It sounds very simple: sending Bitcoin (BTC). But for the beginner it can be a quest with a tangle of unknown terms. In this article we put together the most important topics.
Receive and send Bitcoin
If you read along in our Bitcoin Month, you've already learned about wallets and keeping your Bitcoin safe. An inevitable step is to then order your BTC to receive and send. First:
If you want to take your Bitcoin into your own hands, you need to save the private key or the seed phrase (of 12 or 12 words). This private key comes with a public key. This is a piece of code on which you can receive Bitcoin as it were.
For banks and euro payments, you use IBAN account numbers for this purpose. Bitcoin does not have these, Bitcoin uses wallet addresses. This is a piece of code derived from the public (and therefore also from the private) key.
Addresses
There are three types of addresses:
Are you a beginner? Then forget immediately that there are three species. This is not relevant for sending or receiving.
If you want to send or receive a little Bitcoin, a quantity of satoshi's is associated with these addresses. If this address (through encryption and hashing) turns out to be part of your secret key, you can publish these sats further.
[caption id="attachment_70129" align="aligncenter" width="221"] Example of a QR code[/caption]
Such an address may appear as text or as QR code. Then you can assign a little BTC to this piece of text (or this code).
So if you want to receive Bitcoin, share the address from the wallet with the sender. It may then take a while for the payment to actually come through. You will then see the number of conf (which stands for confirmations) increase.
The above screenshot is of the BlueWallet. Read more about how this wallet works and how to buy the first Bitcoin.
Tips
Finally, some tips for sending and receiving Bitcoin.
1. Reuse addresses not
Please note that the blockchain is transparent. It is recommended to generate a new address for each payment. Some apps do this automatically, some don't.
It gives you extra privacy. If you receive a payment from a publicly known address and then make a Bitcoin payment to a government portal, it can easily be traced back to where these sats come from.
Read more about privacy and addresseshere. It is not an obligation, by the way, but just a tip.
On blockchair's privacy-o-meter, you can read more about useful tips for privacy during send/receive.
2. Check addresses
In addition: also pay attention to what these addresses look like! There are rogue extensions that abuse the copy function of a computer or laptop and thus adjust the clipboard.
Always check the first pair and last few letters and numbers before and after copying and pasting. A Redditor writes how he lost some of his power because of this silly mistake.
3. Do not pay directly from stock exchange
If you want to order something with Bitcoin somewhere, you shouldn't do it directly from a stock exchange. Many webshops use payment providers (such as BTCPay, BitPay or CoinPayments) where a counter ends within which the payment must come in.
Because you can't determine the speed of payment at trade fairs, it is advisable to get your BTC in your own wallet first.
At scholarships you do not have the choice to set the fee. The slowest way to send Bitcoin is with 1 sat per byte. Most apps indicate how long it takes for slow - medium - fast and the corresponding sat/byte.
4. Payments are irreversible
A Bitcoin payment cannot be reversed. There's no call to the bank. So be 100% sure if you make a payment and check everything carefully. So don't just send money to projects with nice promises and even better returns. Road = gone.
For scammers, Bitcoin is a wonderful means of payment for this reason. So be warned twice!
Furthermore, all transactions are stored forever and can be read out in block-explorers. A small mistake can always be found and analysed.
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