Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

I've set up my first mobile Android wallet with Electrum, I'll be getting a Ledger/Trezor soon, and I'm at the stage of toying with the some very small transactions. I've asked a friend to send me a very small amount of his BTC (mates rates weren't applicable apparently given the ATH at the moment  ;D).

I'm now looking to try some reputable exchanges. I'm in the UK if that makes a difference. I obviously heard of Coinbase (and Pro), but I'm looking for some suggestions from you guys that have been in it a while. Which are your favourites and why? I've been through about the first 20+ pages of this section and tried the search looking for the subject phrase "exchange" but not really come across any that give newbies a starting point. I'm all for DYOR, but it would be nice to get some starter opinions on BTC exchanges first. I understand that these would be personal opinions.

Also, I know not to leave BTC on the exchanges, but as far removing BTC goes is it best to send straight to hardware wallet (assuming you have one), or should you send it to say a mobile wallet first, or does it just not matter?

Many thanks for any suggestions guys.

I would recommend you to use Coinbase pro or Binance, Kucoin. These are best at the moment in my opinion.
Search on the forum rather than checking with first 20 pages, search will get you what you are looking for. Don't leave your BTC in exchange. Rather use Electrum. Leaving on exchange mean- you have no control while on electrum mean- you have full control over your fund.

I've only ever used coinbase for buying and selling bitcoin via an actual exchange. Binance might also be an option (I see it advertised that both accept faster payments). Binance is good for altcoin acceptance too.

I'd say keep small amounts on an online wallet like electrum and larger amounts on your hardware.

What you want available or might want to spend now (1-10%) for example and keep the rest stored on hardware.

Make sure to keep your mnemonics in a safe place too!

Maybe the best answer will be given by someone from the UK who uses one of the local crypto exchanges, but in addition to the already mentioned Coinbase, there is also Binance Jersey (https://www.binance.je/en), and as you can see for you from the UK and those from the EU there is a big advantage in quick deposits (GBP & EUR), which is probably not the case with Coinbase. I personally have no experience with this exchange, but those who have used it have mostly positive experiences.


If you already have a hardware wallet then why not use the security that such a device provides you compared to a wallet on a smartphone. Mobile wallets are not suitable for long-term storage or for large amounts, the risk is simply too great if we consider the vulnerability of Android system, various crypto malware that can be downloaded from Google Play, loss of phone and backup at the same time and so on.

I often see most of my Facebook friends and any other cryptocurrency trading tutorials in Youtube use Binance as their platform to perform their trades maybe because of a lot of perks they can get when doing some trades. It is also worth mentioning that they do not require KYC (Know Your Customer) policy when doing some trades unless otherwise you exceed the withdrawal limit of 2 BTC and you are planning to use P2P Trading (Peer to Peer).

Currently, I think Binance is the most used platform right now but still take some precautionary measure when using their platform since there is no such place that is not susceptible for hacking incidents.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/08/binance-bitcoin-hack-over-40-million-of-cryptocurrency-stolen.html#:~:text=Hackers%20have%20stolen%20over%20%2440,breach%E2%80%9D%20which%20occurred%20on%20Tuesday.

It depends, If you plan to stack some bitcoin for long term hold then withdraw it directly from the exchange to your Hardware wallet, if not and you needed your profit for day to day spend your hotwallet is not a bad choice considering that it is not a large chunk of money.

The UK has a few exchanges to trade from, although I've found a lot of exchanges you can buy from, but selling to GBP can be difficult especially if your bank doesn't allow international transfers or doesn't like receiving in USD as a lot of the exchanges send their payments via USD. I believe some banks do the conversion for free, and then others charge a fee. The biggest exchange would be Coinbase which caters for most of the world, and they do send their payments in GBP if sending in USD is an issue. They have a mobile app I believe, so that might make it easier for you if you intend to keep your wallet inside your android.
I'd recommend only keeping a small amount on that android wallet, despite it being Electrum which is considered fairly reputable, I'm not a big fan of keeping wallets on a live system in the first place, and definitely not on a android phone, which I presume you use as your main device? Hardware wallets are decent though, and are worth the initial investment, especially if you need to access those coins fairly regularly without going through too much hassle, then a hardware wallet is ideal.

Thanks Lucius. I don't have the hardware wallet at the moment. But assuming I had one at the time I start buying on exchange, I'd go straight to hardware then. Cheers. With a hardware wallet, I would only ever consider holding £10-£20ish. I just wondered if there might be a reason you'd go Exchange > Mobile Wallet > Hardware Wallet. But I guess not.



