These days, investors from middle and lower-income countries are investing more
in crypto and bitcoin. People over there are using them to send remittances,
preserve their savings, and work as a substitute when it becomes hard to access
financial services in those countries.
Various entities are coming up with new products and services to make it easier
for those that are new to crypto or have been investing in them for quite some
time. However, this greater rate of adoption has also led to more thefts and
hacks.
2022 was the worst year in terms of the value of stolen cryptocurrency
at 3.8 billion dollars.
Commercial non-custodial cold wallets
One of the best options that you have in this regard is a commercial non-custodial
cold wallet. You would find a lot of options in this case such as Trezor Model T and
Ledger Nano X.
These are normally drives that are akin to USB (universal serial bus)
connections and are connected to your device. So, as far as safety goes, such
commercial storage methods perform so much better than methods such as storing
your keys in a wallet on a connected device. A lot of these wallets store
your private keys.
Alternative non-custodial cold wallets
There are various methods that cannot be breached even by thieves and hackers,
and you can always use them to secure your bitcoin keys. USB drives can just
be as effective as commercial wallets provide you safeguard them by using
methods such as encryption.
Disconnect them when you are not using them, store them in a safe
location, back them up, and use them in just one device for the sole purpose of
keeping the keys. One of the first ways in which investors stored their keys was
to write them down on a piece of paper and keep it in a safe.
The safety precautions that you can take in this case
Apart from these, you can take several safety precautions in this context such as
backing up your bitcoins, updating the software you are using to store
your bitcoins, using the concept of multi-signature, using seed phrases, etc.
Back up your total bitcoin wallet as soon and as often it is possible for you.
Make sure that you are updating your software regularly.
The concept of multi-signature has also become rather popular these days.
Hereby every bitcoin transaction needs to be approved by several people
for it to happen.
Conclusion
The thing with cryptocurrency is that it is not becoming any less popular with
thieves and users. There are plenty of people in this world who would rather
steal from others rather than make a living on their own.
This is why it is important to store your bitcoins as safely as possible.
Cold storage methods are the safest way to store your cryptocurrency keys.
However, at some point, you would have to enter the keys or connect the storage
device to use your bitcoin. Use offline devices when you only need to access
your keys and use them.