If you hold any cryptocurrency, you’ve probably heard horror stories of people opening their wallets to find all of their coins missing. Some months ago, cryptocurrency investor and influencer Ian Balina suffered a hack that drained $2 million worth of cryptocurrency live during one of his regular youtube streams. Also, MyEtherWallet, a popular free web based ethereum wallet fell victim to a DNS attack which emptied the wallets of some of its users.
With all the bad press about millions being stolen through cryptocurrency hacks, the average consumer may wonder why anyone would risk their hard earned money on crypto. As it turns out, cryptocurrency is actually the safest form of currency you could possibly use online today. With some extra effort, you can safely view your balances, send and receive transactions all with near 0% chance of your funds being stolen. Sound too good to be true? It’s simple.
Correct! Cryptocurrencies are extremely safe and secure if you just follow a series of strict guidelines to achieve such purpose. You must be alert, and always check a specific software wallet for vulnerabilities, or verify that online wallets are not phished by another hacker. With good antivirus software, a firewall, and the use of cold storage (created offline) or a hardware wallet, then it'll be nearly impossible for a hacker to penetrate your cryptocurrency funds. In addition, you should NOT keep your cryptocurrencies in an online centralized exchange, as they're the number one target of hackers.
If you're willing to keep cryptocurrencies in such exchanges, then I'd suggest that you just keep a very small amount of coins for trading while the rest is kept safely in your hardware wallet or cold storage. For extra security, you could try using 2FA for all your cryptocurrency-related accounts, to make the hacker's life impossible. It's also recommended to stay away from online wallets, as they have the same risks as online centralized exchanges. Try to use decentralized exchanges for all your crypto trades, and a hardware wallet to achieve peace of mind.
These practices (and several other more) will allow you to keep your cryptocurrency balances safe from hacks or theft for a very long time. I've been doing this ever since I've got into crypto, and so far, my funds are intact.