If you are not an active trader, a cold wallet will be the best option for you because it allows you to keep crypto offline eliminating the possibility of a hacking attack. There are two cold storage options: hard wallets (Ledger Nano S, Trezor) or paper wallets.
Hardware wallets help to efficiently protect your money from scammers since your coins are stored on a physical electronic device. Even if your hardware wallet has been stolen, you can simply restore your coins on a new device.
There is also an additional level of security in the form of a PIN code. One shouldn’t rule out the possibility of a random security bug that will create a gateway for crooks. Hackers could potentially get access to your wallet using RNG (Random Number Generator). However, you shouldn’t be excessively paranoid, since not a single case of theft has been reported at the time of writing this article.
Safest way to hold your cryptocurrency
A paper wallet is the safest way of storing crypto, but make sure you do not tell anyone the private keys to your wallet. You also have to keep multiple copies of your keys: your Bitcoins will be lost forever if you happen to lose your paper wallet along with the keys. In order to check the current balance of your wallet, you can simply go to Blockchain.info and enter your address.
If you constantly make payments with BTC, you may want to create a semi-cold (software) wallet. Software wallets are called semi-cold because they can be still installed on computers that do not have access to the Internet (it is advisable to prevent a potential phishing attack). Electrum is one of the most popular software wallet for storing Bitcoin. It combines a user-friendly interface with a high level of functionality.
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Yuri Molchan
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin