I’d heard from quite a few sources that hardware wallets are the way forward in terms of proper security for your coins. These are a form of cold storage, as opposed to hot storage. Hot storage is anything where your private keys are connected to the internet or your computer. Cold storage is what you want for any large holdings of Bitcoin and other supported coins. Large is whatever amount you would feel sick losing. In my previous post, we saw how a guy lost USD 12,000 of Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on his Exodus wallet. This is a lovely looking wallet but it is a hot wallet. You shouldn’t really have that much on there, or any other hot wallet for that matter. So in the world of hardware wallets, there are three main options: Ledger Nano S Trezor Keepkey Keepkey looks great but less durable in …[Read More]
Wallets
The biggest obstacle I can see that might block mass cryptocurrency adoption
Following on from the last post about testing Exodus wallet, yesterday (1st September 2017) I went onto their Slack channel (exodusmovement.slack.com) to find out more about their product. There was a guy on there called @rhyso who claimed to have lost 2 BTC and some other coin totalling USD 12,000. Ouch. He seemed genuine and he was blaming Exodus for creating an alleged security flaw. In a nutshell, by Exodus sending a link for restoring your wallet to your email, this could have given hackers a way into your Exodus wallet. As at today, I don’t think this has been resolved and I don’t know whether @rhyso’s claim re the security flaw was correct. Let’s wait and see before passing judgement on Exodus’s wallet. However, whilst almost everyone was sympathetic to @rhyso’s situation, one Slack user pointed out that @rhyso shouldn’t have had USD 12,000 sitting in one wallet anyway …[Read More]
Testing out the Exodus Wallet
After the debacle of my Ethereum node wallet, I decided that I needed to try out some new wallets: To spread out my coins across different locations, so that if one failed for whatever reason (node not syncing, getting hacked, forgetting password and seeds), then at least it wouldn’t be as bad as if I’d had all my coins in that basket. To see which wallets have a better user experience (speed of syncing, ease of receiving and sending, user interface etc) I’d heard from a video by CoinFOMO on YouTube that the Exodus wallet from exodus.io was worth checking out. Its main USP is its good-looking design and its ability to hold different coins in the same interface. Up until now, I’ve had Electrum wallet for my Bitcoin, Ethereum node wallet for my Ethereum (ETH) and MyMonero wallet for my Monero. I’ve bought a Trezor hardware but I’m yet …[Read More]
Problems with my Ethereum (ETH) node wallet and next steps
I bought some Ethereum (ETH) about 2 weeks ago from Bittylicious. It wasn’t a lot (0.5 ETH) because I’m trying to keep the losses down in case I send it to the wrong place. I also want to dollar cost average my overall entry into my buy and hold Ethereum position. I had 0.5 ETH in my Ethereum node wallet. This was the official wallet from the Ethereum site. It runs as a node on your machine and has to download and then sync with the entire Ethereum blockchain before you can see incoming transactions. And that’s the problem. The blockchain is too big to download at normal internet speeds. I’ve been running this for hours and days. There’s 160,000 plus blocks (which get added to all the time, and maybe faster than you can keep up with), and sometimes, that’s being downloaded to your machine at a block per …[Read More]
Two unplanned new trades (BTC and ETH)….and I need a new Ethereum Wallet
In my previous post, I ended saying I was going to buy some Monero (XMR). This it turns out isn’t as easy as I thought it might be. I couldn’t find one exchange that traded a fiat currency (normal currency), in this case Sterling (GBP) for XMR. The closest fiat currency I could trade for XMR was USD to XMR on Kraken, which I didn’t fancy because I don’t have a USD account (I live in the UK). Even though Kraken looks to have a very good reputation (more on that in a future post). A Google search for ‘Buy Monero’ gave me this result https://www.monero.how/how-to-buy-monero Reading the above page on https://www.monero.how/how-to-buy-monero and the recommended MoneroEric’s guide (which is SUPERB by the way), told me that I needed to buy Monero with Bitcoin and then either swap the Bitcoin for Monero (like Shapeshift) or buy Monero with Bitcoin using an exchange (like Poloniex …[Read More]