If you already know all these, great for you, you’re well versed in crypto security.
If you setup a new crypto cold storage wallet, here’s 8 additional things you can do to give you extra peace of mind.
1- Test the recovery seed phrase.
It might seem really obvious, and if you buy a hardware wallet, they tell you that you need to do this. But I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people didn’t actually bother to do it.
It’s essential that you make sure the seed phrase works and you wrote it down correctly.
2- Save the public address somewhere you can easily access on a regular basis.
This way you can always check randomly to see that your funds are still there, and blockchain is working.
It might sound stupid, but I have wallets I haven’t touched in years. Sometimes I would wake up at night and wonder if those funds are still there. Did I get hacked? I have the address handy, and quickly check on blockchain explorer, and it feels great to have confirmation that your funds are still there, and there hasn’t been any transactions in 730 days.
3- Once you’ve setup a wallet, got your seed phrase backed up, you can setup the extra layers of security.
A 25th passphrase is the easiest one for a cold wallet. You can also add a layer of security or encryption to your handwritten 24 words seed, if you’re worried about someone in your house finding it. Just make sure that whatever method you use, it’s something you can still easily recover 5 years from now, and doesn’t involve remembering anything complex.
4- Consider an adversity contingency plan for your seed phrase.
Once you write down (never use a printer) your seed phrase, consider either engraving it on fire resistant metal, putting it in a fire resistant safe, or have another copy at another safe location (obviously with an extra layer of security). Or a combination of those.
5- You can use multiple wallets, multiple storage, and with many coins like Bitcoin, the same key can generate different public addresses.
If you’re worried about your privacy, it’s a good idea to change your public address whenever it’s possible.
It’s mainly when you’re just sending things to the same wallet, want to make sure you send things to the correct address each time, and maybe even simplify your book keeping, that you’ll want to keep the same address.
But when it comes to wallets, you don’t have to put your eggs in one basket. You can use multiple wallets. Split your risk.
This is a good idea if you want to also get involved in DeFi, airdrops, staking, bridging, and even NFTs. It’s a good idea to have a separate wallet for these open doors.
It does mean a little more juggling.
6- Hide NFTs and Airdrops in your wallet.
This is to add to the previous point.
Many wallets have the options to hide those random NFTs and airdrops you get. Otherwise you can always ignore them, but hiding them avoids slips ups and temptation.
Unless you’re really sure of what you got, or it’s something you were intending to get, it’s usually not worth the risk to interact with these random airdrops.
If you do it like me, you have your main storage wallet that’s air-tight, where you would not interact with anything. And then you create a separate “patio” wallet where you interact in the open, and only put in some of your funds that you want to interact with.
7- Setup a dummy wallet, both in hot and cold storage.
This is your decoy, and more for people with large bags. I don’t go this far, but it’s an option.
There are two decoys you can create.
1-You can put a fake seed phrase on a paper somewhere in your house that would look like a logical place to hide your valuables. You can even take it a step further and buy a cheap used hardware wallet on eBay. This way if you have thief after you, they might just believe they got what they were looking for.
2- More importantly is the hot wallet decoy. That’s either a weakly password protected wallet on your computer, or weak wallet credentials in a file, or a weakly passworded PDF with a decoy key on it.
It’s important that the wallet actually exists and that you’ve set it up and have access to it. You can put just a small but still significant sum like $40 worth of crypto on it and some worthless NFTs. Hence why this is more for the big baggers. It’s important that it has something on there.
This is so you can periodically check and see if someone or some bot is actively after your crypto, and if you’ve been compromised.
8- Don’t let people know
This is one I think most people are aware of, but will still sometimes slip up.
Definitely don’t brag online about your crypto. Don’t reveal details about what you have, how you store your seed phrase, etc…
The less people know about your crypto, the less thieves will know about your crypto.
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