How to secure your crypto professionally
Remove SIM swapping and other risk factors to keep your digital assets safe.
“Only the paranoid survive.” — Andy Grove
There is no such a thing as too much security. Once your crypto is gone it might be gone forever. You have two options, go with either Coinbase/Gemini Custodial services — expensive, or figure it out on your own and get your crypto stolen along the way. But don’t sweat it. The following tips are designed to create security redundancy at every vulnerable point in your transacting with the crypto world. By the end of this tutorial, it wont matter if hackers have your password as it’ll be unlikely to access or steal your funds.
Remember there is no such a thing as perfect security, as human intelligence cannot be underestimated, but if you follow these tips, you’ll be able to deter most attacks. To illustrate, the image below displays vulnerability points or hackable weak points in your mesh of security. If one of these points gets hacked, you may lose your crypto.
What to do about it? Kill vulnerabilities, obfuscate and encrypt communications.
This is what you’ll need to do: Deactivate and have zero 2FA SMS verification — that phone which is connected to to a SIM might be unreliable. Use the Google Authenticator app on an extra cheap smart phone you connect to internet sometimes — but connect to the internet through hot-spotting through your other phone’s VPN wifi connection — you can use Kraken in Russia by doing this for example and circumvent Mama Russia Firewall. You might think I’m crazy but its good you don’t put all your eggs in one basket and by basket I mean, all your crypto codes in one item — your one cellphone. You may just lose your phone and not have backups and you’re screwed. Also, you don’t know who might be on the phone stealing your identity to get SIM swapped by social engineer drilling into the mind of an overworked and underpaid telecom employee. Be paranoid and be safe. Do as follows:
(1) Get a Virtual Private Network (VPN). This is not free, sorry. Most lurkers I know use NordVPN as it is cheap, real easy to use, and it has cool features. Why get a VPN? VPN services establish secure and encrypted connections to provide greater privacy than even a secured Wi-Fi hotspot. Please see video below:
(2) Get an encrypted email you use exclusively for crypto (Protonmail.com) and don’t even tell your granny about it — free: No one should know your crypto email except the exchanges you deal with. Of course, for Protonmail, turn on 2FA Google Authenticator code — NOT SMS Authentication, and 4 digit pin code for mobile device in addition of 2FA (don’t worry, once you’re logged in your phone will only ask you for your pin code to access your email). IMPORTANT: Before you do any of this, you need to set up a new secret gmail account for your recovery email. Once you set up your new gmail account go to Sign-in and Security and turn on 2-Step Verification, get started, put your password, next, and you’ll see this:
What is a security key? This baby will make your recovery email a dead end for anyone trying to hack into it. If you ever need it just plug it into your PC, LINUX, MAC and it’ll be that little 2FA away from anyone elses reach: https://goo.gl/2yf4nb
(3) Now you need to go back to Protonmail and set up PGP Key between Protonmail and whichever exchange you’re using… for example Kraken — click the link to find out more. What this basically does is to protect email communications with end-to-end encryption(which prevents emails from being read by any third parties, including the email provider). This is redundant method as it would be already hard for anyone to read your communications between Kraken and Protonmail — for example — as you’re in VPN. This makes it extra secure.
(4) The last thing you need to secure your crypto is to get a cold storage wallet — the Nano Ledger S seems to be pretty popular: https://goo.gl/JWzNLj
What this will do is to keep your private key even away from yourself, the internet, and will provide you with a crypto address — given that the crypto of your choosing is within the cryptocurrencies they’ve chosen to support. This is the last security measure you need to consider. Suppose you need to buy some Bitcoin for long term investment. Where do you keep it? In an exchange? Well, exchanges can get hacked. If you don’t own your private key you don’t own your crypto — that’s true and final. If you want to truly keep your cryptocurrency safe and away from calamity, you have to keep it in a cold storage wallet — I love this guy:
Now the question is should you trade crypto? My advice is no as crypto is blatantly manipulated. If you’re getting into crypto, find a project you love, buy low and HODL (I absolutely despise when people say Hold on for Dear Life). Can you imagine anyone besides a baby boomer saying that? Yiak. Buy a Nano Ledger S. Get yourself secure. Be paranoid and be safe.
One more thing I forgot to mention, is that within exchanges like Kraken for example, or QuadrigaCX, you need to turn on all alarms bells and whistles possible. In Kraken you can set up different 2FAs for each transaction you make, if you’re trading or withdrawing funds, it’ll ask you for a 2FA specific code you need to put in before the funds are released. In QuadrigaCX I love it that they have 2FA for withdrawing + they send you an email with another code to input into a complex questionnaire before your funds are released. Guys, this is what it takes to be secure. It might take you 5 minutes to make a transaction but its worth it if you know not even you can do it well if you don’t pay attention.