Cryptocurrency Security is Key - Find a Decent Hiding Place and the Cowboys won't bother to look for you.

The cryptocurrency space is often compared to the Wild West. It has a reputation of being poorly regulated and there have been well publicized horror stories throughout the years. Security breaches have resulted in millions of dollars’ worth of assets being lost or stolen. The victims of these attacks are mostly sites holding lots of value such as digital currency exchanges.

Frequent high profile cases, like the Mt. Gox exchange, can be more than enough to scare off the average person from buying that first bit of digital coin. Website hacks have stolen private keys and manipulated users. A recent Coindash ICO had its Ethereum address altered by a hacker. An estimated $50million of Ethereum was stolen and rerouted into oblivion before the issue was discovered and corrected.

We learn from these events. Below is how I propose to hide:

1. It is playing with fire to leave any value on an exchange. Exchanges are usually the targets as the reward is great if their barriers are successfully breached, and private keys exposed. We still have to be careful with $1,000 as the principles remain, regardless of the amount at stake. I will be using a combination of Bittrex, Poloniex, Coinbase and Coinsquare to buy/trade coin. My aim is to transfer the value into a desktop wallet or offline wallet were possible. This will not always be feasible. The exchanges take their transaction cuts and these can all build up over time and dig into profits. It all depends on how long I want to hold a certain asset. Lets just say I may have to play with fire a little bit!
2. My passwords are super safe and changed monthly. I pay for a service called 1password and highly recommend it. All are randomly generated so finding out the name of my first schoolteacher will be of no benefit to any perpetrator. Two-factor authentication is in use for all purchases/withdrawals.
3. Private keys are physically backed up and stashed away in random locations, in case my laptop gets sick. I don't currently own a hardware wallet. I run the exodus.io desktop wallet which is quite good. New currencies are added every month.

Paranoia is a good thing when navigating this ecosystem. If you have any advice for me to further enhance the security of the portfolio then I'd love to hear from you - please comment. I am always up for adding extra layers of protection.

I'm currently working on two additional web-pages for the site. The first page, currently untitled, will flesh out the purpose of the blog and introduce myself a little bit. The second page will have some helpful links for "newbies to the space". There will also be a blog entry within the next few days centered around investment tracker tools.

Remember, I aim to share my profits with subscribers so if you are interested in hearing more about that, add yourself to the mailing list. More on the workings of the profit share soon. For now, stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Cathal Byrne - The Coin Movement