Digital assets are ‘peer-to-peer’ like Bitcoin and Ethereum. That way, without asking for permission, you can send them anywhere in the world. However, it means that you are also responsible – and you alone – to secure your possessions. The Bitcoin.com Wallet secures crypto assets as a vault protects authentic goods, and you need a proper access key in both circumstances. However, as the Wallet of Bitcoin.com is non-custodial, no third party (nor anybody else) possesses the key. You’re only it. This means that you need to be very careful about how your key is stored. You lose access to your crypto-assets if you lose your key. For more information, visit BitQT.

The Issue of Securing Payments Online

Securing online credit or debit cards makes it difficult to mask the attacker as the initial cardholder by revealing a 16 digit card, expiration date, and a three-digit CVV number. To address this risk, solutions such as online payments services (PayPal) need to be authenticated by a login and a password. Passwords are, however, often insufficient entropy and often reused on several websites. Thus, they can be cracked by brutal force.

An attacker may mask an attacker as the user on websites that reuse this information in a single leaked password database. Notably, a www.haveibeenpwned.com website has been established to help individuals verify that they have access to their usernames or passwords in the wild. Most online payments nowadays are fundamentally problematic since the user has no autonomy in terms of money. It is supposed that consumers need to trust their bank to hold and validate their money properly before allowing bank payments.

Indeed, if a fraudulent payment happens, it is the customer’s responsibility to prove that it is not theirs. Moreover, the bank’s solvency is maybe problematic and might lead to losses in the consumer’s savings before starting online payments. To promote progressively insolvent banks, consumers with savings of more than EUR 100 million at the Bank of Cyprus or the Laiki Bank were compelled to face up to 47.5% haircuts.

Save your Wallet

You can configure a biometric or a PIN when you initially install the Bitcoin.com wallet on your phone. Therefore, “back up” your wallet is crucial. Saving your wallet means you create and save a backup key outside your phone. The cloud backup service is maybe the easiest way to do this. Here, you create a single personalized password, which decrypts a file stored in Google or Apple iCloud.

You need to log in to Google Drive or Apple iCloud using the Wallet app to access the cloud backup function. Also, manual backups can be created. In this example, for each digital wallet of your Bitcoin.com wallet, a random collection of 12 words (a phrase) is assigned. Then, you will be required to enter your 12-word password when you reinstall the app on a new device to access any one wallet. Your Bitcoin.com wallet has several wallets, one for each blockchain. You, therefore, have a BTC bag, a BCH bag, and an ETH.

As many wallets as you wish can also be created. In addition, you can have many digital assets within “my ETH wallet,” for example – like ETH, USDT, UNI, and so on, that live on the Ethereum network. This means you are safeguarding access to all the crypto assets kept in the wallet by backuping your “My ETH Wallet.”

Management of Passwords

Whether you select a password that decrypts your entire wallet or several 12-word auto-generated phrases matching each wallet in your Bitcoin.com wallet, you have to stick to recommended practices for password management. First of all, you should never digitally keep your credentials because you can steal them from hackers. Instead, you can use your handwritten password to take screenshots or digital pictures.

The best approach for most individuals is to write the password/passphrases physically on a piece of paper and save it in a safe place. You will want to copy the paper (manually) and store these copies in different locations if the crypto-assets in your wallet are worth a lot (i.e., one at your house or one at the family member’s residence).

Note that everyone with the passcode can access your wallet for manual backups (and steal the assets in it). While you have an extra layer of protection for a cloud backup service, you must first input the other master password you set by an attacker on your Google or Apple account. You make it challenging for a hacker to set up a Google or Apple account using 2-Factor Authentication.