How to stay safe and keep your Bitcoin secure in a public world

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https://i.redd.it/xenxkzqdqnk21.png

In today’s world, everything is shared. From Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, to Reddit, millennials do one thing really good – they share details about their life daily online with complete strangers, giving anyone a direct view into their personal lives, habits, and even their financials.

There is an old saying that dates back ages, “never tell anyone how much money you make.” This saying came about for several reasons, such as people may begin to judge you and also, because of personal security. If strangers know your wealth, you instantly become a target. When it comes to Bitcoin, the heightened level of security becomes even more paramount because although Bitcoin is extremely secure, the way you store them can be vulnerable to attackers if security precautions are not taken seriously.

Mum’s the word

If you go around telling people on social media that you invested in Bitcoin a few years ago and now the price has doubled or tripled, people will know you have made a lot of money and will want to target you. If you share a lot of personal details about yourself online, they can begin to piece together information and target you physically, digitally or both. It’s one thing to say you are invested in Bitcoin generally speaking, it’s another to divulge how much exactly, when, and how much you have gained. This opens you up to all kinds of scrutiny which makes you a target to really bad people out there.

Using common sense is probably your best tool in this new sharing-world. Privacy is important. Just like the old saying goes, the same applies in today’s world of social media and digital cash.

How to stay safe in this public world

It’s highly recommended that you keep your Bitcoin in two different kinds of wallets. A spending “hot” wallet and a savings “cold” storage wallet.

The premise behind a hot wallet is that it’s used for spending only. Think of it as walk around money that is used as cash. You keep small-to-medium sized amounts of Bitcoin in your hot wallet. Typically hot wallets are held on your mobile device and used daily for spending. For a hot spending wallet, download the Bitcoin.com Wallet to get started today. It’s safe, secure, and is the go-to wallet for millions of people around the world.

For a cold wallet, also called a cold storage wallet, the premise is to keep your Bitcoin savings there which won’t be used daily, but used occasionally (for example to refill your hot wallet when you are low on funds). Cold wallets can be stored completely offline, for example with paper wallets that you can create yourself, which is a super cost effective and safe way to store your coins offline. Read our guide on how to setup a cold storage wallet. Another method is to use a hardware wallet. These are safe wallets made with security in mind and have many more features than a paper wallet to keep your coins secure but give you added feature sets such as signing keys offline and defense against malware and other types of attack that a simple paper wallet won’t provide. Hardware wallets are physical devices that are sold by manufacturers.

Other helpful Bitcoin security tips

Staying secure doesn’t have to be hard if you follow basic security practices. Here are 10 tips to help keep you safe:

1. Never share your password with anyone.
2. Use a password manager so you aren’t reusing passwords.
3. Never share your Bitcoin backup passphrase (recovery seed) with anyone.
4. Never share your Bitcoin private key with anyone.
5. Do not reuse Bitcoin addresses (most modern wallets don’t do this anymore).
6. Don’t post your email address, home address or phone number on social media.
7. Always keep your computer anti-virus up to date so you don’t download malware.
8. Always backup your wallet and do it periodically.
9. For cold storage wallets and backup wallet passphrases at home, store them in a fireproof safe.
10. Use Two Factor Authentication (2FA) everywhere.

[uncensored-r/BitcoinMarkets] [Daily Discussion] Thursday, March 07, 2019

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The top red flags to check out before making a cryptocurrency investment

Cryptocurrency investments and digital assets are gaining attraction of investors across the board as they offer an alternative to traditional assets. However, in the past two years, investors in the digital asset market have witnessed the most volatile period in the last decade as prices of most coins and tokens shot up over 1000% since launch. The hike in price is still in effect today, totally oblivious, to the longest bear run Bitcoin (BTC) has had in history.

However, the field has not been all rosy. During the massive bull run of 2017, the industry was filled with ICO scams and exit scams which saw many investors lose their investments. Notwithstanding, the number of hacks on cryptocurrency exchanges was on a high as investors lost close to a billion dollars to hackers. Such unfortunate events are pushing potential investors and governments from the field.

Below are some of the red flags that new and existing investors should look out for before making a cryptocurrency investment.

Target market and Hype

1. FOMO and Multi-level marketing schemes

“Bill Gates is buying coin X” “Gain 100% in less than 24 hours”

The advertisements of most cryptocurrency scams offer false promises to the investor the however that promise to investors is usually not delivered.  Beware of exchanges and other cryptocurrency investments that also ask you to deposit some cryptocurrency in their wallets and gain crazy interest on your investment.

