Send your Crypto to a cold wallet
Still, storing your funds on an exchange? Maybe you should think twice and move it to a Hardware wallet. Here is why and how you should do it
A cursory view of any aspect of history reveals a recurring pattern of events. The history of Bitcoin and altcoins shows why leaving your funds on an exchange is risky. The past demonstrates that exchanges are a good place for making quick transactions and storing a small number of funds, but they are not the best place to keep large amounts. These are some specific reasons we believe you are better off learning from the past and keeping a large percentage of your portfolio off exchanges.
Specific reasons why not to keep your funds on a centralized exchange.
- Lack of ownership
“If you don’t have the key, you don’t own the funds.” The vast majority of exchanges will not hand over your private keys to you, which in a sense is contrary to the custodial nature of crypto. This simply means If you leave your funds on an exchange like Binance, Kucoin, Okex, or Crypto.com, after buying them, they are still technically not yours and belong to the exchange. At any time, the exchange can prevent you from withdrawing or restricting your access to your funds. No reputable exchange would act in such a way without a valid justification, but it is better to err on the side of caution.
- Security risk
Cybercriminals consistently focus their attention on exchanges. Imagine that you are a hacker with the ability to target multiple wallets and that one of those wallets, in particular, has a sum of 100x that of all the other wallets combined. You would likely channel the majority of your efforts towards that wallet with the 100x. Putting your funds on an exchange is putting your funds as a core target for hackers. You don’t want to put yourself at a disadvantage.
According to cryptonews, hacks on exchanges have been responsible for $1.65 billion worth of crypto assets that have been stolen, and the numbers are getting bigger every year. According to Hackernoon, that amounts to a jaw-dropping $12.6 billion loss when values are adjusted for inflation. These exchanges typically have terms and conditions that may not require them to recover your lost funds; however, in most cases, users are reimbursed through insurance.
For a more objective analysis, we must agree that these exchanges spend millions of dollars to keep funds secure, but a single bridge can spell doom for millions of people, which has been the case so far in past cases.
These two factors and many more are reasons why keeping your funds on exchanges may not be the best option for you.
Managing your funds securely
While you wait for the next bull run, I think it will take some time, but it will come in the end. Although making a purchase right now might seem like a good idea, hodling on an exchange exposes you to extremely high levels of risk. Instead of taking unnecessary risks hoping for high returns, the best way to safeguard your investment would have been to purchase it, make it secure on a cold wallet, and wait for it for the 10–100x 😉.
A cold wallet is a wallet that stores your private key offline. Your funds are therefore more secure. You may already be familiar with some of the available solutions, such as Trezor, Ledger, and ColdCard. However, our solution is called AirGap. With AirGap, you can get started right away, and be ready in a matter of minutes, while simultaneously reducing cost, shipment time, and privacy risk to zero.
Cost: AirGap is free to install on any old device, whereas the other solutions cost between $100 and $500.
Shipment-time: AirGap is software that turns your old device into a hardware wallet. It can be easily downloaded from the AppStore or Google PlayStore. Other solutions, on the other hand, necessitate some waiting time, which is dependent on your location. In some areas, you may not even be able to access them.
Risk: Ordering a hardware wallet can expose you to a data breach because you have to give out your data, and as someone rightly said, “the best way to protect your information is not to give it out in the first place.” With AirGap, no personal data is required from the user.
AirGap supports the following coins and tokens: Bitcoin (BTC — Legacy & SegWit), Ethereum (ETH & ERC20), Tezos(XTZ & FA1 & FA1.2 & NFTs) Polkadot (DOT), Kusama (KSM), Cosmos (ATOM), Aeternity (AE), Groestlcoin (GRS), Moonriver (MOVR), Shiden (SDN), Astar (ASTR). It is also worth noting that when you pair AirGap Vault with MetaMask it supports all EVM chains.
Transfer your crypto from exchange to AirGap and get peace of mind. We show you how it’s done
Get peace of mind and start storing your funds on a cold wallet like AirGap now. Become secure in just a few minutes. Moving your funds to a hardware wallet is pretty straightforward and can be done with a few clicks.
- Setup AirGap wallet by following this simple guide. AirGap — The step-by-step guide — YouTube
- Buy your preferable crypto from an exchange or any on-ramp service.
- Copy your address from the wallet by clicking the particular crypto. In this guide, we make use of Tezos but the same step can be replicated for all other supported coins/tokens.
- Click the receive button.
- Copy your address
Now, go to the exchange where you have an account and withdraw your funds. The interface differs for most exchanges. Therefore, we recommend you consult the guide provided by your exchange on “how to withdraw funds.”
Download AirGap
AirGap Wallet
📱 Android — Google Play (GitHub APK)
💻 macOS
💻 Windows
💻 Linux
AirGap Vault
📱 Android — Google Play (GitHub APK)
Interested in AirGap? Stay in touch.
