So, you have acquainted yourself with buying some Bitcoin or Ethereum on the Remitano platform. If you have not, then please help yourself to this introductory article. How can you send this cryptocurrencies to another account? At this point, all your regular lunch or coffee buddies may not have heard about Bitcoin. So, sending them a couple of ‘satoshis’ might not be the best idea. Instead, there are better options out there for you.
Option 1: Turning into a casual trader
This is perhaps the most popular option for many people even if the do not intend to trade often. There are other interesting blockchain projects out there that you might want to check out particularly the ones that may disrupt your industry. A search on the Internet could easily point you to any of these projects. We do advise caution in throwing your entire Bitcoin or Ethereum stack at these projects. However, if you would like to allocate a small proportion to these projects after conducting adequate research on them then this might be for you.
The easiest way to get your hands on the tokens or coins associated with that project you are eyeing is through crypto-currency exchanges. We have tried some of them and found that Binance and Kucoin to be the most user friendly. Please note that these are centralized exchanges and when you do deposit your coins there, you are placing trust on these exchanges to store your coins safely for you. Centralized exchanges have been victim to hacks in the past although in recent times, the security level for these exchanges have been beefed up.
Alternatives to centralized exchanges are decentralised exchanged, where the transactions can take place between wallet to wallet without the need for a middleman. For a newbie though, this might a little getting used to and perhaps not the first recommended option.
Alright, let’s set you up for the first blockchain transaction. Here are the steps:
Step 1:
Create an account at either Binance or Kucoin. Complete all the required steps to generate an account and please keep your login credentials in a safe location (preferably offline).
Step 2:
Login to your Remitano account.
Step 3:
Access your wallet on the site and select the coin that you would like to transfer. Do note that the with blockchains, each coin may use a specific blockchain protocol for transactions. What does this mean? If you are using Bitcoin for example, only withdraw or deposit to another Bitcoin address/wallet. Do not transfer Bitcoin to another blockchain protocol such as Ethereum or you stand to lose all the coins that you have bought. We will be using a Bitcoin example for this exercise.
Step 4:
On another browser window, login to your Binance or Kucoin address if you are currently not on these platforms. Navigate to your account or asset page and look for the Bitcoin deposit address. You should see a 34 alphabet wallet address. (An example from Bitcoin.org is shown below). This is in fact your public key for that particular wallet on the exchange. Click on the available copy button or you can accomplish the same manually by highlighting and copying the address.
Step 5:
Move to your browser window where the remitano account is and look for the Bitcoin wallet. You should see a withdraw button. Click on this button and in the accompanying page, insert the wallet address you copied to this appropriate field. It should appear as the image below. Enter the amount that you would like to transfer and complete the rest of the authentication process.
Step 6:
Voila…, you have just done your first transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain. Details of your transaction is recorded forever on the public ledger to be scrutinized by anyone. However, do note that it may be difficult to identify the parties involved in the transaction because of the pseudo-anonymous nature of the Bitcoin network. Wait for about 20-30 minutes to verify that the amount that you have transferred has been deposited in the exchange account. Congratulations, you have experienced the power of a censorship resistant, border-less and somewhat private transaction with lower fees that what your bank might charge you for a similar cross-border remittance.
Option 2: Storing your digital asset for the long-term (HODL)
This is in fact, one of the most powerful proposition of cryptocurrencies especially Bitcoin. The ability to achieve self-sovereignty and protection of wealth from whims and fancies of your nation’s central bank policies. In the crypto-currency world, this is fondly referred to as HODLing. If this has got you thinking why the need for so? Just trust us for the moment until our article on economic cycles is published on this blog. Instead on transferring your digital asset to an exchange, you could opt to store your Bitcoin long-term. There are a number of ways you could achieve this. Either through the use of hardware wallet or the use of local wallets which could either be on your browser or in another wallet application. There are many such application available and we would advice a good dose of research before you start using them. One that we particularly like is Atomic wallet. This is perhaps the most user-friendly application that there currently is. The transfer from Remitano to a wallet could be achieved in a similar manner to the 6 steps described for the transfer to an exchange. Except in this instance you would use the deposit address of your wallet instead.
Words of wisdom…
Please experiment with small amounts of Satoshis first before you get comfortable in transferring whole Bitcoins. You will soon begin to enjoy the entire process and begin wondering why aren’t more people adopting crypto-currencies.
