The recent news cycle has been filled with stories that represent the worst nightmares of most cryptocurrency owners.
Imagine knowing that you had a hard drive sitting somewhere unreachable, or you no longer had the passkey. And now imagine that on that hard drive, there’s 7,000 Bitcoin, leftover from when you could buy Bitcoin for less than $1 a coin. Now that same Bitcoin is worth around $34,000 at the time of writing, and 7,000 Bitcoin would be worth $240 million.
This is the cautionary tale of Stefan Thomas, and one that many new and current crypto users are now well aware of. The story was picked up by several media outlets, and it has prompted more and more stories of wallet loss, passkey loss, ledger damage and a wide range of devastating problems, that really should have been avoided.
At Portunus, we’ve developed the solution. Find us at www.portunus.ai and learn more. Our app is live on the Play and Apple stores, so download it now and protect your assets.
Security and Protection
One of the key strengths of most of the cryptocurrencies on the market is decentralised and strong security. However, like with most security systems, they are only as strong or effective as the human users and their activity.
In the beginning, crypto users had to use wallets and exchanges that were not in their own hands. This makes life easy, and you can trust the setup and storage to an established business, with an app and easy to use interface.
For those less tech savvy, exchanges and custodial wallets look like a good choice at first. But over time, as exchanges have been shown to be vulnerable to hacks, and ‘hot’ web wallets can be lost if the company fails, new wallet options have been developed.
Common advice now follows the famous line “not your keys, not your coins” to highlight that if you don’t have access to your wallet without a third party, then you don’t really own that asset.
It’s vulnerable to a wide range of issues, accidental and purposeful. Non-custodial wallets, where only you have the pass-key, and only you can transact through the wallet, are certainly safer from external threats, but more vulnerable to internal ones. Due to the private nature of these wallets,if you get locked out or you lose your passkey, you are out for good.
Recovery
Wallet loss or passkey loss is not necessarily a death-sentence for your investment. Those using non-custodial wallets, often combine the external security with the internal security of a ledger or hardware wallet. Software wallets are hosted and stored online, whereas hardware wallets are physical, and not vulnerable to remote intrusion.
Products like the Nano Ledger S or Trezor work like a physical safe, but one that can be carried in your pocket. You store your sensitive data (passkeys, pins and passwords) on the device, only able to be opened and accessed by you. Alongside the pin to use the device, there’s a 24-word recovery phrase in case you lose the device or forget the pin, and need to access your wallet.
Solution
There’s up to $140 billion of abandoned and lost Bitcoin in wallets — around 20% of the total existing Bitcoin today.
At Portunus, we’ve been working on a new way to secure your non-custodial wallets. Decentralized currencies offer so many potential advantages, but security and recoverability must improve first. To achieve this, our application allows users to tear apart their passkey, pin, bank account number or any other sensitive data, and distribute the parts to remote and reliable ‘trustees’. If a user ever loses their passkey or pin, they can request the trustees return the pieces to them, and within minutes, the wallet can be accessed once again.
Portunus will be the difference between successful crypto investment and stomach-sinking asset loss for the current and future generations or cryptocurrency users.
We believe the cryptocurrency is the future, and our goal is to make it as safe and secure as possible. Find us at www.portunus.ai and find out more.
Our app is live on the Play and Apple stores, so download it now and start protecting your data and digital assets.
