Just as we keep our money and our cards in our wallets, our Bitcoins are also store a wallet, but digital. And as important as protecting our physical portfolio, it is to protect our digital portfolio.
A portfolio of Bitcoin can be online, maintained by sites like: Bitgo, Blockchain, Xapo among others, or may be in Exchange as Bitcointoyou, Poloniex among other exchanges. Remember that it is not recommended to keep large amounts of online portfolios, since the services may be unavailable due to maintenance, and can be attacked by hackers, as has happened in some cases, have seen what happened with Mt.Gox and even with Bitfinex
Software installed on your computer can bring security to more than let your bitcoins on exchanges, some of the most popular are: Bitcoin Core, Electrum and multibit HD.
Cases for mobile devices are also available, either for Android, iOS or Windows Phone, some of the most common apps are GreenAddress (Android and iOS), Mycelium (Android) BradWallet (iOS) Copay (Windows Phone).
There are also companies that provide devices (hardware wallet) that are specially designed to be a portfolio and nothing more, making them more secure against vulnerabilities on your computer and against hacking, leading manufacturers are Ledger Nano, Trezor and KeepKey.
With so many storage options, after choosing the one that best fits your needs, you need to know how to protect your portfolio Bitcoin, it is installed on your computer or stored on the web.
If you choose an online portfolio should choose carefully which will use, it is extremely important to make the activation of a form of authentication two-step or two-factor authentication (2FA) in English.
Small amounts: as does not usually keep in your wallet large amounts in Brazilian reais, should keep in your Bitcoin wallet only small amounts for use in their day-to-day. Large amounts must be maintained more safely, for example, a paper wallet or a hardware wallet.
Backup: Make a full backup of your wallet and save it in a safe place, with it's possible to recover the funds in the event of a failure on your computer, theft or lose your phone or other storage device.
Backup Storage Locations: keep copies of your backup in various local insurance can help you if something bad will happen to one of the backup sources. You may use, for example, a pen drive, a CD or other storage medium.
Make Backups often: that way you can make sure that all new addresses generated and all changes in your portfolio will be in your backup.
Encrypt your wallet: encrypt your wallet or mobile will create a security password that will be required of each new transfer values, thereby avoiding the misuse of their funds, remember, however, that this feature does not protect a keylogger software ( software that captures keystrokes).
Set a Complex Password: never create a password containing only words or numbers easy deduction, as these can easily be discovered by hackersatravés some of the programs that they use. For your password is safe and difficult to be broken it must contain at least 16 characters and must contain upper and lower case letters, numbers, special characters and / or punctuation.
Never Forget Your Password: a strong and secure password is often more difficult to be remembered, so you should remember it to be able to remember even after a long time without using, because if you do not remember your password your funds will be lost forever . If you think more secure, annotate and store the password in a safe place.
Any questions or suggestions, leave in the comments!