Thanks RapTarX & JackG for the Binance suggestions. I'll have a look into that one.



Thanks Maus0728 for the Binance information. I wouldn't ever be in the position to trade anywhere near 2 BTC so thats OK. Thanks as well for the confirmation/suggestion on withdrawing.

A friend has also recommended Localbitcoins, where does that fit into the Exchange scene? I understand Localbitcoins act as an intermediary between a seller and a buyer, so does that qualify as an exchange or is that more peer2peer? Does anyone have any thoughts on whether Localbitcoins should be avoided or not?

It’s a P2P trading platform. You can try it as well if you are looking for purchasing BTC or other crypto through your local payment method which different international exchanges don't support. Otherwise, it’s better to use an exchange.

The most easy and secure exchange for newbies in my opinion is Binance. Besides the good interface and navigation, you have a lot of good features and high free limits without KYC (compared to other exchanges).

Make sure you download it from the link there: https://electrum.org/#download and did not search to find it on Google Play that can trap you with phishing apps.

I don't live in UK so I can not give you specific advice but there are two sites you can use to filter exchanges and there are reviews too:

• cryptowisser.com (https://www.cryptowisser.com/exchanges?continent=&coins=1541&fee=2.0) (see my detailed guides (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5289159.msg55591920#msg55591920))
• blockspot.io (https://blockspot.io/exchange/) (type United Kingdom in the Country column; Customize exchange type column -- choose from drop-down menu, Buy/ Sell platform, ie.)

• Check Segwit adoption: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support

Non-custodial wallets are good. Hardware wallets are best but you are fine with non-custodial wallets if you secure your device, backup wallets, secure backups safely.

But use mobile wallet and store all or big amount of your bitcoin on mobile is bad. If you use mobile wallet, use it with small amount of your bitcoin.

Also do following things for settings:

• PIN: set it up and turn it to ON
• Denomination: default is mBTC. I changed it to BTC. Choose the one you like.
• Check and make sure Replace-by-Fee is ON
• Fiat currency: if you want
• Fee estimates
  
  • ETA (not recommended): it can give you overkill fee. Slide it to change the target.
  • Mempool: recommended (slide it to choose the size from tip of mempool (1 block takes 1 MB from tip of mempool)
  • Static: use it if you always want to pay a fix fee rate. (I chose 1 sat/ byte)

Change the default fee estimate from ETA to mempool or Static

Stay away from small exchanges and you should be fine, top exchanges like binance, Okex, huobi, gate, kucoin, bithumb, etc are far reliable than exchanges like p2pb2b, exmarket, latoken, and others, the difference is small exchanges lacks volume and they have no choice but to use fake volume instead

Binance Jersey will be closed according to https://support.binance.je/hc/en-us/articles/360051246251. So I guess that's no longer a good option. Users are encouraged to use Binance directly, and assuming you want to buy Bitcoin with fiat, KYC should be expected.

In case OP wants to find alternatives for Local Bitcoin, Hodlhodl is also worth to try. I never use it personally but reviews from other users seems good.

Possibly, i will second those whom have recommended Binance cryptocurrency exchange for noobs becasue of their simplicity(in terms of exchnage navigation and good features in the platform) in their platform. When i was new to cryptocurrency industry, my first take after migration from Forex trading was to get into Binance exchnage which helped my growth along the line, so, i will still recommend this to newbies around the cryptocurrency market anytime any-day.   

Yeah, Binance and Coinbase are pretty much a classic, quite simple and reliable! Also I recently found out about the ChangeNOW exchange, been experimenting with them for a couple of days and they seem pretty cool too.

Why experimenting other exchange while the current top tier exchange like binance offers the best user experience so far. It's just a waste of time on trying those other exchange that might risk your money to loss in case they are fraud. I check ChangeNOW and its just like shapeshift and changelly which you can place order at fixed rate. You can't set up any order at that exchange.

Thank you so much for that wealth of information tranthidung, sincerely appreciated - I will check those sites out.
With regard to where I got Electrum for Android from. I did indeed get it from Google Play Store. It didn't occur to me that it could be a dodgy version on there?  :o Should I remove it and reinstall from the main Electrum website link and restore the wallet from my seed phrase?

Reference transaction fee's, whereabouts is that in settings I'm not able to locate it?



Also, many thanks RapTarX, tyz, Ken_terrance, joniboini, Becky666 and trueluckychain for the exchange suggestions and clarifications. I can't get over how friendly everyone is on this board when dealing with a newbie. I know we all have to start somewhere, but it must be difficult answering the same questions. So thank you all so much.

