Category Archives: How To

Is Bitcoin A Safe Investment?

Bitcoin can be a wise investment, but it’s also a volatile one. When it comes to “safe” investments, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a good bet—but only if you’re willing to take a lot of risks. Yes, crypto is here to stay and the price of bitcoin is not going to “go to zero” as many early skeptics predicted. But the price of a Bitcoin has swung from $30,000 to $60,000 in the last three months alone. Other, lesser cryptocurrencies are even more volatile than Bitcoin.

As a result, investment experts generally advise limiting any cryptocurrency purchases to under 5% of your portfolio—and ensuring you have a good conventional retirement investment strategy in place first. Before investing in bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, you should establish an emergency fund and pay off any high-interest loans.

Many individuals are concerned about hacking and fraud when it comes to bitcoin investing, as with any other digital investment. According to data from the Federal Trade Commission, crimes involving cryptocurrency resulted in a median loss of $1,900 in the last two years.

While bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies are established and legitimate, many new initial coin offerings (ICOs) are bogus.  An ICO is when a cryptocurrency is first offered to investors before it goes public. However, new coin offerings can often be faked, leading investors to place their money in a cryptocurrency that doesn’t exist in reality.

Before investing in any cryptocurrency, do your homework. What appears to be an unbelievably high return can very likely be a scam. The project’s white paper is a good place to begin your investigation.

Avoid “Pump and Dump” Schemes

Some small groups of investors may artificially inflate a coin price and convince smaller investors to invest in the coin. The initial investors then sell their shares at a profit before the price falls. Traditional investments like stocks are also susceptible to this type of strategy. If a coin’s ROI sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Be wary of cryptocurrencies whose value has skyrocketed for no apparent reason. They fall as they rise.

How to Keep Your Bitcoin Safe

Even hot wallets offered by cryptocurrency exchanges and third parties to store your funds are still susceptible to hacking. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) does not guarantee cryptocurrency held on an exchange or in a wallet. Ensure the  cryptocurrency trading platforms you are using offer rigorous security measures, including two-factor authentication for customers, and are retaining a considerable portion of their holdings in cold storage. In the event of theft or hacking, certain exchanges may even offer private insurance policies.

Generally, look before you leap – and invest in offline cold storage that is not connected to the internet, comparable to a USB drive, to keep your assets safe. Your password should be kept in a place where you won’t lose it. Investing in bitcoin will be more secure if you meet all of these criteria.

What Is A Bitcoin Address And How Do You Use It?

Bitcoin Wallet

A Bitcoin wallet is a software program that helps to keep track of your Bitcoins. To be technical, Bitcoins are not stored anywhere; a private key (secret number) for each Bitcoin address is kept inside the Bitcoin wallet of the person who bought that amount. Users can transfer and receive Bitcoins via Bitcoin wallets, which also give them ownership of their Bitcoin balance.

Wallet Address

A Bitcoin wallet address functions similarly to a bank account number. It’s a one-of-a-kind 26–35-digit letter-and-number combination that appears like this: 1ExAmpLe0FaBiTco1NADr3sSV5tsGaMF6hd. Your Bitcoin wallet address can be shared with others.

What Is My Bitcoin Address and How Does It Work? - unblock.net

Types of Wallet Addresses

Vanity Address

To put it another way, vanity addresses are Bitcoin addresses that begin with words like your name or company’s name or any other word you desire in your Bitcoin wallet address can help your wallet become distinct when receiving or transferring Bitcoin.

How To Bid Ens Myetherwallet How Tio Install The Nano Ledger S – Clinvacin

How to Create a Vanity Address

To ensure the safety of your private key and public key pair, you should create the key yourself. First method is using a processor and a CPU. It is more like mining it yourself where you compute it with a software like Vanitygen. 

The second method is using pool generator. Pool generators are Bitcoin miners. They will use software, GPU and CPU to generate the address and forward it to your email.

Multi-Signature Address

A Bitcoin address containing multiple private keys is known as a multi-signature address. To authorize a multi-signature transaction, you’ll need more than one private key. These are commonly set up as m-of-n addresses. 

A 2-of-2 multi-sig address, is associated with two keys and requires two valid signatures for the transaction to be legitimate. To produce a successful transaction, a 2-of-3 multi-sig address is paired with three keys and requires two valid signatures out three. Traditional addresses are more difficult to steal from than multi-sig addresses.

How to create a Multi-Signature Address

  • Use “get a new address” or “get account address” RPC commands to generate three bitcoin addresses. Also, you can copy and paste from the GUI.
  • Use “validate address” RPC command three times to get the public keys of those addresses.

