Fund Transfers, Wallet Hygiene, Air gapped Devices, Trading Devices.

  Many cryptocurrency investors forget to step up their Operational Security as their bags get bigger. The final section of Lesson 2 is basically high level large volume op sec, as opposed to our previous Opsec 101 section, which was geared towards the smaller bag holders.

   The bigger the bags, the more other people start seeing and caring about them, from criminals to Uncle Sam. 
    If you’re self experimenting and learning with and about crypto and defi, your metadata is already all over the internet.

  This info is also crucial if you plan on passing on your holdings, using them as collateral or liquid for other investments, or moving funds privately to friends, family, or  to an exchange. 

  As it stands now, all crypto must eventually return to the exchange to realize liquid value. Let’s be smart about how we keep it safe up until that point.

  Passwords.

 We reviewed in OpSec101 how using a singular password for multiple accounts is not safe. Passwords which contain personal information and relevant or an easily guessable string of numbers is not safe. 
  A randomly generated password or a random 3-5 word pass phrase.

 Bad passwords- July91983//SpotandKitten111

 Good passwords- ?$(&5?HsLT$yfXL//vaporizer cahoot’s disease dedicate disease unknown 

 Encryption can make any password safe. 

 Wallet Hygeine.

 - Wash your wallet once a market cycle ( or more often, depending how big your bag is.) Burn the old wallet. 
- Revoke contract access often.

- Clear connected sites in your MetaMask often.

- Never send funds directly from old wallet to new fresh wallet.

- Always use a VPN. (It will not only protect you, but give you greater access.)

 Without following these rules, you leave yourself exposed to be followed and tracked, or connected to sites or contracts which may be of become malicious, or at least leave you exposed to malicious actors. 

 Wallets set up through SafePal have better security without using a hardware wallet.(Safepal hardware wallets are still an available option.) Mirror your Safepal wallet to MetaMask for a highly useable interface. If you don’t know how to do this, stay tuned for future lessons. Never trust anyone in direct messages of any sort regarding assistance with your wallet. Trust no one in fact.

 Do not move funds directly from old wallet to new wallet. Here are some ways to transfer funds from an old wallet to a new wallet.

 Moving Stablecoins through a CEX.

 How- Set up a non-KYC account. (You may have to search around, KuCoin works, be cautious and concise using CEXs given their history.) Send stables in many small transactions. Some CEXs will have a limit for non KYC withdrawal, others will flag transactions which are suspiciously large.

Advantages/ disadvantages- Easy to do, CEXs should typically have deeper liquidity to make larger transfers. ( or do they?)// CEX still has some info from you that they can be forced to hand over to a third party.

Tornado Cash and Anonymizers would be a great tool to protect your self from malicious tracking. However, I can no longer recommend using them due to their recent sanctions by the US government. 

But if it wasn’t, hypothetically, you could…

-Deposit funds to the protocol and receive a random hash in return, wait a considerable amount of time, then use your hash to withdraw funds to clean wallet.

 The advantages this method held was that no centralized entity is needed for this transaction, and the protocol really does effectively break the link between origin and destination (hence why it was a target for the Fed.)

 A few disadvantages- sanctioned, for one. Metadata can still be tracked. Also, the code could potentially be changed while your funds are locked in; in other words a dev could rug you while you’re in the cool off period before you claim your hash return. 
 
 Privacy Coins.

  Examples - Monero (XMR), ZCash (ZEC)

  Advantages- anonymous transactions, relatively untraceable, their code is built to obscure origin and destinations of transactions. In certain parts of the world, these coins have gained enough popularity to be used OTC for real world payments. (South America)

  Disadvantages- “grey area” for many countries ( in certain places, they’ve been made outright illegal.) (Korea.) US regulators are looking to make these privacy coins traceable, therefore, they would become non privacy coins. Also, unless using for IRL OTC payment, the privacy coins still need to return to the CEX to become liquid, which will raise a flag if a large bag appears out of nowhere.

 Trade on a separate device then your personal one. This goes especially for large bag holders. If you access your funds with the same device that you use to browse and store other data, social engineering becomes much easier for someone looking to track your bags. 
Don’t spend too much money on a trading device, one of the best devices to buy for exclusive portfolio management is actually a Chromebook, because of its low attack vectors. Also, if your device becomes compromised, it’s not too expensive to replace.

Airgapped Device = Cold Storage Wallet

  Essentially, airgapped devices give you the chance to manage your wallet off of the public internet.

 Hardware wallets are not foolproof. All hardware is vulnerable to damage. 
 The ultimate cold storage wallet is simply a mnemonic phrase. How you will protect this phrase will be up to you. What if you commit it to memory and you suffer brain damage and forget it? What if it’s hidden in a place that suffers natural disaster, or you should die without anyone knowing- this should all be determined based on your bag, your situation, and where your funds will eventually go. A sensible idea is having another person or two who you trust with your life who knows how to access the key to your funds, ONLY in the case of your incapacitation.

Consider buying a PokeGan NFT.

  You'll gain so much more than the basic outlines here. 

  Tokengated lessons provided by Omakasea. 

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