I am writing this to explain to people how to take custody of their own crypto.

This is a risky thing to do, so before you move forward on your whole stash, try it out on a small amount of crypto, play around with that crypto.

Make some transactions, send it to other addresses that you or your friends operate, try out multiple wallets.

After you’re comfortable, take your whole stash to your own address, and make sure you have some guard rails in place so it doesn’t get stolen.

The first thing you need to do is get a wallet. You can download a wallet app and then create one, completely fine.

I am extra paranoid, so I visit this site - https://iancoleman.io/bip39/, and then I generate a new “BIP39 Mnemonic” with 12 words.

This Mnemonic (or phrase of words) essentially generates a string of text, with which you sign a transaction. This also generates your blockchain address.

So let’s say I generate the following key -

squeeze right earth useful suspect produce ensure seminar ozone whisper buyer crater

Now the address for bitcoin with this key is 12KVBXPkuL9AjpuGamzLx3PLBDSy4FwcoF. You can enter the above key in that website and see that it generates the same.

This is the address where you can receive your bitcoin. You can enter this key in a wallet app and send the received bitcoin to some other address as well.

Similarly, there is a field for “Coin” on that page. Select “ETH” there. You will find an ethereum address in the section below. For the above seed phrase, it’ll be 0xAA3DA290E8D0035bC88C5DA6eA833d961FBf7cc3.

You can send your assets on Ethereum chain (or any other EVM Chain like Base, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Shardeum, etc.) and they will be in your control.

You can send them to another address with an app, or just hold them.

All you need to make sure is you keep the 12 words in a secure place. Ideally you shouldn’t keep in on a computer. You should write them down with a pen and paper and store that paper in a secure place.

Don’t put that seed phrase in any wallet app that you don’t trust. Whoever has that seed phrase can essentially transact with your wallet, and thus take your coins/assets and transfer it to themselves.

Hope this is helpful. I encourage you to ask the AI of your choice for anything you get confused by.

Start with a small amount, play around with it for a couple of days. Once you get a hang of things, create a fresh seed phrase and then transfer your assets to that address.

Happy Hodling!