This is the best post I've ever found on this subject. May I suggest to admin that it pinned someplace where others can easily find it?BITCOIN HEADACHE RELIEF
By vitruviusbeard, August 4 in Introductions
Posted August 4
If you are having trouble with bitcoin, please let me help you. It is a lot easier then Google would make you believe.
Step 1: Download Electrum wallet. It will give you a set of words to allow access to your wallet. Keep these somewhere safe. It is the only way to access your money if you forget your password, etc.
Step 2: Set up an account with Coinmama. (this takes a bit of time and pictures, but after 12-24 hours you will be able to buy bitcoin immediately) Banks do not like to support bitcoin so only certain vendors can get passed this.
Step 3: In the receive tab of your Electrum wallet you will see a wallet address. You give this to people so they can send you money. The same goes for Coinmama. When buying Bitcoin from that website it will ask you for your wallet address. This is the Electrum address that you copy and paste in. The money has to bounce around the world for a few hours securing your transaction. (Sometimes you will have to restart the Electrum so it will begin to track your order, you may have to do this a few times)
Step 4: OPTIONAL - You can have multiple Electrum wallet addresses if you want, but the only advantage to this is to know exactly who sent you money. That is the ONLY reason. If you do not need to know who sent you money then don't add other addresses, just keep one.
Step 5: To send money, the recipient will have to send you their wallet address. Go to the send tab in your Electrum wallet and paste that address in. Select the amount of bitcoin to send using google (USD to bitcoin, CAD to Bitcoin, etc) to get the exact amount to send. There is a slider bar underneath asking the fee amount you would like use. Its use is how fast the money gets sent around the world. Whether you set it to high or low, it is really not a large amount of money. So I always send high because it is just a nice thing to do for your recipient. I have never used low so I dont know how much longer it takes, but its only a couple of bucks so just use high.
Step 6: Thank Bitcoin for being amazing and giving us freedom with our money.
Edited August 4 by @vitruviusbeard
Question for the author: What about the reliability of CoinMama? One of the things that kept me with Coinbase (other than relatively low fees and it transfers quickly) is that they're established enough that I trust them not to run with my money. Nothing's stopping me from setting up a website called BitJesse (or maybe JesseCoin?), offering super-low fees and user-friendly service, and just pocketing your money. This is the very reason we have the FDIC, but it doesn't protect pretend-money like bitcoin.
I guess what I'm asking for is an addendum to this that includes other bitcoin vendors. Like many others, I've run into plenty of places that won't work with my bank. So even if I weren't concerned about reliability, some people probably won't be able to use CoinMama because their bank refuses it.
Knowing our options would also be useful because Coinbase may eventually go the way of WU and MG and render themselves impossible for us to use.
Thanks again! This was exactly what I was looking for when I started the "Explain it like I'm 5" thread!