My Bitcoin Journey

[control_freak]

Hi,
I have been a long time lurker here, so I thought I would give back to the community some with my bitcoin experience. At first, I HATED IT so much because I wasn't doing it right. I got on crypto.com and bought bitcoin but had trouble sending it to legit vendors and felt like I was jumping through many hoops. That's the thing - don't use crypto.com to send bitcoin to vendors. First, download and install Electrum and make sure you configure a new wallet. Make sure you write down your password and 12 word phrase!!! Keep it in a SAFE place. If you lose these, you lose access to your wallet unfortunately and the funds that were/are in it. Electrum looks outdated but it is legit and proven it works well.
Use crypto.com (I used it on my phone) to first purchase bitcoin. You can do this with either a Credit Card or a Bank Transfer. Credit card is faster while bank transfers have less fees. Don't quote me on that though. After you purchase bitcoin (may take a few days to clear the bank - that's normal), on crypto.com, you need to send the purchased bitcoin to your Electrum wallet. You do this buy clicking on the receive tab in Electron to get your receive address that you plug into crypto.com after going to bitcoin > withdrawal > External wallet. There will be a significant fee (my example is I had $220 in bc before sending to my external wallet. After sending to it, I only had $185.00. It was the perfect amount though because there's a small fee going from your Electrum wallet to the vendor's wallet address and my total was $180.00 but with fees it was like $182.00 (so $2) or something similar.
TL;DR:
Go from crypto.com -> Electrum -> vendor external wallet rather than just going from your crypto.com account -> vendor's wallet. At first, it was overwhelming and a little terrifying. Once you do it, you got it nailed. Ask ChatGPT when you get stuck or have questions. It helped me to understand everything. Just to note is that I WAS able to make purchases straight from cypto.com, but wouldn't know how much the fee was and they don't auto calculate the fee, it's automatically taken from the total bitcoin that you send.

 

[Gulp2788]

Good job Control, you have a good understanding of landscape, if you are interested in investing in crypto I would highly recommend you get a hardware wallet like ledger or trezor so you have full control of your funds. Never send via anything but your own hardware/software wallets, this way you pay the least in fees and so forth. It isn't as intimidating once you start to understand how cryptos work but I'm glad your in the ecosystem!
I use coinbase for my American ass to buy crypto with my own money but I think they probably aren't the best company to use for buying bitcoin. Always Always ALWAYS transfer your crypto off the exchanges into your own personal software/hardware wallet as soon as possible, you never know when something might go the way of MT. GOX. Never trust services to control your funds, trust yourself.

 

[Sapele]

yeah i made the mistake of not getting electrum quicker, it was actually recommended by one of the vendors as a good one to use, its very easy to use, your electrum wallet will not give out to u about who u might be sending bcoins to but whoever you buy them from probably will at some point! i know about that too

 

[Maelstrom]

Hi,
I have been a long time lurker here, so I thought I would give back to the community some with my bitcoin experience. At first, I HATED IT so much because I wasn't doing it right. I got on crypto.com and bought bitcoin but had trouble sending it to legit vendors and felt like I was jumping through many hoops. That's the thing - don't use crypto.com to send bitcoin to vendors. First, download and install Electrum and make sure you configure a new wallet. Make sure you write down your password and 12 word phrase!!! Keep it in a SAFE place. If you lose these, you lose access to your wallet unfortunately and the funds that were/are in it. Electrum looks outdated but it is legit and proven it works well.
Use crypto.com (I used it on my phone) to first purchase bitcoin. You can do this with either a Credit Card or a Bank Transfer. Credit card is faster while bank transfers have less fees. Don't quote me on that though. After you purchase bitcoin (may take a few days to clear the bank - that's normal), on crypto.com, you need to send the purchased bitcoin to your Electrum wallet. You do this buy clicking on the receive tab in Electron to get your receive address that you plug into crypto.com after going to bitcoin > withdrawal > External wallet. There will be a significant fee (my example is I had $220 in bc before sending to my external wallet. After sending to it, I only had $185.00. It was the perfect amount though because there's a small fee going from your Electrum wallet to the vendor's wallet address and my total was $180.00 but with fees it was like $182.00 (so $2) or something similar.
TL;DR:
Go from crypto.com -> Electrum -> vendor external wallet rather than just going from your crypto.com account -> vendor's wallet. At first, it was overwhelming and a little terrifying. Once you do it, you got it nailed. Ask ChatGPT when you get stuck or have questions. It helped me to understand everything. Just to note is that I WAS able to make purchases straight from cypto.com, but wouldn't know how much the fee was and they don't auto calculate the fee, it's automatically taken from the total bitcoin that you send.

I’ve never seen a fee that high. The most I’ve paid is maybe $3 to purchase coin and then the transfer fees are even smaller. I have had it where the coin took a dump between transfers but again not anywhere near a 15% drop.

Also, there’s ways around that 3-5 businesss day wait. Venmo will give you instant coin if you use your Venmo balance to pay so just build up your Venmo balance to whatever amount and use that to buy coin. Just whatever you do, always always always switch to your personal wallet before settling up with the man. Unfortunately, BTC is no longer the anonymous coin it used to be and why XMR is the coin of choice. It’s a little harder to find so you usually start with BTC and trade it out to XMR using cake or others.

 

[mindfields1]

Also worth checking out bisq, it's a peer to peer market with escrow that doesn't have any know your customer requirements like showing ID. Just need to have a little bitcoin to start to make a security deposit