You know, cryptocurrencies and blockchains are secure by default in term of transactions and access to your funds. Nevertheless it requires some good practice from the user. Yes, you and me, we are human and therefore we can make mistakes at any time.
Remember the day when you lost some photos or documents because of a computer failure, a smartphone failure or may be an unexpected deletion. Remember the felling you had at that time. It was HORRIBLE no?
What about loosing your favorites coins. Our digital World is immaterial and you can loose everything in an instant. It is going so fast, you don't have time to save anything when something wrong happen. Therefore the PREVENTION, more than anywhere else is a key to SAFEGUARD your assets.
There are many factors to take into account to improve the security and today I will concentrate on the DIGITAL STORAGE options for your crypto.
- DESKTOP WALLET. You install on a local computer a full version of a coin wallet (the latest FEATHERCOIN wallet is available here). This option give you a full control over the security of your wallet. In fact, after installation "wallet.dat" is created and it contains all the keys require to access your fund. You can decide to leave your wallet running all the time and contribute to the network performance or you can just store this wallet.dat in a more secure place or create backup copies on usb key. Of course, if you don't know anything about IT security this option might be risky for you.
- MOBILE WALLET. The second option is to use mobile wallet such as EDGE. In this case, your wallet is in fact stored on the infrastructure / servers of the mobile wallet provider. On the application itself it works with a strong authentication to give you access to your funds. Therefore if you loose your phone you can install the mobile on the new phone and recover your access with your credentials. This is probably the most simple option but you delegate the responsibility of your wallet to a third-party.
- EXCHANGE WALLET. The third option is to keep you fund within an Exchange. This is very similar to the mobile wallet approach in term of security however it depend on the exchange security policy. In fact an exchange is integrated with much more services and therefore it open more doors to attackers than a mobile wallet focusing on storing your funds and making transactions. On the other storing on the exchange allows you to react quickly on the markets if you love trading.
At the end of the day it depends on your experience and the size of your assets. Personally, I am using the three methods as I believe in diversification (in all domains!).
- Long term holding on desktop wallet.
- Daily transactions through mobile wallet.
- Short term / trading on the exchange.
Think about that, have a look at your current situation and establish your plan to make sure that you the photo story never happen to your funds accumulated with passion and efforts.
To improve our FEATHERCOIN network dimension, you can consider installing the desktop wallet now with the windows, linux or mac version available here.
That's it for today. I will come back in another article about the other option like paper or hardware wallet.
I wish you very good day,
Feathercoin Writer
