Storing your Crypto Coins

So you have a bundle of coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Neo to name a few that you bought of an a exchange such as Bittrex and you are wondering how do I keep them safe and keep away the evil cyber people from getting them. For these coins you want to take a similar approach to what you would do if you had Fiat money or gold, you want to keep it safe such as a bank safe.

However, like most people I don't own a bank safe so I have to try the next best thing. The joys of holding any amount of coins is that they do not take up much room at all, the maximum size would be the an average USB. Below I will give you 3 ways in which you can store your coins but the key thing to remember is to always hold your private key (PRIVATE) as this key will allow you to access your funds.

1. Paper Wallet (For Bitcoin)
This method is probably the best and safest method to store your coins as it allows you to have complete control over your wallets. These are simple to make and free (something that is good and safe is free now that's a first). The first step is to go here and start the process for Bitcoin, follow the steps carefully and download the client to make the wallet offline. I wont give all the details of how to do it as I don't want to risk making a mistake and in turn maybe you making a mistake. As i stated before keep the private key safe and never give it to anyone, the public key is the key you can show people as you can only lodge bitcoin to this address. When you have done all the steps and stored all the private keys that you were given you can print something like the picture below.

  Now you are free to use your bitcoin and be part of the future. My own tip to help me keep my bitcoin paper wallets safe is to print out a few and store the private keys with people that I trust this might not work for all but its just my tip.



2. Hard Wallet
This method can be done by using your own USB and storing everything on there or else buying a USB that is designed to hold coins. An example of this would be the Ledger nano. This is a good peice of kit but will set you back around €70 give or take. It allows you to store quite a few coins on it with ease and gives you a running balance of each coin. The nano is encrypted so again you will have to remember a password or seed to gain access to the funds. One of the biggest advantages of the nano is it allows you to most of your coins in one place which is very handy and easy to keep track of.

3. Online Wallets
Online wallets are handy if you plan on using your coins often, but don't keep to much on them at any one time. You can have an online wallet on any of the major exchanges and you can also download some wallet clients to have them as apps on your computer. The biggest problem with all of these is the possibility of getting hacked or also a major exchange closing down with all of your coins. So my advice here would be to ONLY use this method for short term holdings and remember you don't have complete control which is something you want to have, you would never give your money to someone you don't know to mind it for you or would you? Below is a sample picture of the program called Exodus which is an wallet that you download that you can store your coins on.