This points to a multilevel marketing scheme where the earliest entrants gain hugely and the rest of the members down the pyramid lose out.

2. “The wolf of Wall Street”

Those familiar with the movie, “The wolf of wall street” understand the analogy of pump and dump schemes. This is a scheme to which certain parties buy in a useless asset and fame it to attract more buyers. Once the price hits the peak, the big early buyers sell off the cryptocurrency leading to a huge crash on the coin and large loses to unsuspecting buyers. These coins are usually pushed with catchy but fake quotes on the platform as shown above.

3. General market cases

The market is filled with duplicated projects offering a bright future or revolutionary ideas to the global economy. Blockchain is being used as the solution to everything and while I agree the application scaling is important, having a coin for everything is not ideal. People do not want to use a new coin to buy bread, another to pay for a haircut, or pay for subscription. Eliminating the cryptocurrencies that offer similar use cases to what we have in Bitcoin and other better technologies should be key before making your investment.

Initial Coin Offering

4. Team

A simple rules applies when it comes to making a statement on legitimacy of any project – leadership of the project. The team shows the seriousness of the project and the ability to carry the development of the project towards its goals. A lack of a solid team, no advisory or few advisors, no industrial diversity in the team and an anonymous team are all indicators of a failing project.

5. Allocation to team

Team members are supposed to work on the project’s development and for this they require compensation. However, a common trend for scams in the industry is allocating unreasonable amounts to the team.

Having less than 10% is a favorable amount to the team. These projects allocates in excess of 30% share of the total supply which shows greed on part of the team members.

6. No Vesting period

A lack of holding period once the initial token offering is complete may lead to a selloff before even development of the project takes off. A lack of the vesting period, which ranges from weeks to months, shows venerability of the token. However there are exceptions to the rule but to be on the safer side you will need to check the credibility of the project.

Technical outlay of the cryptocurrency

7. Repositories

One of the key indicators of a legitimate public cryptocurrency project is a public repository with active commits on GitHub or GitLab. This shows that there exists a number of engineers working on the project. Furthermore, given that most of the cryptocurrencies are fueled by the vision and goals of the development team, working repositories should be a key factor to look at before investing in cryptocurrencies. This especially affects the long term investors.

8. Funding

One of the key steps to further development of the project is funding bar some exceptions such as Bitcoin. However, with the rise of tokenization, most of the developers require venture capital funding to keep developing the project. If the project runs dry, as witnessed throughout 2018, developers are bound to flee leaving the company at a disadvantage.

9. Whitepaper

One key issue that novice investors leave out when selecting a crypto investment is the whitepaper. Well, it is understandable due to difficulty to understand the technical terms used in whitepapers – even business whitepapers. All the same, there exists projects that lack the whitepaper altogether or have a directly copy pasted whitepaper from another website. Beware of such cryptocurrencies as they are likely to be scam projects.

10. Other scams

The list above is in no way exhaustive of the risks involved in cryptocurrency investment. Other risks include mistakes on the website or whitepaper, listed on no or little exchanges, ability to print more cryptocurrency in the future without community approval etc.

Full article in: https://icodog.io/guide/the-top-red-flags-to-check-out-before-making-a-cryptocurrency-investment/

By Lujan from icodog.io

The top red flags to check out before making a cryptocurrency investment

Cryptocurrency investments and digital assets are gaining attraction of investors across the board as they offer an alternative to traditional assets. However, in the past two years, investors in the digital asset market have witnessed the most volatile period in the last decade as prices of most coins and tokens shot up over 1000% since launch. The hike in price is still in effect today, totally oblivious, to the longest bear run Bitcoin (BTC) has had in history.

However, the field has not been all rosy. During the massive bull run of 2017, the industry was filled with ICO scams and exit scams which saw many investors lose their investments. Notwithstanding, the number of hacks on cryptocurrency exchanges was on a high as investors lost close to a billion dollars to hackers. Such unfortunate events are pushing potential investors and governments from the field.

Below are some of the red flags that new and existing investors should look out for before making a cryptocurrency investment.

Target market and Hype

1. FOMO and Multi-level marketing schemes

“Bill Gates is buying coin X” “Gain 100% in less than 24 hours”

The advertisements of most cryptocurrency scams offer false promises to the investor the however that promise to investors is usually not delivered.  Beware of exchanges and other cryptocurrency investments that also ask you to deposit some cryptocurrency in their wallets and gain crazy interest on your investment.

