The importance of securely storing cryptocurrencies cannot be overstated, especially with the rise in online transactions, including in areas like sports betting. Platforms like rg.org, which provide information about bookmakers, are increasingly adopting cryptocurrency as a payment method, making secure storage of private keys and mnemonic phrases crucial for bettors. To ensure your digital assets are protected while engaging in activities like betting or any online transaction, using a trusted password manager is the best way to safeguard your funds and data from potential threats. A private key allows you to initiate a cryptocurrency transfer from a specific address. Securing your cryptocurrency private key, passwords, and mnemonic phrases are essential to protecting your cryptocurrency balances. Anyone on the Internet with access to the private key or anything else associated with your cryptocurrency can initiate transactions of any balance stored at the corresponding public address.
Cryptocurrency is typically stored in these ways:
- a digital wallet service, also known as a custodial cryptocurrency wallet;
- a wallet application running on the end user's device;
- a wallet file stored on an offline electronic storage medium.
Many online cryptocurrency wallets suffer from a major flaw: the wallet provider must have access to your wallet's private key in order to initiate transactions on your behalf. Without the private key, digital wallet services cannot initiate transactions on the blockchain. Handing over your secret key to a digital wallet means that you must trust the digital wallet to keep your secret key secure.
Private keys are too long and complicated for most people to memorize. Often, people lose their private keys. If this happens and it's not stored in a safe place, such as a password manager or secure wallet, you're unfortunately out of luck - you won't be able to recover it like a password. Without a private key, access to your cryptocurrency will be denied, and it will be impossible to exchange it for goods, services, or cash. Losing your private key means losing access to your personal data and digital assets.
Instead of relying on a vulnerable online wallet, some people prefer to use an offline storage method. The problem with using offline or paper wallets is physical security and accessibility. Anyone with physical access to an offline wallet potentially has access to the currency stored in that wallet, so it needs to be protected and secured like any other valuable physical asset, such as storing it in a safe deposit box. However, a secret key stored on a thumb drive or printed on paper lying in a safe deposit box is not conveniently accessible.
The best solution to securely store cryptocurrency private keys, passwords, and mnemonic phrases is a password manager such as Keeper Password Manager, which was created to securely store, backup, and synchronize passwords and private keys. Keeper uses 256-bit AES encryption with zero disclosure. The keys used to encrypt and decrypt passwords or keys stored in your Keeper vault are extracted on your device from the master password. Because the keys are stored on your device and are never deleted, there is no way for Keeper or anyone else to decrypt any data stored in your Keeper vault. Everything stored in Keeper is encrypted at the record level, protecting your cryptocurrency even in the worst-case scenario.
Keeper offers many of the convenient benefits of online wallets and cryptocurrency services, while allowing you to maintain the security of an offline wallet by keeping control of your cryptocurrencies private keys. Using a product with zero-disclosure architecture, cryptocurrency wallets, keys or credentials can be securely backed up or synchronized across multiple devices and accessed from anywhere.
The password manager helps you avoid losing your private keys and losing access to large sums of money, giving you total peace of mind. In the event of an emergency, Keeper Password Manager also has an emergency access feature that allows you to transfer access to a loved one, so you don't have to worry about how to pass on your digital legacy.