If you are the owner of cryptocurrencies, have you ever heard about the function of Cold Storage? Allow us to give you a brief explanation so you can learn more about what Cold Storage is and some popular storage methods.
What is Cold Storage:
It’s commonly used to store users’ digital assets offline in order to prevent the intrusion from any hackers or malware and secure the crypto coins. In other words, cold storage generates and stores your cryptocurrencies’ private keys in an offline environment.
How should you keep the cryptocurrencies:
It is essential that you should keep your crypto coins in an offline manner to secure their safety because online environment is too vulnerable and full of hacking incidents.
What are the popular offline options of cold storage:
- Paper Wallets:
This is a storing method that contains a pair of private and public keys printed on a paper.
- Hardware Wallets:
This is the safest option for keeping the cryptocurrencies. Such method requires an electronic device such as Ledger, KeepKey or Trezor to store your private keys in a secure physical device.
- USB Flash Drive:
It is the easiest way to cold store the crypto coins by exporting and saving the private keys on the USB drive. However, it is also the riskiest option because anybody got your USB drive can has access to your crypto money. Besides, hardware failures are pretty common with USB drives that you should take into the consideration as well.
- Computer, laptop or phone:
There is no need to use a brand-new device to turn it to the offline purpose; in fact, an old used one that is built by a reputable manufacturer is far more than enough. It is recommended to separate the purpose of usage and even keep offline and online devices physically far apart. And have the old one remained completely offline with only the wallet software installed.
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