What Security Does Cryptocurrency Use?

It’s no secret that cryptocurrencies have become a very big deal and are getting closer to becoming pretty much mainstream. Of course, as things become popular more people think about joining and have many questions to ask before doing so. One of the most common types of questions pertains to the security systems in place. People are of course reluctant to invest their hard-earned money into things if they aren’t certain that it’s as secure as possible. This is completely normal so we’re going to do our best to cover the security systems in place with cryptocurrencies. Let’s get straight into it.

What you can do to protect yourself

Before we get into the backend security that all crypto systems use that is related to the blockchain we’ll first cover what you as a trader of cryptocurrencies, can do to better protect yourself and your coins. Of course, it’s good to be certain that the systems already in place are well made and will ensure the safety of your property. Still, we believe it’s best to first focus on what you yourself can do to minimize the chances for unnecessary losses and so that you can sleep well knowing this.

The main thing we recommend that greatly increases the security level of your coins is getting a physical wallet instead of an online one. Online wallets, the ones that exchanges offer specifically, are always vulnerable to getting hacked and all the coins becoming stolen. Once you get a physical wallet, you can transfer all your currency to it and then store it somewhere safe. Of course, you need to keep the physical object safe now but it’s generally easier to secure the beefy equivalent of a hard drive than it is to rely on the security measures of most online wallets.

Of course, as with anything else keeping your passwords and private keys out of the hands of anyone else is absolutely necessary. Make sure that your passwords are as difficult to crack as possible and also remember to not only keep both safe but also not lose them as that would mean losing access to your currency which would be horrible. This applies to everything online but it’s even more important here as you’re dealing with your hard-earned money so the incentive to keep it safe is even greater than say your Facebook account or Runescape profile.

What protections does the blockchain offer?

According to the experts at Crypto News there are multiple security methods in place which offer redundancy. Redundancy is the most important aspect of any secure system as it means that one thing failing does not cause a collapse (or in this case breach of private funds/data), but rather multiple things need to go wrong. In this case, the main things in use are things such as public key cryptography, hashing, and multiple others. They all come together to create a system that is considerably more difficult to breach than any of the individual parts. 

Public key cryptography is present pretty much everywhere in modern times as it is one of the most efficient ways of utilizing encryption in large-scale systems where you can’t rely on every user to keep their public key safe. Unlike enclosed systems such as those in military or office use, everyone is a liability so asymmetric public key cryptography is used to make sure that one person failing to keep their keys safe doesn’t jeopardize everyone else in the system.

Hashing is also utilized to great effect, in its simplest form hashing is turning a string of characters into some different value which can then be stored in a table of hashes. The reason this is important is that, at least in the type that is used in crypto, it’s nearly impossible to figure out what the input in the process is based solely on the output, providing excellent safety and security that adds onto the pile we’ve already created.

Conclusion

Every single process and option we’ve listed in this text come together to cleanly create a system that’s incredibly hard to breach and even if one part is breached the others are still kept safe. It’s like armor where each part is tough to crack individually, making the total even better in return. Hopefully, you now have a greater understanding of the safety features that cryptocurrencies utilize to keep your property safe.