How to Buy Bitcoin and Ethereum as Simply and Securely as Possible
In recent months the meteoric price rise of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum has led to more and more readers approaching Finance Magnates staff with requests for help getting into this market.
The number of possibilities, different opinions and new technologies can seem overwhelming and prevents many from even getting started. To provide you with an easy and simple solution we created this guide for buying your first Bitcoin.
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Find an exchange
The first step is to find an exchange that will accept your fiat currency (USD/EUR/GBP…) with a transfer method that is available to you. There are a great deal of such exchanges, some regulated some not, all over the world, and it is highly advised that you check for yourself which one you trust with your money. Two popular options that you can look at are localbitcoins.com and Coinbase.
Coinbase is a San Francisco based company licensed by New York’s Department of Financial Services, to offer Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. It has over 8 million clients and serves over 30 countries including the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore and much of Europe. It accepts PayPal, bank transfers and credit/debit cards. For a special deal for Finance Magnates readers click here.
If you are not willing or able to send a bank transfer or credit card payments you still have the option of buying in person with cash using localbitcoins.com. This person-to-person service supports all currencies and many payment methods such as cash, Neteller, Webmoney, Skrill, Moneybookers, PayPal, Western Union and more. For a special deal for Finance Magnates readers click here.
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Get a wallet
Exchanges are not considered a safe place to store your cryptocurrency long term, for that you will need a ‘wallet’. This means a piece of software, a hardware device or an online service which stores your private keys to your crypto funds.
There are a lot of options for cryptocurrency wallets and many have proven in the past to be insecure or fraudulent, therefore it is best to keep an eye on the wallet provider you use and always follow best practices for securing your wallet. These include picking a strong password that you will remember, enabling multi-signature, encrypting the wallet and routinely backing it up on several locations such as on USB keys.
The simplest and most secure way is to have a dedicated hardware crypto wallet. The two most popular options for this are TREZOR and KeepKey.
KeepKey works with the wallet software on your computer by taking over the management of private key generation, private key storage, and transaction signing. It supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Dash and Namecoin.
TREZOR was created by the Prague-based firm SatoshiLabs, known for its Slush mining pool. It supports Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Dash, Ethereum Classic and ZCash.
nice informative article, however i had nothing but frustration when i was trying to open a wallet with coinbase.
As i was not in the same country to my passport it would not recognize it. Moreover, no humans on support so they cannot answer queries about how to resolve it. This was a common hindrance found by many on the forums.
I had the same experience. Hence we use xapo now and also we creating our own native waller for bitcoin and ethereum for binary.com to bypass this headache.
Thanks for that I will give them a try.
I think if someone can offer a service with human support they will grab a decent market share.
Surprised nobody from retail FX have not seen this,
Better option.
Same experience here.
Coinbase is a joke. I bought 6 BTCs thru them last year for $650/BTC and tried to sell 3 of them thru Coinbase when the price hit $5500 … couldn’t do it … and there is NO SUPPORT at all from that “exchange”!!
After you signup with coin coinbase , funded your account and start buying cryptos. You can actually transfer your crypto assets to your EtherWallet if you already created your EtherWallet in the first place.
In its turn I find Ethereum and Bitcoin useful for buying tokens of other types of cryptocurrency, for example newcoming STFCoins
Coinbase isn’t a safe exhhange for bitcoin trades.
Matter of fact, any exchange where registration requires linking an existing bank account while signing up isn’t a safe one.
This article is insightful. But I wish the Finance Magnates articles can be shared on WhatsApp too.