Hey /r/btc community, I'm Josh McIntyre, also known as chaintuts. I've been creating free and open-license educational content about cryptocurrency security for the last 6 years. I cover cryptography, security, and development in open blockchain ecosystems.
I recently released an open-source book on protecting your BCH, BTC, and other crypto assets against all of the interesting (and perhaps intimidating) threats out there and wanted to share it with you all. This book is an in-depth guide to understanding security for everyday users from beginner to expert. It dives into crypto key formats, securing exchange accounts, managing self-custody keys, and understanding common threats.
For example, there's chapters on:
- How passwords are stored and cracked, and how to construct a strong, difficult to crack password
- Proper hardware wallet backups and layered security strategies such as BIP39 passphrases
- Common social engineering attacks such as investment scams, seed phrase phishing, impersonation, and recovery scams – with real-life examples I've compiled throughout my years in the space
- Malware threats like clipboard-swapping and seed-scanning
I've been involved in the space for over ten years and creating content for six, so I've seen a lot of security-gone-wrong scenarios — especially around key management and resisting social engineering attacks.
Like all of my videos, articles, and code demos (CC-BY, BSD), this book is published under an open license (CC-BY-SA). You can read the entire book for free on the chaintuts Github and freely share it with others. If you'd like to support free and open education, you can purchase a nicely-formatted paperback or ebook on Amazon.
- Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F47FMHPK
- EBook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F3WJ6MTJ
- Open Source Repo: https://github.com/chaintuts/crypto-book
Somewhat ironically, I'm still working on a way to distribute the paperback and ebook for cryptocurrency payments, so if anyone has suggestions on platforms/website integration solutions I'd love to hear them. KDP makes publishing easy for reaching a wide audience, but I'd love to take crypto for a crypto-security book. I want this knowledge to be widely available and accessible.
I'm active in this subreddit and other crypto-focused communities and I'd love to answer any questions folks have about securing your assets or about the inner workings of Bitcoin cryptography and security. Here to learn and teach!
