Looking for a way to protect your private wallet keys?
Try writing them down, cutting them up, and placing each piece of paper in different bank vaults across the country.
Extreme right?
Well maybe not if you have cryptocurrency that is worth around $1.3 Billion USD at current prices.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have done just that with hopes of protecting their $1.3 Billion worth of Bitcoin.
The Winklevoss twins began buying bitcoin back in 2012, when bitcoin was trading for around $10 per coin.
To fund their purchases, they used roughly 18% of the money they received from the settlement reached with Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook.
That 18% equated to about $11 million dollars. (The total settlement was for $65 million USD)
Which bought them about 120,000 Bitcoins.
They were laughed at during the time and ridiculed for putting that amount of money into bitcoin back then. Now people call them geniuses.
Funny how quickly things can change.
Either way, the Winklevoss twins aren't taking any chances with losing their wallet keys or having them fall into the wrong hands.
Plus it probably helps remove the temptation for them to sell as prices seem to make new highs just about every week.
Is this something you should do with your wallet keys or your steemit master password?
Probably not, though there is something to be taken from this story about keeping your password safe and well protected.
At the very least it should be stored offline, and you should possibly have a physical copy of it as well.
You don't want to be the person, when steem is trading for $100 per coin, telling some news paper how you had 10,000 steem that you can't access because you lost your password many years ago.
Don't be that guy.
Stay informed my friends and happy holidays!
Sources:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5210417/Winklevoss-twins-cut-key-1-3b-Bitcoin-fortune.html
Image Sources:
https://bridge909.org/eightonesixty/oneyearanniversary/
http://www.businessinsider.com/winklevoss-twins-on-bitcoin-2013-11
Follow me: @jrcornel
absolutely right
Yes, 100% right.It's so much important to all.
and people gona be like
Hahaha . My uncle is one whom my Dad helped open an account and funded it with 100 steems and he never saved the password . As steem rises I can see my uncle already worried.
Agreed! 100 % :)
Peace
Cool
Merry Christmas
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What do you consider the best way of protecting your crypto assets? I have a Nano Ledger and I hand wrote all my passwords - what else do you recommend?
Nothing else... but perhaps running a vpn also?
Great strategy.
I have a buddy who had several Bitcoin but then lost his password, he bought in 2012, and forgot about them till this year when bitcoin started blowing up. He had a few bitcoin, he didnt say how many.
Anyways he finally tore his place apart looking for his old cell phone to unlock the wallet, but couldnt. Fortunately he found his paper wallet the salesperson gave him when he bought the BTC from a private seller!
Also I would just like to put this out there:
Winklevoss for President 2020, 2024, 2028 and 2032!
Regarding steemit I still do not know what is a safe way for most of us to store are keys. Every time I make a transaction I always need it on hand. I do at least one transaction a day. Curious what ways to protect a steemit key?
I currently have it stored on a usb drive but not encrypted. I have heard about spyware and key loggers so have up to date security software on the computer. Still the fact that the key is used daily makes me feel vulnerable.
Awesome story @jrcornel going to be sharing this with friend and family!
Smart men making smart decisions. It's a shame Zuckerface got the best of Facebook.
Regarding security, at least have a fire safe in your home. Trusting even one word to an outside source is risky to me.