Kraken has UK faster payments now and I've never had any trouble with there. Gemini is getting the same too soon and it doesn't get more solid than them. If you want to go shitcoin crazy then neither of those have a vast amount but they have a few.

As long as the developer of Electrum is "Electrum Technologies GmbH (https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Electrum+Technologies+GmbH)" right before you install it in Playstore -- you'll be fine.

I assume that you have finished creating your wallet and finished backing up your seed phrases on a piece of paper. You can easily see the transaction's reference under the Send Tab

https://i.imgur.com/RJimQvTm.jpg

Since you are a newbie them there are few things you may not know about exchanges, we have

1. Centralized exchanges
2. Decentralized exchanges
3. Insta swap exchanges

If you want to be on safer side I recommend going for popular exchanges either CEX or Dex or instaswap,  I will try to list trustable Platforms here and stay away from new exchanges that people don't know about

1. Binance
2. Okex.
3. Bitmart
4. Coinbase
5. Gate.io
6. Kucoin
7. Luno exchange
8. Hoo
9. Probit

Here are exchanges that always use and I have no bad results using any of them

Dex exchange like Uniswap is also good but can be too dangerous for newbies that have no full understanding about erc20 tokens very well, all tokens have smart contract address and before buying any tokens on uniswap its better to know the token real smart contract because on uniswap scammers are making fake tokens with same name of popular tokens

Based on my experience, I found Binance very useful and effective for me. Although, I also use Coinbase as my exchange, I'm more comfortable with Binance because of its security and how easy it is to access. If you're also an altcoin investor and you don't focus only on bitcoin then you should try using Binance.

It still depends on you if you will try what I've suggest and then tell us about your experience with it.

Good luck on looking for an effective exchange for yourself!

Ah right Maus0728 I see. Sorry I thought it was in the settings. That's fine then, yes I see that.



Thanks gentlemand. I had heard that one mentioned, but it's not been pushed as much so maybe I'd better stick to Binance first as my first exchange, then looking into Kraken in a bit. Great to hear about the UK faster payments.



Thanks AniviaBtc, Gorosden & for your input.



Many of these exchanges have apps, is the preference to create your account on the website and use that mainly, or are the apps for Android just as safe to use? I say this only because of what I've read in this thread about Google Play Store apps being potentially dodgy versions. Does that happen with the exchange apps too or am I OK downloading and installing those from Play Store and creating an account/buying/selling that way?


Thanks guys.

Visit the official website and then follow the link for the apps from there, that would reduce the risk of downloading fake apps. I think it doesn't really matter from where you register, as long as the device that you use is secure.

Kraken has been around since before Binance's staff were sperm yet to be made. Just because Binance makes a great deal of noise does not mean it's 100% dependable or proven.

They certainly get the job done but their status is questionable in more than a few jurisdictions. Kraken has never been hacked. Binance has.

Oh wow. Thanks gentlemand. I didn't know that. There I go learning again. I can't do anything at the moment without learning something new.  ;D



Good to know joniboini thank you. Before crypto I've blindly trusted Play Store for any apps. My eye's are being opened to so much with getting involved with crypto.  :o



I've just created a Binance account, installed the app (and immediately jumped to lite mode for starters  ;D). I notice a lot verification prompts telling me do this, do that etc. I did the basic 2 Factor verification, but is it necessary to do all the other verifications in the settings such as 'Personal details' and 'Address verification'? I ask because of reading a lot of comments on here where people seem to be against KYC, is that this? Or should I just go ahead with this verification without worry?

Also, is there any preferred way you guys deposit funds to exchanges? There seems to be two main options of credit/debit card and bank deposit (although it looks like the ID verification mentioned above needs to be done or you can't progress with either?).

Thank you everyone for your continued patience. I'm hoping my stupid questions will also be of help to other newbies too.

If somewhere has optional KYC like Binance I always do it. It's a right pain if they freeze you and demand more info and you never know what trips them. Better to get that out the way before that happens. I certainly wouldn't do it with the more obscure places out there as you've no idea how secure their file storage is or whether they use your info themselves.

KYC is a fact of life with centralised exchanges. You can avoid it with decentralised services but their volumes are pitiful and some supposedly decentralised joints have asked for this too.

Any time cards are involved fees will be much higher, or they won't be available at all because of the risk of charge backs. Bank transfers are cheaper. And I don't think there's any such thing as depositing into an exchange account with a card, you just buy crypto directly and immediately.