Scammers & Hackers
If the exchange gets hacked or laws change and force something to happen to your cryptocurrency, you have no power.
There is a phrase in crypto, “Not your keys, not your Bitcoin” Which means, if you don’t have exclusive ownership of the private key to a wallet then it's not your Bitcoin. An account on an exchange has access to withdraw from a wallet, who generated that wallet? You can control the balance while logged in, what happens when you can’t log in?
The best exchanges can go down and at that moment there is nothing you can do. If it was a hack, or a glitch where would you rather have your Bitcoin sitting? In Bitcoin history, Mt.Gox is a warning of why you do not leave your Bitcoin on an exchange.
When you buy Bitcoin from an exchange, withdraw it to your address. Exchanges have different fees for buying bitcoin except for Strike that has no fees for buying Bitcoin. Strike only sells Bitcoin. If you are hodling any cryptocurrency, do not leave them on the exchange. Withdraw them to your private hardware wallet.
An example of proper hodling is to use a hardwallet to generate a 24-word phrase, transcribe the phrase on a metalwallet and hide it. Burn the paper and never share the location of the metalwallet. Now when you send Bitcoin from the exchange to your address, you securely OWN that Bitcoin.
Never share your 24-word phrase with anyone who asks, they are trying to steal your cryptocurrency
A common scam on live streams is asking you to send an amount of a cryptocurrency, in this case, it's Cardano(ADA), and you’ll get back double for free. . . sounds great right?
Clearly, if you send any funds to a campaign like this you’ll lose them. Like in anything, if it sounds too good to be true, it's a scam.
It’s common for scammers posing as someone else to comment on your facebook posts or youtube comments with some message on why you should join a telegram group or contact them. They will use multiple accounts to make fake conversations to lure victims in. These are all scams. If you join, they will use every trick and tool they have on you without remorse.
Be sure you are on the correctly spelled website and it has a valid security certificate.
Scammers and hackers will never stop. They will email, text, call, message using fake accounts, or hack your friends' social media account to reach you. Do not take them for granted and protect yourself by being vigilant. Keeping your private key in a metal wallet and find a way to never need it so it can remain hidden
Restoring private keys can be dangerous because scammers will make fake websites and wallet apps trying to get you to give away your seed phrase. Take your time to make sure the website you are on is the correct spelling and has a valid security certificate.
Here is an example of this attack that imitated a popular softwallet Exodus. An unsuspecting user downloaded the fake wallet from the fake website and attempt to restore their private key. Using the fake app resulted in them giving away their seed phrase to scammers. Watch this video they made as a warning to all new to crypto.
exodus.com vs. exodus.phrasecheck.com is what a scammer site may look like to trick you.
Having a hardwallet can make you immune to all of these attacks if you keep your private key safe.