This points to a multilevel marketing scheme where the earliest entrants gain hugely and the rest of the members down the pyramid lose out.

2. “The wolf of Wall Street”

Those familiar with the movie, “The wolf of wall street” understand the analogy of pump and dump schemes. This is a scheme to which certain parties buy in a useless asset and fame it to attract more buyers. Once the price hits the peak, the big early buyers sell off the cryptocurrency leading to a huge crash on the coin and large loses to unsuspecting buyers. These coins are usually pushed with catchy but fake quotes on the platform as shown above.

3. General market cases

The market is filled with duplicated projects offering a bright future or revolutionary ideas to the global economy. Blockchain is being used as the solution to everything and while I agree the application scaling is important, having a coin for everything is not ideal. People do not want to use a new coin to buy bread, another to pay for a haircut, or pay for subscription. Eliminating the cryptocurrencies that offer similar use cases to what we have in Bitcoin and other better technologies should be key before making your investment.

Initial Coin Offering

4. Team

A simple rules applies when it comes to making a statement on legitimacy of any project – leadership of the project. The team shows the seriousness of the project and the ability to carry the development of the project towards its goals. A lack of a solid team, no advisory or few advisors, no industrial diversity in the team and an anonymous team are all indicators of a failing project.

5. Allocation to team

Team members are supposed to work on the project’s development and for this they require compensation. However, a common trend for scams in the industry is allocating unreasonable amounts to the team.

Having less than 10% is a favorable amount to the team. These projects allocates in excess of 30% share of the total supply which shows greed on part of the team members.

6. No Vesting period

A lack of holding period once the initial token offering is complete may lead to a selloff before even development of the project takes off. A lack of the vesting period, which ranges from weeks to months, shows venerability of the token. However there are exceptions to the rule but to be on the safer side you will need to check the credibility of the project.

Technical outlay of the cryptocurrency

7. Repositories

One of the key indicators of a legitimate public cryptocurrency project is a public repository with active commits on GitHub or GitLab. This shows that there exists a number of engineers working on the project. Furthermore, given that most of the cryptocurrencies are fueled by the vision and goals of the development team, working repositories should be a key factor to look at before investing in cryptocurrencies. This especially affects the long term investors.

8. Funding

One of the key steps to further development of the project is funding bar some exceptions such as Bitcoin. However, with the rise of tokenization, most of the developers require venture capital funding to keep developing the project. If the project runs dry, as witnessed throughout 2018, developers are bound to flee leaving the company at a disadvantage.

9. Whitepaper

One key issue that novice investors leave out when selecting a crypto investment is the whitepaper. Well, it is understandable due to difficulty to understand the technical terms used in whitepapers – even business whitepapers. All the same, there exists projects that lack the whitepaper altogether or have a directly copy pasted whitepaper from another website. Beware of such cryptocurrencies as they are likely to be scam projects.

10. Other scams

The list above is in no way exhaustive of the risks involved in cryptocurrency investment. Other risks include mistakes on the website or whitepaper, listed on no or little exchanges, ability to print more cryptocurrency in the future without community approval etc.

Full article in: https://icodog.io/guide/the-top-red-flags-to-check-out-before-making-a-cryptocurrency-investment/

By Lujan from icodog.io

[Daily Discussion] Thursday, March 07, 2019

Thread topics include, but are not limited to:

• General discussion related to the day's events
• Technical analysis, trading ideas & strategies
• Quick questions that do not warrant a separate post

Thread guidelines:

• Be excellent to each other.
• Do not make posts outside of the daily thread for the topics mentioned above.

Other ways to interact:

• Get an invite to live chat on our Slack group
• Set your flair to trade pretend money in the Flair Game
• Weekly threads: Newbie Mondays and Fundamentals Fridays

[Daily Discussion] Thursday, March 07, 2019

Thread topics include, but are not limited to:

• General discussion related to the day's events
• Technical analysis, trading ideas & strategies
• Quick questions that do not warrant a separate post

Thread guidelines:

• Be excellent to each other.
• Do not make posts outside of the daily thread for the topics mentioned above.

Other ways to interact:

• Get an invite to live chat on our Slack group
• Set your flair to trade pretend money in the Flair Game
• Weekly threads: Newbie Mondays and Fundamentals Fridays

Bitcoin Price Prediction Analysis: BTC Consolidation Will Likely Continue For a While - Bitcoin Exchange Guide

https://bitcoinexchangeguide.com/bitcoin-price-prediction-analysis-btc-consolidation-will-likely-continue-for-a-while/