How can one see if an address is multisig? - Bitcoin Stack Exchange

  • Add multi-sig address to generate a 2-of-3 multi-sig address; for example: bitcoin add multisig address 2 ‘[“044322868cb17d64dcc22185ae2d4493111d73244c3668f8ac79ecc79c0ba8d30a6756d0fa20157 709af3281cc721c7f53321a8cabda29b 
  • Be cautious, as the public keys are in raw hexadecimal format and do not include checksums such as bitcoin addresses. The standard send to address/send many RPC commands, as well as the GUI can then be used to send money to that 2-of-3 transaction.

SegWit Address

Transaction signatures and scripts (the so-called “witness data”) are separated from other data in a process known as “Segregated Witness,” or “SegWit.” Layer 2 Bitcoin scaling is enabled by removing non-intentional transaction malleability. Segwit has lower fees as more Segwit transactions can fit in a Bitcoin block.

How to create SegWit (Bech32) BTC wallet address? | CoinDeal - safe crypto  exchange

The Bech32 address standard is used in conjunction with SegWit. The characters “bc1” start all Bech32 addresses, which is alternatively “native SegWit” addresses, while Legacy addresses start with a “1.” SegWit (Bech32) which is receiving addresses, and are now used as the default in Blockchain.com Wallet. Segwit fees are lower.

How to create a SegWit Address

The steps to create a SegWit address are: 

  • Log in to your Singlesig Bitcoin wallet using Blockstream Green. 
  • Select Add New Account. 
  • Choose SegWit and give your account a name. 
  • On the Accounts page, you should now see your freshly formed SegWit account. 

To use it, simply tap on it. When you pick Receive, a bech32 address will be produced. Not every service supports bech32 addresses yet.

The Future of Bitcoin KYC

The addition of two Iranian SamSam ransomware bitcoin addresses to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) list ushered in a new era in Know Your Customer, Counter Terrorist Financing and Anti-Money Laundering (KYC/CTF/AML) regulation compliance for bitcoin transactions. From now on, no one is allowed to transact with these two bitcoin addresses:

1AjZPMsnmpdK2Rv9KQNfMurTXinscVro9V
149w62rY42aZBox8fGcmqNsXUzSStKeq8C

It’s a significant first. For responsible crypto exchanges and bitcoin ATMs operating in this wild west legal environment there are very few FREE KYC/CTF/AML compliance tools available. BitcoinWhosWho.com provides open-source data necessary to adhere to burgeoning global KYC/CTF/AML procedures involving bitcoin transactions.

  • Monitor OFAC List
    Prevent scam addresses from registering at an exchange.
  • Bitcoin Transaction Profiling
    Warn customers before they send bitcoin to an accused scammer.
  • Wallet Risk Assessment
    Mark wallets which have transacted with “scam” wallets to a higher degree of risk.

Continue reading The Future of Bitcoin KYC

Where To Report Bitcoin Scams

Taint scam bitcoins here

What can I do if I’ve been scammed out of bitcoins? Bitcoin transactions may be irreversible but there are steps you can take to ensure that someday it may be possible to recover your funds.

Taint the Receiving Address

How do I taint a scam bitcoin address? Is it possible to taint a bitcoin address? Yes! By reporting a scammers receiving bitcoin address(es) to BitcoinWhosWho.com you taint them and all future downstream transaction addresses. Forever. This allows anyone, including law enforcement, to monitor the addresses, and associated wallets, and take action when they are sent to crypto exchanges, Bitcoin ATMs and other known exit points.

[tweetshare tweet=”Have you ever wondered how to taint a scam bitcoin address?”]

Your report to Bitcoin Whos Who can also help screen and potentially freeze future fraudulent transactions.

Only BitcoinWhosWho.com offers blockchain community members a free API and searchable database of reported scam and bitcoin address website appearances, but there are other fraud report venues out there: Continue reading Where To Report Bitcoin Scams

How To Buy Bitcoin For Dummies

As anyone who’s been ripped off by a bitcoin scam artist can tell you, how you buy, sell, hodl or otherwise transact in crypto is a matter of who to trust with your private key.

The most trustworthy bitcoin exchange & wallet in the United States is Coinbase.com.

Get Free Bitcoin When You Sign Up

Founded in 2012, Coinbase is one of the oldest and largest bitcoin exchanges still in operation. In addition to bitcoin, they also facilitate transactions in Ethereum, Litecoin and recently began offering Bitcoin Cash. For beginners and experts looking for hassle-free storage and best-in-class security there is no better option.