Best practice: Run Bitcoin Core on an air‑gapped, dedicated machine for cold storage, or use the wallet only as a hot wallet with modest funds.
Do both. Write down your seed phrase on metal (fire/waterproof) and store it in a safe. Additionally, keep an encrypted backup of wallet.dat on an offline drive for convenience. Bitcoin Core Wallet.dat
Regularly back up your wallet.dat file. This ensures that you can recover your funds if something goes wrong with your current wallet file. Best practice: Run Bitcoin Core on an air‑gapped,
If you control the private keys (via the wallet.dat or the seed phrase), you own the Bitcoin. If you leave them on an exchange, you don't own the Bitcoin—you only have an IOU. dedicated machine for cold storage