The Beginning

[Anonymous No.24894518]

So uhh

Where do I start with crypto? Also how did you start investing into crypto anons?

[Anonymous No.24894533]

>>24894518
Don’t post here.

[Anonymous No.24894589]

>>24894518
you should kill yourself

[Anonymous No.24895157]

>>24894518
First you'll need to create a wallet. Some people get stuck at this step but don't worry I will help you. It's best to use a seed phrase to create a wallet.
Most people write down phrases on paper but they can be stored in many other ways such as memorizing, engraving or stamping on metal, writing in the margins of a book, chiseling into a stone tablet or any other creative and inventive way.

In the past many people have accidentally lost bitcoins because of failed backups, mistyped letters, forgotten hard drives, or corrupted SSD devices. It's also important to protect the seed from accidental loss.

It could be a good idea to write some words of explanation on the same paper as the seed phrase. If storing for the long term you may forget what a phrase is how it should be treated. A sample explanation that can be adapted is:

These twelve words have control over BITCOINS. Keep this paper safe and secret, like cash or jewelry. The bitcoin information on this paper is encrypted with a passphrase.

Through bitter experience it has been found that one of the most practical storage mediums is pencil and paper. The private keys of a bitcoin wallet are encoded into random words from a dictionary which can be written down. If your hard drive crashes, you can find the paper with the seed phrase and restore the entire wallet. As seed phrases use natural language words, they have good error correction. Words written in bad handwriting can often still be read. If one or two letters are missing the word can often still be deduced. The word list that the seed phrase words are drawn from is carefully chosen so that the first four letters of each word are enough to uniquely identify it.

For storing on paper writing with pencil is much better than pen. Paper should be acid-free or archival paper, and stored in the dark avoiding extremes of heat and moisture.

[Anonymous No.24895200]

>Methods that are not recommended
Some methods that are not recommended are: storing in a file on a computer (including online), or storing online.

Some people get the idea to split up their phrases, like storing 6 words in one location and the other 6 words in another location. This is a bad idea and should not be done, because if one set of 6 words is discovered then it becomes far easier to bruteforce the rest of the phrase. Storing bitcoins in multiple locations like this should be done with multisignature wallets instead.

The Shamir Secret Sharing algorithm is sometimes promoted as a way to divide control of bitcoins, but in practice there are many pitfalls and tradeoffs that make it not worth it.

Another bad idea is to add random decoy words that are somehow meaningful to you, and later remove them to be left only with the 12 word phrase. The phrase words come from a known dictionary (see next section), so anybody can use that dictionary to weed out the decoy words.

It's possible but risky to memorize (Brainwallets) seed phrases. This should probably only be done in situations that really need it, such as crossing a hostile border where one expects to be searched.

Now that you have safely and securely stored your seed phrase you may begin using your wallet to invest in bitcoin.