How to KEEP your crypto and wealth for 5+ years

I got into bitcoin back when it was $5. I bought thousands of USD worth of bitcoin at this time. I bought hundreds of dollars worth of dogecoin almost a decade ago now. I'm broke. Why? Because my security and practices at holding/storing crypto were mediocre.

I now believe it doesn't matter how much crypto you have if you're not enacting the BEST practices because you're going to lose it.

I'm going to explain exactly what I do now and feel free to chime in if you have anything to add. Combining all of this is very important because the chances of you getting hacked, losing a seed phrase, reformatting your pc, etc are very high. Exchanges also get hacked.

Every exchange I used when I first got into crypto is gone and most ran with all the money.

Hot/Cold Wallets

Use multiple wallets. Hot wallets are for actually using the blockchain. Cold wallets are for storing things. When you need to buy something move money to your hot wallet.

When you buy an NFT use your hot wallet.

Buying some coin on a dex? Hot wallet.

Your cold wallet should ideally be a hardware wallet and should never interact with any contract. Just do simple transfers. This will save you from getting exploited. Especially on EVM based chains bad actors can add code to seemingly innocuous contracts and functions.

Hardware Wallet

Use a hardware wallet. This gives you a physical layer of security. You HAVE to physically interact with the wallet to ok a transaction. This is a great investment. No one can remotely control your computer with a trojan and steal your money unless you ok it on your ledger.

Make sure you buy a ledger or trezor directly from the vendor or maybe their official Amazon store.

If your seed phrase gets compromised anyone can steal everything on your hardware wallet btw. So it's really only as secure as your seed phrase. Think of a hardware wallet as a key to unlock your crypto which is on the blockchain. It's not actually stored on your hardware wallet. Your seed phrase generates this key and is something you can never lose or share no matter what.

Backup your Seed!!

This is important. Eventually your computer will go corrupt. Someone will clean your room and donate your ledger thinking it's some outdated USB storage stick. This literally happened to me several months ago when I was doing construction in my computer room (I got it back and didn't lose anything).

100% make sure your seed phrase is backed up. Not just in one place but in multiple places. What you can do is use a cypher to protect your seed. Now people can't steal it even if they find your written seed.

What I did was translate each seed phrase into a number based on https://coldti.com/coldti-bip39.pdf

Then I performed Modulus 3 on every word and wrote the number. This divides the number by three and throws away the remainder. I then sent the remainders to myself and backed them up on several places online. Now if someone finds my seed and somehow figures out what I did there are 3²⁴ combinations to crack it. This will stop 99.9% of people.

Save your Seed in Metal

Buy a cheap titanium seed kit on amazon. I hammered my seed phrases into titanium and hid them at my parent's houses. Again I used the modulus 3 basic cypher I described and put the remainders on a cloud service. This is important because you want backups in multiple locations. There can be fires. Robberies. Floods. You need something tough.

Seed phrase and private key security

Absolutely try to avoid ever typing your seed phrase or copying and pasting it on any device that is or will be online. Never send it to yourself in email. Never encrypt it with a commonly used password and store it on dropbox.

A decade ago I lost all my dogecoin because I copied and pasted my private key. Turned out there was malware that instantly detected it and emptied out my address. That was a decade ago. Imagine how advanced this stuff is now.

Don't get greedy with APRs. Only use the safest Exchanges

People get greedy with yield. They'll throw everything on some new exchange giving 5-10% interest. It doesn't matter how much interest you get if the exchange gets hacked or steals everything. Literally every exchange I used years ago is gone. Assume that'll happen to every exchange we have today. I would guess Binance, FTX, and Kucoin are safe right now but who knows. Ideally you should store all your stuff on a cold wallet which is a hardware wallet.

Don't hold bridged assets Many people don't realize when they're holding bridged tokens. These are tokens that may represent Ethereum on Binance smart chain for example. They're worth 1:1 with ethereum because this bridge holds one eth for every one BSC eth. These bridges are constantly hacked and holding assets from them is very high risk. It's safer to use an exchange like kucoin and sell assets and buy the asset on it's chain of origin. Hold eth on eth chain. Hold BNB on Binance smart chain. Hold Solana on Solana chain.

Ronin bridge, harmony, binance and many others have been hacked for billions at this point. Holding these assets is incredibly high risk.

Any other tips?