The Golden Rules
This list highlists some of the most important rules for your safety in cryptoasset investing.
Our "Top Six" List of Lessons for Crypto Investing
Never Share Your Private Key - If you don't own your key, you don't own your coins. Protect your private key like you would protect a pile of cash.
Avoid Online Seed Generators - The vast majority of online seed generators are compromised by hackers. If you need to generate a seed or private key for a paper wallet or certain other type of wallet, always do it with an offline script on a computer that is not connected to the internet. Also, make sure that the script is one that is endorsed by the official developers of the project. Even an offline generator can be dangerous if a criminal sets it up to distribute seeds from a certain small list of pre-populated compromised seeds that he or she has set up.
Don't Trust Strangers - Many of the people whose advice you read on the internet are, at best, badly misinformed. There is a surfeit of blatantly false information posted on Reddit and other forums. These forums are also populated by large numbers of scammers and hackers. Verify everything before acting upon information that you read from anonymous strangers on the internet.
Use Resources Endorsed by Developers - Don't trust third-party wallets, websites, or any other type of resources found on the internet unless they have been officially endorsed and code-reviewed by the actual developers of the cryptoassets that you are investing in. A good starting point is the "sidebar" in the official Reddit community for a crypto, although some nefarious resources have even snuck into these lists in the past.
Understand Your Investments - If you don't understand the technology, learn the technology. Otherwise, you won't be able to tell when a project description is simply smoke and mirrors. If you don't understand coding, learn to code. It may take a year or more, but it's a great life skill to have.
Learn to Keep your Computers Secure - If you're not fully comfortable with the use of computers, and in knowing how to keep your devices secure, this is another great life skill to have. Computers will only become more prevalent in our society in the future.