Protect bitcoins: 5 tips to keep them safe

The big trend of the moment is bitcoin virtual currencies. Although they appeared a few years ago, this type of currency has become increasingly common and famous, attracting curiosity. If you're starting to venture into this market and still don't know how to protect bitcoins from potential attacks, check out our 5 tips to keep them safe from hacking or hijacking attempts.

Tip: Still researching about virtual currency? So get to know the top 5 facts you need to know before you get started!

1. Use strong passwords

It sounds like generic advice, but considering we're talking about money online, this must be the first tip on the list. Using strong passwords is essential when protecting bitcoins.

A strong password is at least 16 characters long, with upper and lower case letters, plus numbers and special characters. If you have difficulty creating them, there are random password generators on the web that can use and configure these parameters.

2. Encrypt your applications

To successfully protect bitcoins, it is essential that you encrypt your bitcoin applications that fall into the digital wallet category. Some of these digital wallet apps already have encryption, so if you are unfamiliar with encryption, we recommend using one of them to manage your bitcoins.

3. Back up your wallet

Another very important tip. Just like files on your hard drive, it is essential that you back up your bitcoin wallet. Again, as we are talking about money, the importance increases considerably. If you do not back up, you could lose all your money. With the copy made, you will be able to reduce the losses and risks with problems in your portfolio.

It's interesting that you back up both your full wallet, but also make copies for private keys and information about other addresses from where you extract your bitcoins. Also remember to make backups in different locations like USB sticks and external hard drives.

The previous tips are also good for backups: don't forget to generate new strong passwords and encrypt everything whenever possible. This way, your digital wallet will be much safer than most users.

4. Use multiple signatures

Ideal for those who operate a team account. Multi-signature not only allows everyone in your company to access the bitcoin portfolio, but also to prevent a malicious member from performing operations on their own and harming the rest of the team.

When using multiple signatures, all user signatures are required to perform operations. But signatures don't necessarily have to come from another user: You can require sign-in to your account from more than one device, like a two-step verification.

That is, to perform an operation, you can configure your wallet to only accept the order if it is sent from the computer and confirmed by the phone, for example. However, not every digital wallet still supports multiple signatures, although they are gradually being adopted.

5. Use bitcoin hardware

Anything connected to the internet is at risk of being hacked. With that in mind, some companies have developed equipment to keep their bitcoins out of this access, requiring them to physically steal hardware to attempt access. These devices allow you to check the current state of your accounts, as well as confirm transactions, as if it were a digital token of traditional banks.

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What are your methods for protecting bitcoins?

Following our tips, we believe you can better protect your virtual money. Have you started to improve the protection of your bitcoins? What other tip would you like to share with us? Comment below!

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