Why You Need To Keep Your Coins Off The Exchange And In A Hardware Wallet

What if the exchange you were using was hacked and you lost it all? That is happening more and more. Exchanges are not the safest place to store your coins.

Friday morning Coincheck was hacked and lost 523 Million NEM Coins. It was valued at $534.8 million dollars. All withdrawals were brought to a halt other than bitcoin on the platform.

NEM was not at fault, it was the exchanges. The exchange was hacked and had nothing to do with the security of NEM.  So what is NEM?

The NEM coin intends to help businesses handle data digitally on the blockchain. Prices did fall after the hack more than 20 percent. Which makes this a good buying opportunity.

Management of coincheck said “that it held the NEM coins in a “hot” wallet which is a method of storage that is linked to the internet.” Coinbase for example holds 98 percent of their coins in offline storage which is the safest and most secure method.

This is a good lesson for all cryptocurrency uses and the safety of using hardware wallets. We highly recommend utilizing a trezor or nano ledger s hardware wallet.

A cryptocurrency hardware wallet is a physical device that keeps your portfolio safe and stored offline. Some online wallets also support hardware wallets like Myetherwallet.

Most of the hardware wallets generate and store a private key on the device which also can be known as “cold storage”.

There are still some risks that come associated with utilizing a hardware wallet. Most of which are caused by lack of security and user error. To date there have been no known coins stolen from a hardware wallet.

So your best bet is to pick up a Nano or Trezor and move all of the supported coins to them. It can be a daunting process so if you need any help let us know.

-The AboveCrypto Team