The 1000€ Holding Challenge

This post belongs to The 1000€ HOLDING CHALLENGE, an experiment that consists of holding 1000€ in cryptos during the whole 2018. If you want to enroll or know more, here are some interesting posts:

Introduction

In this post I'm going to show you how to securely store your cryptos out of the exchange, so I assume you have bought some and have them stored. The reason why I want to move the cryptos out of the exchange, is because we are going to hold our coins during at least one year, and leaving them in an exchange is not very secure, because it can get hacked or close, and we don't want to loose our money. In this post we will go through:

Jaxx wallet.
MyEtherWallet
Paper Wallets.
Ripple Wallet.
Iota Wallet.
Neo Wallet.

Jaxx Wallet

Jaxx is a wallet that can store different cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, and it is available for desktop, iOS and Android. Also, you have access to your private keys. Lets explain how to create an account.

Just download it in the version that you prefer. You can select the desktop version if you are working on a computer or the phone version. Note that you can setup one "acount" in different devices and you will have your funds available in all of them, but the less devices, the better, because you will be less exposed. Creating a wallet is quite easy:

Select the coins you want to store. You can choose from the typical ones like Litecoin, Bitcoin, Ethereum.
Copy and store the phrase. You can use this phrase to restore your wallet.
Setup a pin code.
You can also copy the private key and save it in a safe place.

MyEtherWallet

MyEtherWallet is a really good option if you want to store Ethereum or ERC20 compatible tokens. Just go to MyEtherWallet, type a password and click in "Create New Wallet". These steps are very important:

Save the JSON file.
Copy the private key to a safe place.

With these both options you will be able to login to your wallet. Using the JSON file + password or just using your private key

In my case I will use MyEtherWallet to store Ethereum TenX and WaBi. Once you have created your wallet, you can send Ethereum to the public address you will find on the right:

If you want also to send a compatible ERC20 token, you need to do the following. Go to "Token Balances" and select "Show All Tokens"

If for example, you want to receive PAY token, search it on the list and click in "Click to Load". Now you will see in the balances a zero. Once you have done that, you are ready to send PAY tokens to your MyEtherWallet wallet.

To sum up, I will store in MyEtherWallet the following cryptos:

Ethereum
WaBi Token
PAY Token

Paper wallet

Paper wallets are a less fancy way to store cryptos, but also the safest one. A paper wallet is just a piece of paper, or pdf file that contains your public and private key of a given currency (i.e. Litecoin). There is not a webapp or desktop app that you can use to send funds, so if you are going to use a paper wallet, note that you will need to import it to somewhere else (like Jaxx) if you want to take your funds out.

Using walletgenerator we can generate paper wallets of different coins. If you want to be 100 % sure that your coins are safe, do the following:

Go to the WalletGenerator Github repository.
Download the content.
Disconnect your computer form the Internet.
Open the index file from the folder you have downloaded.
Select a coin.
Move your move to randomize the key until you reach the 100 % in the progress bar.
Print or store you keys.
Delete the folder you have downloaded, clean the browser cache.

Now you are ready to transfer your founds to that wallet. Note that each wallet is for a specific coin. You can't send Bitcoins to a Litecoin wallet. In my case I will store in a paper wallet:

Litecoin
Bitcoin Cash

Ripple Wallet

To store Ripple I will use this Minimalist Ripple Client. It is very used on the Internet and totally legit. To create the wallet download the zip and run it locally without Internet. In the "Identity" section you can select "Generate Identity" to create your keys.

After that, introduce a password and "Encrypt" your private key. Once it is encrypted you can view it by clicking "Show/Hide Secret". Note that the key you will see is not your actual key, but a encrypted version. You can undo the encryption and get your real key by using your password.

Iota Wallet

We can store Iota coins using the official App available on GitHub. Just download the last release. Install it and you will see the following.

You are asked to introduce a seed. Note that Iota is not the same as other cryptos, where you have a public and a private key. To generate the seed, you can do it from the terminal with the following commands.

Using Linux
cat /dev/urandom |tr -dc A-Z9|head -c${1:-81}

Using Mac
cat /dev/urandom |LC_ALL=C tr -dc 'A-Z9' | fold -w 81 | head -n 1

If you know Python or any other programming language, you can also generate the 81 characters seed. Once you have your seed, you can log in and you will be able to send and receive Iota funds. If you want to get the paper wallet, you can use this link.

Neo Wallet

We will use NeoTracker to store our Neo funds. It works like MyEtherWallet. Just click "New Wallet", set a password and create it. After that, download the keystore file and copy your private key. You can also choose to print the paper wallet. As always, store that file and key in a safe place.

Now you are ready to send and receive funds in you Neo wallet. Note that if you hold NEO you can claim GAS. Use this calculator to calculate the GAS you can claim.

The 1000€ HOLDING CHALLENGE - Storing Cryptos