Crypto Conversations: Jon Najarian and Charlie Shrem of CryptoIQ Discuss Security

Many of our Investitute subscribers have reached out to me and asked “Jon, what do you think of Bitcoin and crypto?” I am very excited about the potential of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and want to bring this excitement and knowledge to our Investitute community.

I’m excited to announce that we at Investitute have partnered with the one-and-only Charlie Shrem of Crypto.IQ, to bring you the most accurate and reliable crypto trading resources.

Charlie and I have become good friends over the last year, and I just had to share his knowledge with you. Whether you are new to crypto trading, or have been a “HODL” investor from the beginning, Investitute and Crypto.IQ will help you navigate the exciting and promising world of cryptocurrencies.

Here are two things to get you started: Sign up for Investitute’s cryptocurrency daily news email for daily updates on what is going on in crypto, and visit Crypto.IQ for access to proprietary crypto research and trade ideas!Jon Najarian: I’m here with my good friend, Charlie Shrem, and we’re talking now about security. Charlie, any time you’ve got a lot of money, you tend to have a lot of people who want to take that money. And crypto is no exception. It’s attracted a lot of less than reputable people into the space that want to get in there and either phish or hack your crypto account, and take your coins. What does an investor do about that?

Charlie Shrem: Just like in the early days of the Gold Rush, you had the honest entrepreneurs and you had the scammers. The less than honest entrepreneurs came out because when there’s a lot of money there’s a lot of people who are waving that money around and are not really sure how to handle it the best way.

Wallets

There are a few security precautions you can take, and that’ll help you sleep at night. First of all, hardware wallets, like a Trezor, a Ledger, KeepKey – these are actual physical little devices where you can, long-term, hold your cryptocurrency and no one can control it.

Then you have two types of wallets, you have the major companies like Coinbase, Zappo, Gemini, Circle – these are what we call “custodial wallets.” They hold cryptocurrency on your behalf. And these are very reputable companies, they are regulated and bonded so they’re holding reserves if something were to happen. And so those are relatively safe.

Then you have software wallets and online wallets, where you keep your cryptocurrency on your computer. They are secure and free, but it comes with a lot more risks because if you click on a link in an email from something that you don’t understand, if you log on to the wrong website, if someone has a virus on your computer, just like with anything, they can get into your bank account, they can get into your cryptocurrency.

So I always say, leave a little bit on your phone or computer. If you have a larger amount, keep it on one of these major company wallets or use one of these hardware wallets. Other than that, if you follow major security precautions that you already know about, like don’t click on an email you don’t know, don’t open up attachments, you’ll be relatively safe. Honestly, I think a lot of the major issues with hacks have been overblown and people getting excited over some little thing.

You can be safe if you follow the same precautions that you’ve been taking when you open up an email every morning at your office.