FIRST STEPS
Address / Private Key
The simplest form of a bitcoin wallet consists of a piece of paper containing an address and the private key. In the beginning, this was a not uncommon way to store bitcoins for the long term. Today there are much better options and with a paper wallet you are always exposed to certain risks. That’s why we only use the paper wallet to gain a few insights.
A paper wallet can be generated directly on the following website bitaddress.org .
What we have now is a piece of paper with an address and a private key on it. We can share the address and have coins transferred to us. The private key ensures that we have access to the coins associated with this address. No one else should have access to the private key.
The fact that we can generate the address and the private key offline is exciting. The address does not have to be registered anywhere in a database and is not assigned by anyone. It is pure cryptography or mathematics that protects and secures access to the coins.
All transactions and stocks of Bitcoin addresses are stored in the blockchain and can be viewed using a so-called block explorer . For example, we can find out that we have a valid address and that it has not yet been used. It is also exciting to see how many Bitcoins are partially assigned to an address and how large transactions are made:
Binance Cold Wallet:
34xp4vRoCGJym3xR7yCVPFHoCNxv4Twseo
Large transaction:
d486aeb0e59181fd1addb4aa69ce04d638188fc1125c424899267e8ed6a8af24
Now how do we get to bitcoin
Buying Bitcoins today is quite simple. We show you under Buy Bitcoins a few options.
wallets
As we have seen, the simplest wallet consists of a piece of paper with the address and private key written on it. This can be used to receive and store Bitcoins (not recommended), but not to send them. So a wallet is needed that offers even more functionality. Firstly, the management of addresses (best practice is to use a new address for each activity) and also the wallet must be able to generate transactions and transmit them to the Bitcoin network. There are tons of wallets and depending on the requirements, the choice varies.
Under Wallets you will find a small selection that has proven itself for f418.me.
First Transactions
After a successful purchase, you can transfer the bitcoins to your wallet using the appropriate address. If you have a paper wallet with coins on it or you have a Cryptonow gift card, you will definitely want to be able to use these coins later. There are two ways to do this. Either you import the private key into a wallet or you carry out a so-called sweep. With the sweep, a complete transaction is carried out on the address of the wallet (e.g. Exodus). This has the advantage that the coins are then automatically backed up via the wallet backup. With a pure import, the wallet then simply works with the existing address and private key. Often there is not a clear distinction in this regard. The Exodus wallet, for example, makes a sweep, even if the documentation mentions import.