Don't be like Thomas.

Here's How to not lose access to your coins AND protect yourself against getting hacked at the same time.

TL;DR:  You'll Want A Multi Sig Wallet + Backups
It's like 2 factor authentication, but for your crypto. And yes, I agree, this is really annoying to set up. Buuut remember, don't be like Thomas. You don't wanna wake up to millions in crypto in 2030 but no way of accessing it.

How Does This Multisig Wallet Thing Work
So a common setup is 3 wallets and a threshold of 2. You could have 2 hardware wallets and 1 MetaMask for example. 2 out of 3 wallets are required to do transactions. That way, if you lose access to one of your wallets you have a backup.

If you need a quick explainer on what wallets are, here's a past thread of mine.

Seed Phrase Backup
So you have multiple wallets in use and multisig set up. Congrats, you're a G and way ahead of most people! So what are the chances your hardware wallet(s) ever get stolen, lost or straight up stop working?

If they're greater than 0 (hint: they are!), you should prob have a backup The 24 word "seed phrase" is the master password to your hardware wallet. You can regain access to your money with this... But so can everyone else if they have it. Therefore: Keep it suuuuuper safe!

On Password Hygiene
You need great password hygiene:
• Have strong and UNIQUE passwords for your wallets
• Store them in a password manager
• Strong and unique passwords means A DIFFERENT PASSWORD for every wallet

"Is this really worth all the effort?"
"I don't have that much crypto anyway..."
If this is you, that's totally fair.
And I know plenty of people that have their crypto on Coinbase. I'll talk about the pros and cons of being your own bank vs using Coinbase next time though.

As far as how to implement all of this multisig stuff for Ethereum and DeFi wallets, @gnosisPM is pretty much the industry standard right now.

To be continued

[Photo by Emil Kalibradov on Unsplash]