Depends somewhat where you live and what you plan to do with the Bitcoin (long term hold or actively trade).. but major exchanges in major countries are pretty trustworthy these days.
Kraken, Gemini, and Coinbase are all quite trustworthy, if any of those are available in your locale.
Buying and holding for 4+ years has produced amazing gains in Bitcoin since its inception. Trading often and fooling around with alt coins has caused many great losses and pain. Don't invest more than you can stomach losing or holding in the red for a few years.
Thank you for the info. I live in the US and plan to buy and hold (for diversification) with the money I can stomach to lose. I'll try out Coinbase because it's the one that is the most familiar to me. Happy holidays!
For reference to support parent: that tax implications of the bitcoin I owned and sold after 7 years of sitting on it was much simpler than the bitcoin I bought and sold over and over again trying to make money on both sides of an order book during high volatility.
I am a US citizen. I have fully complied with tax law as I understand it. To my knowledge, I’ve never been involved in any darknet marketplaces. I’ve seen an opportunity much sooner than my peers.
I have been waiting for the current price volatility since the last ATH spike in January 2019 since exiting a majority of my bitcoin positions. The block reward halving last summer combined with an ever increasing mining difficulty is a no brainer to me. Good luck
There’s 7000 shitcoin trading on an infinite number of shitcoin exchanges providing infinite liquidity; that’s what I see. What is there to stop bitcoin?
Coinbase is the easiest to buy. But, I suggest you try another option. Coinbase's whole goal is to make money (surprise!) by selling many "coins" easily. Swanbitcoin or kraken are my suggestions. DYR.
Market cap doesn't mean much at all in crypto. XRP's is high because the circulating supply is 45 billion XRP - 2500 times more than BTC, 400 times more than ETH, etc.
I could create a blockchain and issue a quintillion coins and if I manage to get it listed and sell some for a fraction of a penny it'll have a bigger market cap than the rest of crypto combined.
Also, 'circulating supply' is a misnomer for XRP. The vast majority is held by a small population of individuals who would crash the price if they tried to liquidate
I can't speak much to it, as I don't play - my girlfriend does, and finding a pad for her was difficult. There's just nothing out there. Couple of dead projects, the L-Tek, and some total junk pads.
I ended up with the L-Tek one you linked. The buttons seemed awfully futzy to me, and she says they're ok but not great - plus her toes hit against the edges of the raised non-button squares and hurt.
I think 2017 showed that it will be damned difficult politically to make any change that requires a hard fork to Bitcoin anymore.
Pure proof of stake is fantasy. That's not "Bitcoin" and it never will be.
My personal hope would be that mixed proof of work and stake with on-chain governance, like Decred (their devs have built much of the Lightning Network tooling, performed the first cross-chain atomic swap, etc.) - could be adopted; but, realistically, I think that's also a fantasy.
I pay 0.15% and the exchange has been around for a decade without ever losing funds. It's even now licensed as a bank in the U.S.