Honey, I minted an NFT!
Recap: Amy lost her private key.
“It is really easy to retrieve the private key. The challenge is always how to safeguard it from hacks,” said Jessica.
“Hacks! Like what you experienced recently? All these things sound so scary.” Amy looked genuinely worried.
“Don’t worry too much. As long as you are doing things right, the chances are minimal. Let’s settle your private key issue first,” said Jessica. “Now that you have already signed into your wallet, click on the 3 dots below the round logo at the top right corner, and select Account details. Then, select Export Private Key, type your password and you will see the private key. Copy your private key onto a paper and keep it somewhere else safe.”
“Please slow down,” Amy was panicking again. “I am not following. What do I have to do after I click on the 3 dots?”
“Let me share my screen and show you.” Jessica loaded up her MetaMask and shared her screen, “This is my dummy wallet with no coin in it. Please don’t ever show the private key of your wallet with coins to anyone in any situation. What I am doing now is a bad example. I am nagging like an old auntie because this is really, really important. Alright, are you ready? Just follow each of my steps.”
Amy followed closely and retrieved the private key of her account, “Now what? What should I do with the private key?”
“Store it in a place, or a few places that you know no one will find, and it is not likely to be destroyed. For example, you can write it down on paper, laminate it, put it in a fire-rated safe.” Jessica laughed, “I might be a bit exaggerated here, but like the paper you used to write your private key on, it was accidentally smeared because your hand was wet when handling it. But don’t stress too much over it. At this moment, it is good enough if you write it down on paper, put it in a ziplock bag and hide it somewhere you think is safe. Do a few copies and hide them at different places if you think that’s necessary.”
“Should Amy keep a copy somewhere else other than in the house? In case of fire, you know.” Zack crossed his fingers.
“Zack, you have got a good point. Like those days when companies backed up their databases in harddisks, they would keep another copy off the building, so they still have a copy of the data in case of fire to the buildings where the servers were.” Jessica concurred with Zack.
“Oh, such a hassle. Why do people want to use cryptocurrency? Now I have to worry about losing my private key. I am going to have sleepless nights.” Amy covered her face in her palms. “I probably shall just cash out the Eth I have and forget about all these cryptocurrencies.”
“Don’t give up just yet, Amy,” said Jessica. “Now you only have 0.1 Eth in your wallet, so don’t stress too much over it just yet. Come the day when you have much more worth of crypto in your wallet, you can slowly add more security to your wallet. This technology has only been around for just a decade and it is gaining more popularity day by day. Even if it is relatively young compared to many other deep techs, it is here to stay because it solves some serious issues. Just like our money, we need to learn to handle our money in our purse, in our bank account, as an investment and so on. We may find it difficult when we first handle it but we get the hang of it after a while. We do not have any issue handling it because we have been doing that for ages. It will come the day when handling cryptocurrency is as easy as handling our paper money.”
“Yes, madam. I will do as I am told.” Amy put up a salute gesture.
“What other ways to keep the private key?” Asked Zack.
“One of the ways is to use a cold wallet, or a hardware wallet. Let me show you mine. Give me a couple of minutes,” Jessica went off screen and came back with a USB drive lookalike in her hand, “Here is my hardware wallet. This brand is Ledger. It is not a USB drive, even though it looks like one. It stores your private key. It is much more secure than storing the private key in your computer because malware can run on your computer and steal information from it. Malware can’t function on this device. So, your private key is safe.”
“Darling, maybe we should get one of those,” Amy asked Zack.
“You should eventually,” said Jessica, “There are other brands in the market too. You can do some research before deciding on one that you like. At the moment, a hot wallet, like the MetaMask you are using now, is more than enough.”
“Thank you so much for the information. I have been hearing bits and parcels about cryptocurrency for some time but do not dare to touch it partly because I am not confident in handling it. I went as far as installing the MetaMask extension in my Chrome and that’s it. Didn’t go further,” said Zack.
“You are much better than many,” said Jessica.
“Hey, Jessica. Can you tell me why someone went and invented cryptocurrency?” asked Zack, “I have read somewhere that the inventor of Bitcoin is Japanese but nobody knows who exactly he is. Is that true?”
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