The world is in a state of constant change and money and the way its created and used has changed much over time as well. The latest phenomenon that has shaken finance and is rapidly reshaping it has been the intriguing universe that is the cryptocurrency world. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin are now household names worth hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalization with a daily capital flow of tens of billions of dollars every single day and because of that you need a SAFE Wallet and a Bitcoin Safety Strategy dealing with your cryptocurrency assets.
Investors and speculators alike have trooped into this exciting world with seemingly limitless possibilities. Companies as big as Microsoft, Dell and PayPal have already jumped on the train, and countries such as Japan have officially made the acceptance of Bitcoin (and its trade) legal for anyone to partake in.
But as with anything of value, threats always abound, and when it comes to cryptocurrencies, being digital assets whose transactions are irreversible and are ultra-portable, these threats are rather amplified and safety now becomes a genuine concern.
The goal of any investor or cryptocurrency enthusiast is to have the maximum freedom and access to their digital assets while ensuring they are kept under the maximum possible security and protection. So how does one achieve this middle-ground? I have a three-pronged solution to bitcoin safety and having a safe wallet strategy to deploy in your day to day financial dealings that we hope you find useful.
MAINTAINING PERFECT BALANCE SAFELY WITH BITCOIN ASSETS
Safe Wallet Day-To-Day Transactions
What’s the point of having any kind of money if you aren’t able to buy a cup of coffee while on break from work, or pay for plane tickets or even donate it to charity? Fiat money gives us limitless and unrestricted access to conduct everyday transactions. You protect your regular wallet and keep it safe in your purse or pocket, so you also need a safe wallet solution for your digital bitcoin and cryptocurrencys as well.
They are highly fungible and as long as someone doesn’t mug us we are secure in knowing that they will be at our disposal the very second we need them. Cryptocurrencies although a new phenomenon, are fast catching up to fiat in their acceptability around the world. In time they could take takeover.
You can buy a computer from Microsoft or Dell, make payments with it using PayPal, Buy a Lamborghini, or even pay for a trip to space using the virgin galactic private shuttle.
However, in order to have seamless access to your cryptocurrencies in order to conduct near instant transactions, you must first make the choice of the actual crypto asset to use in making your payment. While Bitcoin is the most widely known, it has recently become much bogged down as a day-to-day means of making an exchange, taking too long to transact with and being outright uneconomical for micro payments.
Therefore the first choice is to choose a cryptocurrency that has low transaction fees and very short verification time periods. When it comes to the actual transfer portal, day-to-day transactions require speed more than anything, and as such your safe wallet choice will also be affected here.
The best choice for day-to-day spending is to use hosted Wallets such as the Blockchain.info wallet or that of Coinbase which are both mobile-friendly. However, it is very important to understand that you must only transfer what you feel you will need for a given period or day and not put all your savings in a hosted wallet, as their constant access to the internet makes them the most vulnerable to possible attacks and not the safest wallets in the medium or longer term.
Medium-Term Storage a Safer Safe Wallet Strategy
If you are looking to store your crypto assets in a place where you will have a reasonable level of security much higher than that of hosted wallets but at the same time have a reasonably fast access to your crypto assets, then this is the section for you. What you are looking for is a wallet option with top-notch security that can be connected to the net for when you need to make a transfer to your hosted wallet when it’s depleted.
Electrum is a great desktop-based cryptocurrency wallet that can fit perfectly for this purpose. It is lightweight, fast, has a wide array of coins it supports, and has an incredible safety track record. In order to keep your assets safer, it is best to keep your PC or Mac installed Electrum Wallet on a computer that is mostly offline, giving it a semi cold-storage status to enhance security.
Long-Term or Bulk Storage Safe Wallet Strategy for CryptoCurrency
If you are like the Winklevoss twins who has Bitcoins that are worth billions of dollars, and are not looking to cash out anytime soon, then keeping your cryptocurrencies in a maximum security storage is extremely important and a fact you cannot afford to ignore.
An anonymous bitcoin wallet such as KekepKey or Ledger Nano comes in very handy as a cold-storage maximum security option for investors in this category.
These hardware wallets come with several layers of security including a 4 digit PIN only you should know before any transactions are made, also a 12 seed word to recover your assets should someone steal the physical device or should it get lost, and a top-notch internal security protocol that means you can confidently use these mini vaults even on computers you are not entirely sure of.
While Hardware Wallets remain among the absolute best and safest option for large crypto holders and long-term investors, there are other options that carnival its security among which are paper wallets.
What Paper Wallets are essentially is the mimicking of fiat money in the way they are kept. Cryptocurrencies are always in danger due to their digital nature with hackers going through networks to steal them.
Paper Wallets circumvent that by allowing the investor to print out their crypto assets on actual sheets of paper in the form of QR Codes, which can then be stored by the owner in actual safes somewhere.
The simple principle is that as long as the printed private keys are not physically stolen by a burglar, your crypto assets remain perpetually safe beyond the reach of hackers.
Safe Wallet Bitcoin Wrap Up
Cryptocurrencies are extremely slippery in the way they operate and an investor cannot afford to gamble with bitcoin by making the mistake of allowing unauthorized transactions as they can never be reversed.
As such, if you want to enjoy using them in the short and medium-term as well as salt away a stash for future use, then you have three choices but not one solution.
It is all about attaining a certain balance, where you can transact on a daily basis, without risking that much as well as having the maximum security to secure your future with bank-grade security on your bulk assets for the long term.
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