Perhaps a start would be not to keep more than, say, a fifth of your cryptocurrency in a single place if you have many millions' worth?
It may have some utility as an asset class but the crypto fan boys seem to ignore that it is largely incompatible with our current financial and legal system.
I’ll happily agree with anyone that Bitcoin is an interesting and novel invention but I fail to see how it does anything useful for me other than as a speculative investment.
Now that crypto markets are a parody of wildcat banks in the 1800s I won’t even touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Edit: I found it amusing when the cafe closed a year later presumably because both owners retired after selling at the peak in early 2018.
If I have to pay for breakfast I’d rather use a credit card app on my phone that has a dispute process and gives me a % cash back.
In Canada those breakfasts would technically be taxable capital gains, which means calculating the adjusted cost basis based on mining input costs and then half of that taxable gain is added to your annual income.
There is just no real incentive to use crypto unless you’re buying something questionable on the internet.
That said, crypto loss is very preventable. Lots of people have put lots of effort to make holding bitcoin/crypto more secure.
“Well, you know, sometimes you die”… doesn’t seem like good investment or fiat currency plan.
Better analogy would be "it is not worth living because you might die"
In this case don't use cryptocurrencies, or at least don't hold your own coins and delegate that to a third-party (keep them in an exchange, etc).
Keeping your coins in a self-hosted wallet is like handling millions in physical cash or precious metals. You can do it, but it requires responsibility and precautions, which is why in the real world it's typically delegated to financial institutions (as in you keep that cash in the bank) and they themselves use precautions such as moving physical cash in armored trucks.
With this kind of amount, you need to take the appropriate precautions and have (or build) a digital "armored truck" and definitely not keep them on an online machine. Use a hardware wallet at the very least, or "build your own" hardware wallet by using an air-gapped machine with no direct access to the internet.
Definitely not. I'm sure that for someone who has middle-level skills at basic IT and basic understanding of cryptocurrencies, safe storage and handling of cryptocurrencies is 10x safer than handling the same amount of physical cash or gold at home. Considering also that you want to use your assets.
If I were routinely transfering tens of thousands worth of cash from my home to somewhere to spend it would surely catch some attention, I would guess. With crypto I can just use it from safety of my own home at online shops and similar.
Typically you can safely work with an independent financial advisor as your money is stored with a custodian like fidelity. Fidelity is on the hook to make basic tax reports, account statements, and provide security for your funds. Obviously a part of that security is controlling transfers and not dealing with dubious business partners.
I can’t point to any vault where my money is stored, but I can reasonably bet that fidelity has enough safeguards that it won’t vanish. I wish there were more such custodians for btc assets providing “cold wallets”. BTC makes audits and other activities to verify nothings gone odd with the custodian for your and everyone else’s accounts without requiring privileged access to the ledger.
Paying .05% for the price large of not having your btc vanish is a bargain.
Have to note that when there are millions or maybe hundred of millions of people with crypto wallets, there will be also some amount of "false positives" reporting lost BTC, for example people who have sent their BTC to wrong address drunk or high, and then afterwards think that its the platforms fault.