How to Stay Safe After Diving Into the Crypto Waters: A Beginner’s Guide
The crypto waters can get rough when market volatility strikes and even a little dangerous when hackers try to get their hands on your crypto holdings. However, if you follow the five steps on how to stay safe as a new crypto investor in this guide, you should be able to stay afloat.
Pick a Secure Wallet to Keep Your Digital Assets Safe
Probably the most important aspect of investing in cryptoassets is to store your coins and tokens securely in a cryptocurrency wallet that you have full control over.
Choosing a wallet that is user-friendly, secure and provides you with private key ownership is a vital aspect of being a successful crypto investor.
Experts agree that the safest option for storing digital asset investments are hardware wallets as they store your holding offline, far away from the reach of hackers. The most popular hardware wallets are the Ledger Nano S, Trezor, and KeepKeye.
Choose a Strong Password And Enable 2FA
Once you have chosen a wallet that suits you and your investment needs, you need to ensure that you use strong passwords for all your cryptocurrency accounts. The passwords you choose for your wallet(s) and exchange accounts should be long, alphanumerical and not easily guessable. Also, you should never re-use the same password for multiple accounts.
Moreover, it is best practice to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) to add an extra layer of security to your cryptocurrency accounts. Most exchanges offer this option.
Use Only Reputable Platforms to Avoid Disappointment
Today, there are hundreds of exchanges, trading platforms, and apps that enable you to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. However, not all platforms are made equal.
When it comes to investing in digital assets, security is imperative. Hence, it is important that you only use reputable exchanges, wallets, and other types of crypto service providers to make sure you are staying safe.
Leading exchanges such as Binance, Bittrex, and Kraken, for example, are good places to start when you want to invest in a range of digital assets through user-friendly and secure platforms.
Moreover, a cryptoasset investment platform like CentrumCoin can be used as a gateway to access ICOs and STOs of promising blockchain startups that could shape the landscape of the decentralized digital economy of tomorrow.
Keep an Eye Out for Hackers and Scammers
Unlike how movies may portray it, most hacking doesn’t involve breaking the firewall of a company to steal data or funds. Instead, the majority of hacking — especially in the cryptocurrency space — comes down to digital forms of social engineering.
Phishing emails mimicking bitcoin exchange notifications, fake crypto apps that steal your coins, fake ICOs that collect your funds and then disappear with them, and fake exchange websites are typical methods of how hackers will try to gain access to their victims’ digital asset holdings.
Simply being aware of these types of scams will already help you to avoid them. The key is to stay vigilant and keep an eye out for anything that seems fishy.
It is also important never to click on email attachments from unknown senders as they can contain crypto malware. Having an up-to-date anti-virus program and malware scanner is, therefore, highly recommended to ensure you don’t fall victim to cryptocurrency-stealing malware.
DYOR Before Investing
It is a golden rule among investors to “never invest in something you don’t understand.” This rule also applies to cryptoassets.
The acronym ‘DYOR,’ which stands for “Do Your Own Research,” has become a meme on “Crypto Twitter,” as a result of inexperienced investors putting funds into new cryptocurrencies or ICOs simply based on hype without conducting thorough (or any) research about the projects beforehand. For many newcomers to crypto investing, this resulted in a substantial loss of funds.
Doing your own research before investing in a digital currency or token (or any other type of investment) is imperative to ensure that you make smart investment decisions that can contribute returns to your investment portfolio. Investing in something you don’t understand is a classic newbie mistake that can easily be avoided by taking the time to look into the cryptoasset that you plan on investing in.
Moreover, platforms like CentrumCoin can be a tool to use during your investment research as the company conducts a strict pre-screening process of all ICO and STO projects it supports during their fundraising efforts.
The crypto markets can seem intimidating to beginners at first but by following the advice in this guide, you should be able to start your crypto investing career off on the right foot.
