What is a Bitcoin wallet and crypto transactions? Hold your horses, buddy! Take your time when transferring your money. Don’t rush, and make sure the sending and receiving addresses are correct. Never type an address. Just copy and paste them. This way you avoid any chance of typos. And hey, it’s faster! After you copy and paste it, always verify the first two characters and the last three characters match your address.

Backup your wallet. Store only small amounts of currency for everyday use online, on your computer or mobile, keeping the vast majority of your funds in a high-security environment. Cold or offline storage options for backup like Ledger Nano or paper or USB will protect you against computer failures and allow you to recover your wallet should it be lost or stolen. It will not, however, protect you against eager hackers. The reality is, if you choose to use an online wallet there are inherent risks that can’t always be protected against.

Exchanges accept a variety of payment options based on what they are willing to use. This is sort of a sore point for many exchanges, since some payment methods have been used to scam sellers for a quick buck in the past. Coinbase allows both bank account and credit or debit card transfers for payments and one payment solution must be linked to your account before you can make the trade. Paypal is not supported by Coinbase and with good reason.

The cryptocurrencies work like this: They are generated by the network in most cases to encourage peers, also known as nodes and miners, to work to secure the network and verify entries or transactions. Each network has a unique way of generating and distributing them among its peers. Bitcoin, for example, rewards its peers (miners) for “solving the next block”. A block is a group or entries with all transactions. The solution is to find a hash that connects the new block with the old one. From here comes the term chain of blocks. The block is the group of entries and the string is the hash. Hashes are a type of cryptographic puzzle. Think of them as Sudoku puzzles that the classmates compete to connect the blocks. Find more information at Fair-bit.

During an ICO (Initial Coin Offering), startups offer the general public an early chance to invest in their idea through a crowded sale. In return, these investors are allocated tokens at a lower price with a promise to sell them at a much higher price when listed on an exchange. Time has proven that ICOs can quite successful with records showing that some tokens ended up more than ten times the value of the projected returns. But what’s the catch in this, you might ask… ICOs have attracted a large number of investors clearly due to their high returns; however, another large number of ICOs have turned out to be total scams. People have lost millions worth of investments.

Kraken is another reliable exchange, they are based in the US and you can buy different cryptocurrencies with ACH transfers, SEPA transfers (great news for our European readers). Kraken is one of the oldest still remaining Bitcoin exchanges. And it is one of the most trusted sites still around. Coinmama buy Bitcoins with credit card or debit card And last on our list is Coinmama. It is a broker site similar to Coinbase and Bitpanda. Here you can buy BTC with a bank transfer or credit/debit card. Coinmama specialises in making it easy for anyone to buy Bitcoins or other cryptos. Both with a card or bank account. It’s an easy to use site and with a good customer support to help you on the way. You need your own Bitcoin wallet before buying BTC at Coinmama. Discover more information on Fair-bit.