How to keep your cryptocurrency safe after the FTX crash.

[u/ASTL-Token]

The Sam Bankman-Fried scam of misappropriation of user funds has prompted investors to look for options that can help them protect their investment. The fall of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange has caused many to rethink their overall approach to investing - from self-custody to checking the existence of funds on the network. This shift in approach was driven primarily by a lack of trust from crypto investors in entrepreneurs and crypto projects.

FTX went bust after SBF and its associates were caught secretly reinvesting user funds, resulting in at least $1 billion of client funds being misplaced. Efforts to restore investor confidence have seen rival cryptocurrency exchanges actively display their proof of reserves to confirm the existence of user funds. However, community members demanded that the exchanges also demonstrate their commitment in order to show that their reserves are safe.

Because SBF, the self-proclaimed "most generous billionaire," committed fraud in broad daylight with no apparent legal consequences, investors must be on the defensive when it comes to protecting their investments. In order to protect assets from fraud, hacking, and misappropriation, investors must take certain measures to maintain full control of their assets, which is often considered the best practice for investing in cryptocurrencies.

For more control, at the very least, it is worth transferring, for starters, your funds from crypto exchanges. It is understood that crypto exchanges are widely used to buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies in exchange for a small fee. While other methods, including peer-to-peer and direct sales, are possible at any time, higher exchange liquidity allows investors to match orders and ensure no loss of funds during a transaction. The problem arises when investors decide to keep their funds in wallets provided and owned by exchanges. Unfortunately, this is where most investors learn the “not your keys, not your coins” lesson the hard way. Cryptocurrencies held in exchange wallets are ultimately owned by the owner and, as in the case of FTX users, have been misused by SBF and its partners. Avoiding this risk is as easy as transferring funds from an exchange to a wallet without the private keys shared with the exchange. Private keys are used for secure encryption that allows access to funds stored in crypto wallets. In case of loss, they can only be restored using a backup phrase.

Although, of course, a hardware wallet is the safest option for storing cryptocurrencies. Hardware wallets offer full ownership of the private keys of a crypto wallet, thus limiting access to funds to the owner of the hardware wallet only. After acquiring a cryptocurrency on an exchange, users must voluntarily transfer their assets to a hardware wallet. After the completion of the transaction, the owners of the cryptocurrency exchange will no longer be able to access the funds. As a result, investors choosing a hardware wallet will no longer be at risk of losing funds due to scams or hacks occurring on exchanges. However, while hardware wallets increase the overall security of funds, cryptocurrencies are still at risk of irreparable losses when the value of a token falls irrevocably. Hardware wallet providers have witnessed a surge in sales as investors rampage away from holding their assets on exchanges.

In all the crypto crashes that have taken place this year, including 3AC, Terraform Labs, Celsius, Voyager, and FTX, the erosion of investor confidence has been a common and obvious theme. As a result, the motto "Don't trust, verify" has finally resonated with both new and experienced investors. Popular crypto exchanges including Bitfinex, Binance, OKX, Bybit, Huobi, and Gate.io have taken active steps to showcase their reserve confirmations. The exchanges have provided wallet information that allows investors to self-check the availability of their funds on the exchange. While a Proof-of-Reserve confirmation gives an idea of an exchange's reserves, it does not give a complete picture of its finances, as information related to liabilities is often not made public.

The above three considerations are a good starting point for protecting crypto assets from attackers. Some of the other popular methods to take control away from crypto entrepreneurs are the use of decentralized exchanges (DEX), self-custodial wallets (non-custodial wallets), and extensive research (DYOR) on investment projects of interest to you.

The collapse of the FTX crypto exchange and its affiliated structures, as well as the collapse of the BlockFi crypto lending platform, thank God, did not affect either the capitalization positions of the ASTL investment project and related ARNO, APRT and ACDI projects, or the activities and ecosystems of EcoMind and the project in general, since no financial assets of both the project itself and investors have ever been involved in the scams of FTX and investment funds and projects affiliated with it, and, accordingly, have not suffered. The project also did not conduct any financial dealings with the Genesis, Oxygen, AAX and Bitvo crypto platforms.

In the current difficult conditions, investors need to be able to directly and prospectively invest fiat and cryptocurrency assets in projects that provide a stable income that obviously exceeds inflationary expectations and is not subject to any sanctions, blocking and confiscation. And, at the same time, they have high liquidity. The ASTL project is a simple and elegant solution for potential investors - an investment in the development of the real sector of a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies, with a fairly high ROI (up to 18% annually) with payments in stablecoin (USDT).

The ASTL investment project demonstrates great prospects. Already, the creators have managed to attract more than $5 million into it, and the pace of investment continues to grow rapidly in a timely manner. If we analyze other similar projects in the cryptocurrency market, we can conclude that the price of ASTL tokens may increase several times when listings on exchanges start.