Bitcoin Forum

One of the questions I get asked all the time is How do I buy my first bitcoin.

I put together a  comprehensive guide to buy bitcoin  (http://www.bitcoinbulls.net/how-to-buy-bitcoin-the-complete-step-by-step-tutorial/) for people who want to buy their first bitcoins.

The step-by-step post covers:

• Coinbase - the option most people want.
• LocalBitcoins - if you NEED bitcoins today.
• Buying bitcoin with a brokerage account (IRA, 401K, etc.)
• BitWage - how to get a portion - or all - of your salary in bitcoin.
• Exchanges - for bitcoin traders and experienced investors.
• Why Bitcoin Mining is a bad way to get bitcoins.

If you are a beginner looking to buy bitcoin, let me know what you think.

--dave

i don't agree on bitcoin mining being a bad way to earn bitcoin, it depend

if you have free electricity or at least very cheap, you can do it without thinking, you will have a very high chance to roi, without doing the trick of selling your miners after 3 months

with that trick you can actually take big profit and in a short time, if you invest big

though i wouldnt still recommend mining bitcoins if you have to buy all your hardware as its pretty risky also a guide seems to be pretty cool

Hey Dave, welcome and thanks for making this very nice guide! I will bookmark it and share with people who I introduce to Bitcoin and who might ask me the same questions as people have asked you!

Even though there are some things that I wouldn't do as a beginner, I think that these things are OK to slide for the beginners! They will get away with them.

This is a great guide. Calling  out Coinbase as the only online wallet is a bit misleading, no? How do you know it's the wallet that most people want? In  fact, most people here would tell you they don't want to use Coinbase for several specific reasons. What about Xapo? What about Circle? [/list]

Very good overall but it could do with an international rundown too. It's very different from country to country. It might be a giant pain up the arse to include but perhaps it could link to separate pages.

Yeah those are good points. I might reword what I said.

Thanks!

Thanks Mickeyb!

If there is something you want to share privately re: things you wouldn't do as a beginner feel free to email me: dave@bitcoinbulls.net

Thanks again!

--dave

Hmmm I did want to make one recommendation per Category to make it simple. I definitely didn't intend to mislead people.

Initially I used Circle for day to day purchases, but I went back to Coinbase for some reason (buy limits? habit?)

I haven't used Xapo, but I think I have an account there...

Thanks for the thoughts! I might reword some of the wallet section.

I had given a little though to internationalization you are right on it is VERY US centric - almost to the point of not being useful (or harmful) to other nationalities?

I wonder if I could do some type of switch based on language...

What do you think? I've only ever lived in the US so I'm not sure what expectations (or frustrations) are in other countries visiting US-centric pages.

Feel free to email if that is better for you: dave@bitcoinbulls.net

Thanks for the thoughts!

--dave

Yes. A lot of those services won't be accessible to other countries. Some countries have better set ups than the US. It's more of a grind to include it for you but there's no clue that it's a US only page when you arrive there.

It depends.

Here in Brazil, there is a fantastic site working as a exhange bitcoin/peercoin market.

www.mercadobitcoin.com.br

I'm buying bitcoins from them weekly.

Fully recommended.

you can buy 1 bitcoin with the method that suits the most and by which you are more comfortable like you can buy online or deal with localbitcoins for offline buying,you can buy also with exchange services like btc-e.com which can accept deposit with bank wire.

The fact is, the difficulty is insanely high and not all of us live in areas where electricity comes cheap. But, if you got plenty of cash in you, go to China, create a farm and see your sweet miners generating good income for you.

If your looking to spend around half a million that would be a good idea.
IMO, waiting for next generation miners is a good plan.

Can buy Bitcoin using Paypal balance? Which site?

https://www.virwox.com/ but the fees is make your butt hurt :D

I don't know other trusted site to trade paypal to btc.

Do yourself a favour and send your paypal balance to a real bank account. You'll get far more coins for your money. The most established method is buying Linden dollars with Paypal on virwox.com and then exchanging them for bitcoin but the fees are enormous.

but mining is not an act that can be done at home. even with cheep electricity, it still is going to produce a lot of noise and heat. besides you have to keep a system running for long hours which can be annoying.

maybe it is just me but i will never consider mining even if it gives me good ROI

I found this site somewhere in this forum before https://wesellcrypto.com/ where you can buy bitcoin (and some altcoins) with your paypal balance, I never tried it though, :D Feel free to check it out but make some research first about the site, and also check their customer's feedbacks ;)

basically you're saying that you don't want money, yet you are advertising with a sig, very funny

i'm saying that with cheap electricty and resale of your asic after 3 months, to cut the roi time, you can do pretty good with mining, in terms of profit

this is also a common strategy with cloud mining, no one wait until his HW reach roi, it's too risk

The last I heard about them is that they are legit. Use on your own responsibility though! Also do your own research!

Better go with known and most recommended.
Do not risk your money while buying bitcoin with an unknown sellers. Now a days a lot of resources available for making easiest bitcoin buying. So, it's easier than counting numbers but must do in a safer way.

I heard they dont send there coins.

i remember when i bought my first bitcoin, i bought from a guy, i found him on our group making money online on skype, i used paypal, i was really need bitcoin for purchased some vps because the seller asked me to pays with bitcoin, but right now i can buy bitcoin easily on our local exchanger

i bought my first bitcoins with localbitcoins.

Im never hear about free electricity, all country give high fee for miner, i think buy and hold bitcoin is better than mining at this time

It's a cool guide, but i dont know how newbie you are to the internet, you should never expose your e-mail like that, in your username.

There are tons of harvester robots lurking around the internet that harvest e-mail addresses from text, and will send you massive spam e-mails.

I heard somewhere on Saudi Arabia they have free electricity. Just quite not sure , maybe someone from Saudi Arabia or somewhere on UAE can confirm it :D

I agree with your point buying and holding is quite better nowadays than mining, especially on places with high cost electricity.

there is a simple difference, with mining you can increase your total sum of coins, when roi is achieved, with simply buying you can not, unless you do trading

but you say simply buying and holding so...

Yes, but you forgot the other way around. With mining, you can also lose money/coins if difficulty, price, new asics come out. With just buying and holding you will always have the same amount.

I guess there is just risk associated, like with everything else.

if you buy always the last efficient miners, it will eventually rich roi, maybe it will take more than excepted, but you have then a machine that you can sell and gain more bitcoin than your roi

All option may vary per country. For example Coinbase, it doesn't support buying bitcoin option in some of the country like in my country. One thing I can add is to joined some Facebook Group (yes, social media) in your country about Bitcoin Exchange where some of reputable person are there doing that selling bitcoins like the one we have in our country (although there are many ways now here to buy bitcoin). In that way you can interact to with others.

buy? from my neighbour firstly he give me some btc, but i was play all on gambling and lost it
so i buy from him with cheap price.

I usually buy some BTC on Bitonic.nl (Dutch website) and transfer it directly to BTC-e.com. BTC-e.com requires that you buy at least $2000 worth of bitcoins while Bitonic.nl actually doesn't have an online wallet available.

Thank you for the very informative post. I've been looking to buy some bitcoins and this information points me in the right direction.

The only problem with that is that most people around here don't have any people in their near vicinity who use bitcoins. Also, even if there was/were, I'm sure most neighbors wouldn't trust them enough to freely hand out bitcoins to.

What were you planning to do with those bitcoins anyways?

Bought mine from coinbase