So you have recently discovered this awesome world of Crypto Currencies and decide to just dive in head first. Well hopefully you will read this article and many other articles like it that focus on staying safe and keeping the crypto that you accumulate through trading.
Chances are you will be buying your first Bitcoin or bit of a bitcoin via coinbase.com. Now coinbase.com is generally a very safe please to buy Bitcoin (BTC), Etherium (ETH), Lite coin (LTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH & BCC). You must be aware that Coinbase has some of the worst customer service I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. So should there be some type of unforeseen issues with your account or order you should not be expecting the issue to be resolved right away, in fact it can take days and even weeks (I am still waiting) before your issue is resolved. Plus there are numerous reports all over the internet of unresolved Coinbase customer issues. So if you do use Coinbase i would advise you to use a credit card to make your purchases because you can always do a charge back if Coinbase decides that you are not worthy of their time if an issue should arise. You may also want to check out there BBB reviews.
The options for getting your cash (fiat) into crypto are not very many and they are all a little on the sketchy side. So just be sure to exercise caution when dealing with fiat exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, Bitstamp, etc, etc. There are also other options for mobile such as BREAD or Abra which can be found in the app store. Just be weary that Banks don't like you buying crypto and they don't like you using your bank account to buy crypto or your credit cards to buy crypto. Crypto threatens there entire business model.
Other options for buying bitcoin include bitquick.co and localbitcoins.com. These options allow you to buy crypto using cash by either meeting someone in person or depositing cash into a bank account and receiving your crypto in your wallet. The options mentioned above are best for staying under the radar if you don't want certain agencies or individuals knowing what you are doing with your money. You do pay a little bit of a premium and its not the most convenient option to buy Bitcoin. However it is probably the option with the least number of things that can go wrong.
Buying alt coins! While BTC, LTC, ETH and BCH are great investments and will likely provide you with great returns if you simply hold them. Chances are you will want to go deep into the rabbit hole and trade in highly profitable alt-coins like NEO, OMG, XRB, OST, BRD, XVG, etc etc. To do this you will need accounts on exchanges such as Binance, Bittrex, Poloniex and Kucoin. These exchanges are Targets and i mean HUGE targets for hackers. They literally have Billions of crypto assets moving in and out of them on the regular basis. The best thing you can do to stay safe using crypto exchanges is to always VERIFY the web address that you are visiting to make absolutely certain that you are not visiting a site that is pretending to be the exchange you want to visit. Spoofing the most common way you can be hacked. Also always verify the wallet address before you send any crypto to anyone or any exchange. There has been malware that was literally taking the address that you copied to your clipboard and changing the wallet address to that of the malware creators, so you would not be sending your DASH to Bill or Ann but to Paul the hacker. If that happens consider it gone forever. So always triple check the wallet address you are sending to. Now as far as an exchange being hacked and your info and crypto being stolen, well there is not much you can do about that. You can however not keep a lot of your crypto in the exchange wallets to minimize any possible losses. What are the chances of a centralized exchange being hacked? Probably about as likely a bank being hacked, yes it happens but not very often.
Where to store the bulk of your crypto currencies? Me personally I store the majority on an exodus.io software wallet on a separate laptop that I only use for crypto asset management. I also have the secret key and restore/back up phrase stored on a text file in google drive but I encrypted the file before transferring it to google drive using boxcryptor just in case google drive becomes compromised by a data breach of some sort since it is centralized. I also have another copy of that file on Storj.io which is a decentralized cloud storage platform. You should also print out a copy of your private keys and put it away someplace safe like a safe. With crypto currency you are your own bank so security is entirely up to you. Keep your private keys for your wallets safe and backed up!
Other options include hardware wallets such as the legder or the trezor. They are a little expensive but i hear NOTHING but good things about them. I am not 100% familiar with either of the hardware wallets so I will not comment much on them besides the fact that they are another secure option for storing your crypto currencies.
Binance: https://www.binance.com/?ref=10910139 Kucoin: https://www.kucoin.com/#/?r=E3hf2k
https://www.exodus.io/
http://amzn.to/2FiZjvx
http://amzn.to/2FiZjvx
One other option for staying secure and keeping all your wallets on a computer that you use on the daily basis would be to install a Linux operating system distribution such as Ubuntu or Mint. The idea is that most malware is written for Windows and occasionally Mac because those are the two most popular operating systems. However this may not be a good fit for you because you may require software that is just not available on Linux and installing software on Linux can often be challenging. But if you are just a casual PC user that spends most of their time in a browser and using basic office software than Linux may be a good fit for you to keep your assets from being a victim of malware, spyware, or whatever.
Lastly Don't visit porn sites, bittorrent sites, or anything sketchy on the PC where you store you crypto or do any crypto related business. Don't go to forums, reddit, youtube, friends and family, etc, etc bragging about how much you have in crypto. All it take is for some talented hacker, bad friend or enemy to focus their efforts on targeting you and just like that its all gone.
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