It has just come to light that South Koreas largest bitcoin and ether exchange Bithumb has been hacked resulting in huge losses for 3 % of its customers.
Worlds fourth largerst Bitcoin exchange
Bithumb who was just hacked handles more than 10 % of the global bitcoin trade and is currently the largest ether exchange in the world. The hackers got away with the personal information of more than 30.000 investors and holdings worth millions of US Dollars. Bithumb, in an attempt to ward of criticism, stated that it was an employee’s PC that was hacked, and not their office server.
It came as no surprise to me that this happened, and I don’t buy their excuse. They clearly have a responsibility, and it doesn’t matter whether it was their own servers of an employees PC that was hacked.
Hacking is sadly becoming a recurring issue for cryptocurrency institutions and it’s doesn’t look like it will stop anytime soon. I’m not a proponent for regulation, but I would say that most of the hacking incidents are rooted in the fact that the industry isn’t regulated. Which means that the majority of the institutions don’t have the necessary anti-hacking policies in place to prevent these attacks.
The lack of such policies from these institutions is clearly an abuse of our trust in them.
All for the sake of their own profit.
I don’t have a problem with exchanges earning money, that’s fine, it’s why most companies start out in the first place. But it’s becoming clear that the industry is tainted with greed, and aren’t doing enough to protect peoples cryptocurrencies.
If you think that I’m exaggerating and blowing things out of proportion, well here’s a list to prove otherwise.
Cryptocurrency institutions that has previously been hacked:
https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/
There is a way to protect yourself, and everyone should do it
I cannot stress this enough, but storing cryptocurrency on the exchanges should only temporary. I recommend that you protect your cryptocurrency holdings by taking them off the exchanges and storing them elsewhere. You can do this in a number of ways, here are some suggestions:
1. Hardware wallets
Trezor: https://trezor.io/
Ledger: https://www.ledgerwallet.com/
Keepkey: https://www.keepkey.com/
2. Paper wallets
www.bitaddress.org
3. Mobile wallets
Mycelium: https://mycelium.com/
Jaxx: https://jaxx.io/
4. Web wallets
Blockchain: https://www.blockchain.com/
That's all I have for you today
What's your favorite wallet, and do you have any experiences with the ones I have mentioned?
Your comments are much appreciated and feel free to ask any questions.
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Don't forget also decentralized exchanges as an option.
This comment has received a 0.38 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @xiobus.
This is great information @cryptodan. Now I know the necessity of having some sort of a wallet to protect myself.
Right now I have some BTC on Genesis mining about $100 worth but your article gave me a lot of information. Keep the good stuff pouring in brother :))
I think it's very important to stay as safe as possible with our savings, so I would start out with withdrawing your funds to a mobile wallet.
Then later put them onto a hardware wallet once you have a good amount.
This is because the hardware wallets are quite expensive so it wouldn't make sense to buy one in order to put a small onto it :)
Thanks for your support brother :)
That's a great advice my dear friend @cryptodan. I will try mycelium.com. Thanks a lot :))
Great advice and post :) I need to take mine off soon
Thank you @road2wisdom.
I would opt for a hard wallet :)
Can the hardware wallets store the lesser known currencies like Viacoin or Siacoin for instance?
Very useful info with the links conveniently provided :) Just got verified Tier 3 level on Kraken after waiting for almost 5 weeks lol...I would like to buy a hardware wallet (I've heard it's the best option).. Are the hardware wallets limited in anyway to certain coins? Like if I had small coins like sia coin, etc, could they go on the wallet too, do you know?
Thanks @foodie.warrior, and congrats on the verification. I hear tier 3 can take a long time to get :D
Yes, the hardware wallets are limited to the major coins as far as I know, so you won't be able to have all your coins safely stored that way.
I guess it's only a matter of time before someone comes out with a hardware wallet that can take a lot of the smaller coins.
Jaxx mobile wallet is on the verge to update their mobile wallet. I think it will be able to have about 50 different coins. So I would probably go with that once it gets updated.
BTW Siacoin has a wallet you can have on your PC :)
@cryptodan thanks for sharing all these information :) I am on the waiting list for the nano ledger s, as recommended by a number of people I spoke with..Will have to check out the Jaxx mobile wallet too..
Btw, do you know of any mobile wallet or other safe storage ways for antshares other than on the exchanges? Mine is currently on Bittrex lol
Nice post. You got a new follower.
Thank you very much @tylersr, it's good to have you aboard :)
thx for the information, i wrote some pome and made some picture about this theme https://steemit.com/jackjohanneshemp/@jackjohanneshemp/hacking
I'm glad you found it useful.
Thank you for dropping by and nice poem :)
greetings from Belgium, have a nice day
useful information thank you very much
I'm glad you found it useful my friend :)
I am using wallet program Electrum for Bitcoin.
I can save backup files on thumb drives and in emails.
I haven't tried that one, sounds interesting with the backups.
I will look it up :)
Can vouch Electrum is a solid choice, Electrum works via a seed which is a string of random words used when generating your private key during wallet creation. As long as you remember the seed you have access to your funds. They also have a private key export option but I would suggest encrypting the resultant file after exporting for maximal security. :)
It's so important to have your investments in a safe place.
Thanks for the info @nphacker :)
Great post. Thanks for the advice. I am using blockchain but I heard that they had some issues in the past so I may buy myself a hardware wallet. :D
Thank you @guyfawkes4-20 :)
Hardware is the way to go in my oppinion.
I have heard that there are long waiting lists at the moment because of a huge spike in demand :)
Huge waiting lists. Until September. :))
Thanks for the information and the other valuable resources, particularly the BlockChain Graveyard. I could not agree more on having an independent wallet from exchanges, it is in fact one of the very same reason blockchain exists, decentralization, if we have separated the money there will be no "Big pools" to steel and therefore a much more difficult task to perform for hackers.
Excatly!
Decentralized is the magic word.
Thanks for dropping by :)
Click...click...vote and leaved simple comment then zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! :D
Haha @happyphoenix :D
Sleep well my friend and thanks for your support :)
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is the money insured in any way? this would be terrible to be one of the ones hacked and have no recourse
No insurance, that's why it's important to keep our money of the exchanges :)
but then how could you ever hold bitcoin or litecoin ? you'd have to be transferring it to cash
I think you are missing something here, so I will try to explain.
You must differentiate between an exchange and a wallet.
An exchange is where you buy and sell cryptocurrency i.e. a market.
A wallet is just what it says a wallet i.e. a place to store value.
The problem is that exchanges get hacked, and wallets don't get hacked.
So move your crypto to a wallet, and the problem is fixed :)
There's no need to transfer to cash.
thank you. but just having it sit on coinbase, isn't that using my coinbase wallet?
You are welcome :)
Coinbase is still an exchange regardless of them having a wallet. I would place them somewhere else.
like where? thank you
This post received a 1.7% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @cryptodan! For more information, click here!
god info
Thanks
This is a great article with good content ! such a pleasure to read these kinda articles !!
@CryptoDan Very Good advice...have a Trezor wallet but haven't put all the coins on it yet. Your Post is a nice "kick" the butt to just get it done...
Thanks Again Dan !!
the trezor wallet is really good!
That's why I always keep my bitcoins on my offline wallet. My other altcoins I just leave it on the exchanges. Hackers wont waste their time on other coins worth cent a piece i guess
Better to be more careful then to lose our money.
A hardware wallet is the most secure way to store crypto:
https://steemit.com/crypto/@niel96/fkxwctmxw