How much should really sit in a hot wallet?

Most custody incidents don't start with broken cryptography. They start with too much value sitting in the wrong place for too long. Sizing your wallet tiers is one of the highest-leverage security decisions you can make.

Start with data: pull ninety days of withdrawal history and find the 99th percentile daily outflow per asset. That number, plus a buffer, is your hot wallet ceiling. Everything above it should live behind at least one additional approval step.

Warm wallets bridge the gap. They are online but require multi-party approval and enforce velocity limits. Refill the hot wallet from warm on a schedule, and refill warm from cold on a slower, ceremony-driven cadence.

Finally, revisit the numbers monthly. Trading volume shifts, new assets get listed, and yesterday's safe ceiling becomes today's honeypot.