Well here we are again. It wasn’t that long ago we saw one of the first major bullruns a few years back when Bitcoin shot up from about $4,000 to $20,000. Now we’ve watched it go from about $13k or so a few months ago, all the way up to $64,000! Pretty interesting and pretty parabolic new high for the godfather of crypto, bitcoin itself. And just like last time I’m seeing people throw very personal hefty sums at the crypto market but unfortunately they failed to learn how things actually work. They usually make their way over to coinbase, pay some ludicrously high fee to grab some Bitcoin or Ethereum, and then just keep it there.

Much to learn padewans! I talked about this in my book, so if you’ve already read that (thank you by the way!) then you already know what I’m about to say. If you don’t hold the private keys to your wallet, you don’t actually own your crypto. The exchange you’re keeping them on does, and anything can happen with that. Breaches are common in the crypto space, the most notorious of which “The Mt Gox Digital Heist.” That happened back in 2014 and many other exchanges have also fallen victim to breaches, usually over a period of months without anyone noticing until it’s too late.

But here we are, seven years later and Bitcoin and crypto mania continue. But you know what? Mt Gox customers didn’t have hardware wallets back then. They were more or less FORCED to keep their bitcoin at that exchange unless they opted for what’s called a “paper wallet.” To this day, most have never had any of their stolen Bitcoin returned to them. Back then it was like the California gold rush of 1849, people were just rushing to own some internet coins. Luckily for you dear reader, times have in fact changed and you can actually protect your funds far more securely than ever before using your own hardware wallet (although I know some people who still prefer paper wallets, which is also fine). As I’ve said before, the idea behind crypto is each coin holder is essentially their own bank. YOU hold your own funds. YOU participate in your own blockchain transactions. YOU lock it up secretly and securely, away from prying eyes and would be attackers. YOU hold your private keys!

If the extra effort to do the above just isn’t something you’re willing to do, please realize a few things can happen. If your local government decides to ban crypto assets entirely, anything you have sitting on an exchange will get seized and frozen. (Yes, this totally includes Robinhood, WeBull and every other brokerage firm that allows crypto trading) You can lose all of your holdings overnight. That alone should make you NOT sleep like a baby. Another thing that can happen is again, the entire exchange can get breached either from an outside attacker or an internal employee (it’s happened before, Capital One). In another instance, the sole owner of an exchange and the only facilitator of the private keys there, died one evening and nobody has been able to move any customer assets since. So all this and more basically puts you at the mercy of other humans. Why would you even bother? How much do you trust perfect strangers? How much do you trust financial guys? People are buying crypto in droves right now because many no longer trust their own country’s fiat currency, especially here in the US where I write this. I mean, I certainly don’t. I know where the dollar is heading and I’m not super stoked about it. Precious metals and Bitcoin are my go to.

So do yourself a favor, if you want to get into crypto:

1. Read my book “Crypto Four Eleven”

2. Secure whatever you buy on a hardware wallet!

3. Sleep easy knowing your assets are safe and can’t be confiscated because only you hold the private keys

Just a quick refresher. Like I said, there’s a lot of new people coming back into crypto right now because of the insane bullrun and this second digital gold rush. I welcome all of you! I just wanted to warn you that there’s still things you need to be wary of and securing what you buy is paramount to you thriving in this fast moving asset class. For tons of other information, background, and avoiding scams go read what I’ve already put out there!

Have a great rest of the week and never trade more than you’re willing to lose, ever. Best of luck!