that that is no small amount to lose. In comparison, I've seen people lose thousands by making dumb mistakes. Hell, I've got a wallet of cryptokitties that I don't have the recovery phrase for. You live and you learn. I've been in crypto since 2015 so I've had my fair share of fuck ups. Luckily I've never been SIM swapped or had my email hacked.

2FA

2 Factor authentication is the most basic form of securing your crypto, if it's on an exchange. I would advise highly against storing any significant amount of money directly on an exchange... But people are people and they're going to do it anyway. So if you're going to do that, please for the love of th Gods, use 2FA. I'm not talking about getting a text wit ha code, either. I'm talking use Google Authenticator for your sign ins. Every few seconds, the code generated is changed and only YOU can see it. If someone SIM swaps you, odds are you're not going to notice until it's too late. SIM swapping is when someone gains access to your wireless account (happens a lot, I worked for a major cell phone company for 8 years in a lot of departments) and has someone from the company change your SIM card to theirs. Effectively stealing your phone number without you knowing. Once they have your phone number, they start trying to reset passwords. Crypto exchanges, email accounts, bank accounts, you name it. If you have Google Authenticator set up, they're dead in the water even if they stole your phone number. See my point? I understand that using an authenticator is not always an option, but when it is, please use it.

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* clap * Hardware * clap * Wallet

Man, I can't emphasize it enough. The importance of hardware wallets is growing every day as more and more people are starting to interact with different cryptocurrencies. I'll just ask you.... What is your security worth? More specifically, what is your financial security worth? How much money do you need to see stolen on the news? If you're messing with cryptocurrencies, odds are you are doing it to make money. Would you want to just store your money under a mattress (exchange) or would you rather have it in a safe (hardware wallet)? You decide. I'm not here to judge you. I'm just here to tell you how important it is to own your private keys. Say you have $100,000 sitting on your favorite crypto exchange like BitMart and you're trading every day... You wake up one morning unable to access the website. You panic. You see on Twitter that they've been hacked. Your money is gone. GONE. All you can do is pray that they refund users that lost money. Now you're down $100,000 just because you wanted the convenience of having that money readily available to trade. Picture the same scenario except you have your $100,000 of crypto in a Ledger Nano X. You wake up and see that BitMart got hacked. You say "damn that's crazy" and go back to bed because you know better than to leave the crypto on the exchange. See the difference?

not your keys, not your crypto.

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Hey, @readthisplease, what do you think about crypto security?

Thanks a lot @l337m45732 for giving me this opportunity to collaborate with you. Crypto security is something we need to take more seriously, because we have been screaming, decentralization!!! decentralization!!! We want freedom but we forget that freedom comes with responsibility. We have the decentralization now, but are we going to be accountable and responsible for anything that happens to our account?

This is where the responsibility comes into play. You have to be responsible enough to know that you have to protect your account by protecting your keys.

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What brought my greatest scare in crypto security was when I read @belemo ‘s post talking about how his BSC account was hacked. My life hasn’t remained the same since then, because I have been extremely vigilant. I did 2FA Authenticator to all my useful apps like my email and exchanges, after doing that, I don’t still feel safe. Just as @l337m45732 said in the importance of using a hardware wallet or cold wallet, how much do we have to lose to consider using it? This is something that has been on my mind for a long time. Although the reason I have been delaying my getting a cold storage is because I earn passively with my coins, like my Hive power helps me earn curation rewards and some of cryptos on exchanges earn rewards for me passively. It’s just hard for me to let go and put them in a cold storage. But am I making the right decision by risking them on a hot wallet? Definitely am not making the right decision. So am considering buying one, putting half in a cold storage and leaving the other half in a hot wallet.

Now let’s talk about how I try to protect my hot wallet especially the exchanges like Binance and Kucoin. I use 2FA, mobile number, and email for transaction verifications. Yep that’s wild and stressful, but I don’t mind the stress as long as it keeps my money safer. On my Binance account, whenever I want to do any withdrawal I get asked to input the pin sent to my email, phone, and the pin from my 2FA. This is the safest I can go with my Binance account, the rest of the security, I have to depend on the centralized exchange to keep providing quality security for the crypto exchange.

Because if you do all your part by securing your hot wallet and the centralized exchange flops on theirs then all your efforts have wasted. Big disadvantage of using CeFi (centralized finance).

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If you decide you want to use a centralized crypto exchange then doing thorough research is very important. Know the strength of the exchange, do lots of background check and most importantly go on Twitter, type the exchange’s name and hack on the search space to see if customers do complain about hacks on the exchange. For instance you want to use a crypto exchange called Mango Crypto Exchange, go to Twitter type Mango Exchange hack or Mango exchange Security hack, and see other people’s tweet on it. This will guide you to know if you can go with that exchange.

But that’s because it’s a centralized exchange, but in decentralized exchange like Metamask and Trustwallet, you are totally responsible for your own security. This is why you need to keep your keys and seed phrases safe, because if anyone gets hold of them, then they are no more yours.

Thankfully I have never encountered any hack or crypto loss due to security breach before because I always try to be careful, but no one can be too careful so I always try to be vigilant. Crypto security is something that needs to be talked about more often so people can take actions.

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Posted Using LeoFinance Beta



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13 comments
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Yes I do agree having 2FA and I do have 2FA for my Binance and this is what I also suggested to have 2FA here on Bibe as well because when the keys are lost then they say that its not recoverable.

What what if we get an option for password recovery with the 2FA feature here on Hive? I think that could be nice.

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Absolutely. Every layer of security helps.

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I am not sure if Password recovery using 2FA would be possible on the Hive blockchain but I believe you can set up a designated person to help you with account recovery.

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Hi! Sorry my question is off topic, since you refer me to atomichub can you tell me some of the ways to earn passive wax specially by nfts so I can earn wax quicker and increase my collection.

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Earning WAX with NFTs? Maybe check out R-Planet, YoshiDrops, Alien Worlds. Those all reward you with tokens on WAX that you could swap for WAXp

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On atomichub just by holding or I have to use some other website for that?

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No, not just for holding specifically. Most require you to use their website.

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You guys rock.
Thanks so much for this helpful and massive info

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Thanks once again for this opportunity, I learnt a lot about crypto security while writing this post with you. I had to cross check all the apps saved with 2FA to make sure I have my recovery code Intact.

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We learn and grow every day. Onward and upward bro

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