Welcome to the first Stellar Community tutorial :) For more information about this new category please take a look at this post. This topic is about how to store and send your lumens, here are some top tips:
Don't store your lumens on an exchange
When you buy some lumens, you're more than likely dealing with an exchange so it's always convenient to keep them there which is understandable. The problem is that you're now trusting someone that you shouldn't necessarily trust to hold your coins which can be very dangerous. There have been many crypto exchanges that have been hacked but one of the biggest was the hack of Mt. Gox. Your lumens mightn't be worth too much to you at this moment in time, but that could easily change very soon.
Remember: You don't own your lumens unless you're the one that has access to the private key of that particular address. Get those lumens off the exchange as soon as possible! :runner:
Send small amounts first
If you're about to send a good amount to lumens to another address, don't send them all at once. Imagine you want to send 100,000 lumens to another address (could be to a friend, another address that you own etc.). To be extra safe, it's recommended to send a small amount first to that address to make sure you haven't made a mistake. For example, send 20 lumens to the address, then send the remaining 99,980 lumens. This way, if you copied and pasted the wrong address or made any other mistake, you'll lose 20 lumens rather than 100,000 :blush:
Have a backup of your private key
If you've only got one copy of your private key, you're living dangerously! Always have more than one copy of your private key and make sure that they are safe and secure. It's not much good having your private key on one of your computers and that's it - what would happen if it got stolen or it just stopped working?! If you lose access to your private key you can kiss your lumens goodbye! With crypto you've got more control over your money but at the same time you've got to look after your own stuff because nobody else will :lock:
Keep an eye out for hardware wallets
At this moment in time, there aren't any hardware wallets that support lumens, but I'm sure that'll change in the near future. Hardware wallets allow you to safely store your coins without worrying about what will happen if your computer gets a virus for example. One very popular hardware wallet is the nano ledger S but at this moment in time it only supports the likes of bitcoin, ethereum and ripple - but again, they keep adding more and more cryptocurrenies so hopefully stellar is on the roadmap :map:
Don't tell people how many lumens you have
I noticed there's a thread on here asking people how many lumens you own - this seems fine at first but you could potentially make yourself a target by telling people this. If one person owns 100 lumens and another owns 100,000 lumens - who do you think a hacker would rather try go for!? At the moment you might think "Nobody will try hack me since I own so little" but in a couple of years those lumens could be worth a lot of money and now everyone knows how much you own. Sometimes you're better off keeping some things to yourself :zipper_mouth:
And that's it! Hopefully you've learned a thing or two after reading this first tutorial :) Again, if you want to write up a tutorial to share with the Stellar Community get in touch with me :thumbsup:
