I am seeing alot of people asking the question how can I secure my Bittrex account due to so many people now having their accounts hacked so this post and video is going to walk through a few simple steps on how you can secure your crypto trading Bittrex account.
The video below is a step by step guide on how to set up the security features on your Bittrex account and most cryptocurrency exchanges will have similar options.
Rules For Securing Your Bittrex Account
Rule 1: Don’t store more on Bittrex than you are willing to lose. Any coins you are not day trading should be stored off the exchange in a desktop wallet like Exodus or the dedicated wallet for that particular coin. Basically any coins you are holding long term get them off and into an offline wallet or an external hardware wallet. My own personal recommendation for an external wallet is the Ledger Nano S – Get Your Ledger Nano Here
Rule 2: Set up 2 Factor Authentication – This is done through the Google Authentication app. First you install the app on your smartphone and link it to your Bittrex account. Once it is set up it means that any time you try to log into your Bittrex account it will first ask you for your password which is step 1 and the step 2 is that it will ask you for your 6 digit code which you get from the Authentication App. The code on the app changes every 30 second so it makes it very secure.
Rule 3: Never enable Withdraw permissions on any of your API keys. Alot of people use API keys to allow third party apps like Coinigy access to their accounts. Coinigy is a very good charting app and when you connect your exchanges API key you can execute trades through Coinigy. There is nothing wrong with using API keys just make sure noone else gets them and also that you never enable withdraw permissions through the key.
Rule 4: Optional – White-list the IP Addresses you use most which means that trades or withdrawals can only ever be executed by someone is is connected through them particular IP addresses. This can be a very secure option but also a big pain as most times your IP address will change each time you connect to the web unless you have set a static IP address or you are using a VPS that has a set IP address.
Rule 5: Withdrawal White-list. White-list all your own wallet addresses so your coins can only be withdrawn to them. Basically this means that you can all your own coin withdrawal addresses as the only ones that coins from your account can be withdrawn to. This means that if someone does get access to your account then they can’t withdraw your coins to their account.
Summary of How to Secure Your Bittrex Account
Hopefully this has helped you and you will be able to secure your accounts going forward. The most important step is rule 1 and to always take coins off the exchange that you are not using daily. I will soon start a video series on how to set up a wallet for each of the coins I own myself and a few other coins as well.
Let me know if there is anything else you have found that helps secure your account so it can help others too. If your new to trading cryptocurrencies then check out my post on How to Trade Cryptocurrencies which has a step by step guide and also a detailed video showing how to trade on Bittrex.
PLEASE SHARE this post to help other secure their Bittrex account and make it alot harder for hackers to steal money from Bittrex users.
