Take care of your private keys. Save a backup of your wallets. Custodians are not wallets.

One will be sad to have a fortune and lose it because of private keys not being stored properly. The worst will be to lose your coins to a hacker. That is why if you hold or you are going to host your private keys, you must do your homework before starting and dedicate some time to it so that you better understand what you are doing. Even if you already know how to set up your wallets and save your private keys, you should still read this article; my advice may help you in the future.

When backing up your private keys, make sure you are not doing anything else but just that task, that way, you will prevent any errors on your part; in case you lose concentration. You may write down one word of your wrong seed phrase and make your whole wallet invalid. If possible, write down your keys on paper and verify your seed phrase before sending any significant amounts.

An excellent way to verify that you have your 24 words seed phrase is by sending and small amount into your new setup wallet and processing to delete your newly created wallet so that you can restore your wallet from recovery seeds. That way, you will know your seed phrase works and that you have access to your funds.

When writing your seed phrase, you could do it on a piece of paper but make sure no one else has access to that paper and that it is protected against fires and floods if you want to have your phrases on an offline form. The other way will be to write your seed words into a document file like Writer for Open Office or Word for Microsoft Office.

When writing down those words for the first time, it will be a good idea to do it on a PC disconnected from the internet and, if possible, use a newly installed version of Linux or even a Live USB stick. Once you write down your words, you must protect that file with a password that you haven't used before on any other place—and put that document inside a WinRar file to defend it with another different password.

Once your text file is protected by a writer or word password, cover it with a compressed password. In this case, WinRar, you could also put that file into another folder and compress it so that your phrase key will be protected by three different passwords, make sure they are not the same as your email password or any other online service. And make sure you can remember them as well.

Once your seed phrase is protected, you could upload your file to Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, but make sure those services are covered by a different password than the ones you used in your recovery phrase. Also, make sure you put a second-factor authentication (2FA) in your online accounts.

This way, your recovery seed phrase will be protected by four passwords and one 2FA token. Also, you will protect your seeds against accidental loss and add your backups at home, like having your files on a secondary hard drive if in case you lose access to your online accounts you still have your backups in your house or secure place as well.

Having your private keys and hosting your private keys is a responsibility that you must do to protect your money, and there are no compromises on this unless you want to use custodian services. If you wish to use custodian services, you wouldn't be better off using cryptocurrencies. Part of being your bank is being responsible to yourself first and most. Otherwise, you could end up losing your satoshis to a hack.

I would also recommend that you learn to use Linux distributions to use your device to access your coins, it is always good to have a dedicated device when it comes to using the blockchain, and you must make sure you can remember your passwords too. And use passwords that are easy for you to remember but hard for hackers to guess. I hope my advice can help someone out there on the internet.

I recommend that people use online backup tools because it is easy to save files. You can still access your private keys if you lose your USB sticks or external drives. Having your private keys on online storage also could help you if you need to restore your keys in another location or if you suddenly need to change your location. Another thing that I would recommend is for users to use Authy for their 2FA application because that app helps you recover your 2FA tokens with just a phone number and password.

So in case, you lose your device or phone, you can restore your 2FA passwords fast by using your phone number or email to recover your tokens. Also, make sure you set yet another password to protect your 2FA credentials.

As you can see, it is all about passwords and different passwords for each thing, and you must remember them correctly. Still, you also must make them hard for hackers to guess, and that way, you will have your bank secure, and you will be your bank without having to rely on custodian services. That is an advantage of using cryptocurrencies, but you must be willing to learn to use them properly for those features to be helpful to you.

The best solution to save your seed phrase or private keys will be on your hardware devices, and backup never goes online, even if protected by many passwords. And it will be better to have at least three copies in secure places that only you know and can't be found by others. Encrypted or enterprise USD units could be used to store the seed phrases, a physical safety box to save a hand-written seed phrase, and hardware wallets instead of a software wallet.

And never leave your coins on custodians like Celsius, Nexo, Gemini, or Coinbase because you never know when those services may decide to run with your money, just like Celsius is doing just now. And if you want to trade, use decentralized exchanges like Mist, Tango, Verse on the SmartBCH network, and Sovryn on the Bitcoin BTC sidechain Rootstock RSK.

If you have something else you would like to add, please, by all means, leave your comment in the comment section, and I will respond to your comments and ideas. And if you could add your knowledge to this topic that would also be wonderful.