The most important thing to do when beginning to invest in cryptocurrencies is to practice safe trading. Many newcomers overlook this and end up losing most of their investments due to poor financial decisions, scams, or hacker attacks. With the crypto community rapidly growing, hackers will target unsuspecting newcomers might be easy targets. If you’re not careful, then you can expose your account to hacks through a brute-force attack, scam, or malware infection, leading to all your assets being stolen.
Additionally, if you don’t do enough research prior to trading crypto, then you can easily make regrettable decisions leading to huge losses. Luckily, you can avoid all these risks so long as you understand what to look out for. That’s why you need to learn how to stay safe when trading cryptocurrencies!
Top 8 Ways to Stay Safe When Trading Crypto
If you want to avoid phishing scams and hacker attacks, or you simply want to learn safe trading practices, then check out these top tips for staying safe when trading cryptocurrency:
Do Your Research
Before you begin your crypto trading journey, it’s essential to do some research. For starters, you’ll want to understand what exactly cryptocurrency is, how the crypto market works, and what to expect when trading. Once you start building up your portfolio, it’s also helpful to know how to store and manage your crypto. More importantly, you should fully understand the risks that come with trading before you invest your own money.
Thankfully, there are tons of resources online that you can sink your teeth into. For instance, you can check out Investopedia for trading strategies, market news, hot tips, and even a crypto dictionary. Doing your own research before you start trading can reduce your chance of making poor financial decisions and minimize your losses.
Update Your Software
To reduce your chances of becoming a hacker’s latest victim, you need to regularly update your software. Hackers will exploit software vulnerabilities to infect users with malware and steal their crypto. Many software updates are there to patch these vulnerabilities, so it’s vital to remember to have the latest version at all times. This includes your crypto wallet, antivirus, and operating system. However, we do recommend not enabling automatic updates, as new updates can sometimes include bugs that hackers can capitalize on. Instead, you can wait a day or two and check that the new update is running smoothly before installing it.
Avoid Public Wi-Fi Networks
It’s a good idea to avoid accessing your crypto accounts and trading on public Wi-Fi networks. This is because these public networks are typically unsafe and can make you vulnerable to hackers. Hackers can set up hotspots to access to any information users send when they connect to them. This includes your bank account information, messages, and login credentials. Hackers can also distribute malware through public Wi-Fi networks that can infect your device, delete files, and steal sensitive information. If you have no other choice and need to connect to a public Wi-Fi network, then we suggest using a VPN and turning off your device’s ‘file sharing’ option.
Use a Trusted Crypto Platform
To further protect your crypto assets, you should sign-up for a trustworthy crypto platform that uses experienced brokers to help make trading safe, simple, and swift. A reliable crypto platform will link traders with licensed brokers who have various tools and resources. To ensure you’re getting the best possible trading support, you need a highly secure platform that will make investing convenient and hassle-free.
Bitcoin Up is one of the available safe options to trade crypto. The platform connects you to reliable brokers and “make use of brand new technology to secure your data upon signing up”. This is ideal for beginner traders who need extra guidance when investing in crypto and managing their portfolios.
Enable Two-Factor Authentication
As you set up any crypto account, you should enable two-factor authentication (2FA) whenever it’s possible. This is an extra layer of security that can prevent hackers from gaining unauthorized access to your accounts. After entering your password, you’ll need to verify your account with a second form of verification. This can consist of a code being sent as an SMS, a one-time password through an app, or biometrics such as fingerprint or voice recognition.
Using two-factor (or multi-factor) authentication means that even if a hacker successfully brute-forces your account password, they will need to go through this secondary verification which will be much harder to bypass. Setting up 2FA is very simple and can save you from having your crypto account hacked and your assets stolen.
Use a Secure Password Manager
Another way to increase the security of your crypto accounts is to use a password manager. A password manager is a tool that automatically generates and stores complex passwords in an encrypted vault. With so many different online accounts, many of us struggle to create unique passwords for each one. Some users end up forgetting their passwords or worse, start reusing the same passwords for multiple online accounts. This can leave you at risk of having your account hacked and losing all of your crypto funds.
With a password manager, hard-to-crack passwords generate automatically for each of your accounts. Many popular password managers also have an auto-fill feature that will input your credentials into online accounts, saving you plenty of time when accessing your crypto portfolio.
Avoid Falling For Scams
Unfortunately, the crypto market has many scammers eager to profit off of their victims. To avoid falling for these scams, you need to learn what to look out for and remain cautious when trading. Common crypto-related scams include fake giveaways, phishing scams, blackmail scams, pump-and-dump scams, and fake broker scams. The best rules to follow to help you avoid these scams include: never sharing your personal information with anyone, never clicking on links, and never sending crypto to anyone who promises to send more back in return. If something ever seems like it’s too good to be true, then it’s best to turn the other way.
Be Cautious When Trading
Although this may seem obvious, many new traders make the costly mistake of becoming careless when trading. Investing in cryptocurrency is highly risky and if you’re not careful, you can end up losing all your money. One way of preventing this from happening is to avoid trading impulsively.
You may have already heard of FOMO (fear of missing out) which refers to when traders act on their emotions after seeing other traders profit from a particular coin. This leads them to invest a large amount of their money into a coin before doing the proper research beforehand, leading to losses. Also, if you’re a new trader, then you should start off with smaller investments to help you learn and start to understand the volatile crypto market.
Summary
Becoming a master crypto trader takes years upon years of practice, and this is not a process that you can rush. And always remember, even experienced traders can end up with losses. But losses aren’t all that you need to worry about. Many crypto traders make unsafe decisions that put themselves and their cryptocurrency portfolios at risk.
Hackers are lurking all across the internet, waiting for their next victim to fall into carefully laid traps. That’s why you should follow the rules that we’ve mentioned in this article to help keep yourself safe when trading. Most of these practices are easy enough to do and can drastically improve the security of your crypto assets. So, remain vigilant when trading, learn the signs of crypto scams, and always ensure that your assets are secure at all times!
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