There is no such thing of "best wallet". Why? Because each one of them have specific features good/bad that fit necessities of each user.
There is only one difference between BTC wallets:
The Golden Rule of Bitcoin so choose wisely your wallet, this is the only one important thing that make difference between wallets.

Bitcoin = Be your own bank, so act accordingly (don't watch too much porn with the same pc you are dealing with btc, or don't play those stupid mobile games on the same mobile you have a btc wallet)
Mobile wallets = for managing small amount of btc
Desktop wallets = for managing medium amount of btc
Paper/steel/hardware wallets = large amount of btc, that you just hodl and do not move for long time.
Steganography wallets = insanity, paranoia about security
Online/custodial/Coinbase wallets = black hole of your money, use on your own risk. Those are violating The Golden Rule of Bitcoin.

Etherum's Buterin said in the lengthy roadmap document of last year '“The long term goal for Ethereum 2.0 and 3.0 is for the protocol to quite literally be able to maintain a blockchain capable of processing VISA-scale transaction levels, or even several orders of magnitude higher, using a network consisting of nothing but a sufficiently large set of users running nodes on consumer laptops.”. When Buterin maintains commit, Etherum have a path forward, not a stale mate as it is in Bitcoin. Right now, an Etherum transaction takes 6 minutes to get approved; a Bitcoin transaction: 1 hour-3 days. The costs: a few cents vs $5-$7. Thus, the usability of Etherum is a lot higher than that of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has a decentralized p2p network, meaning it is censorship-resistant and lacks a kill-switch. Think BitTorrent except with counterfeit-proof payload (tokens).

Bitcoin is also open source, meaning anyone can read the source code and contribute. People do so daily. No backdoor or lie lurks in the code.

Hence Bitcoin is what it is and govt cannot stop or change it - provided we constantly guard Bitcoin security.

Central banks are, however, developing their own private blockchains and they will soon be issuing cryptocurrency fiat to replace anonymous cash and as a means of doing surveillance.

They will sell it to the public as being "based on the amazing blockchain technology". But without open source code, without open participation (mining by anyone), the cenbank blockchain won't be decentralized and tamper-proof - it will be a sham and a coercion, as you describe.

Bitcoin is revolutionary. Voluntary. The real deal. Money for the people by the people.

Facecoin - the only thing less secure than your privacy.

This implies the government has any control over bitcoin. Which is wrong. If they could win against bitcoin they would have already won. They can regulate the entry points/exchanges from fiat-based currencies. They can regulate ICOs. But a main concept of Satoshi's bitcoin is that it is it's decentralized. Every owns the ledger (the blockchain) and everyone can see it. They can't manipulate it in a manner that can't be controlled. Only the truth would win, unlike a central bank. Where they can control inflation rates and stuff like that.

I'm used to running Mycelium on LineageOS and Bitcoin-Qt and Electrum on Ubuntu. I've had the bad fortune of trying to guide a friend or two that are new to Bitcoin to wallets on iOS. Every single wallet has been shite.

It has value because the people who use the currency says it does. Why is USD worth anything, it's nothing more than a piece of cloth. It is not backed by anything store of value like gold. It has not been backed for a while. In the production of any crypto coin, there is the value it takes to mine that coin. It takes electricity to mine coins, so there is a basis of value in that. There were times when it cost more to mine what a bitcoin was worth on the market. I'm not an expert and someone can please correct me if anythings wrong, for my better understanding, but that's how I see it.

Download coinbase deposit 20$ get a feel for how to read the charts and the percentages up and down each day. Just read, much more information available today than ever before take advantage of your resources.

"BTC used to be like walking in the woods without a flashlight. At least now you have a flashlight to guide you while walking through the woods." - Me

I got in at the beginning of January. I'm down ~800 USD, and I love it. The blockchain tech is incredible, and once you dip your toe in, the crypto world sucks you in and you are surrounded by all this unfamiliar wonderful stuff to learn. I highly suggest getting involved, because when you invest in crypto, you begin realizing you must also invest in yourself, and your knowledge base, and that is the best thing you can do for you.

The world currently works on having lots of seperate 'floating' currencies. Because they 'float', their value changes relative to each other; for example one US Dollar buys 1.03 Canadian dollars buys 0.62 British Pound buys 0.73.

Now each country or each currency has a central bank, who can do certain things to make their currency worth more or less, depending on the needs of the day. For example, it might be really good for China to keep the value of the Yuan quite low so that Americans can buy Chinese exports for cheap and Chinese companies can make a lot of money. Countries that have to import a lot might prefer a higher valued currency and so on.

The problem is that each country has different things happening in it's economy. The Germans are very focused on exporting things like cars, which is fine, because they get money for their cars. But Greece isn't exporting much stuff at all, and in the mean time, each Euro isn't worth as much and the cost of things in the country tends to rise as a result. This is fine if you're getting more money because you work in Germany making cars and you're selling more and this year you got a bonus, but it's not so good if you're in Greece.

This is an economy that's doing two or more different things in different places and you end up with a weird situation where people in one area arent earning very much, but still have to pay the same prices as the people in the rich area.

This is a pretty simplified way of explaining it but tl;dr: Poor People would have to pay rich people prices for shit.

Because of BTC's structure, lack of pre-mining and the fact it was the first into this space, BTC is by far the most decentralized major cryptocurrency. Nodes are running all over the world and this has created a highly secure network that has never been hacked. By contrast, when Ethereum got hacked, it ultimately rolled back ETH transactions, which showcases just how different (and centralized) it is compared to BTC. ETH founder, Vitalik, even promises to throw countries or their leaders off of the ETH network if they "do evil". Do you want a crypto where one person (Vitalik) gets to decide what it means to "do evil" and which transactions don't get to go through as a result?

Like ETH, many of BTC's competitors are centralized, which means there are fewer pressure points to be exploited by hostile actors. The CEO or founder could exit-scam, or release all the coins in escrow, or a nation-state could bribe/blackmail the person/ppl in charge into making changes to the protocol that benefit them, etc. With Bitcoin, there's no one in charge. There's no one person or hardware that it's too reliant upon. There are fewer pressure points, which makes it far more secure.

If by "trading" you mean active trading, there are several factors - liquidity, API availability/quality, fee structure and the exchange having the coins you want to trade.

GDAX has a reasonable API, is very liquid, only lets you trade three coins for now (BTC, ETH, LTC). Fees are 0.25% for taker / 0% for maker orders.

Gemini - horrible API, two coins only. 0.25% fees. Not a good trading exchange. Very good as a "gateway" to move fiat in though. Wire transfers clear in a bit more than an hour.

Binance - lots of coins, API not great but ok if you're writing your own code, 0.1% fees. Fairly liquid.

Bittrex - lots of coins, ok liquidity, fees 0.25%. API - for streaming market data there is no published API and reverse-engineering it is a huge pain.

Bitfinex - lots of coins, 0.1% maker/0.2% taker fees. Not sure about API. Does NOT allow US clients.

etc. etc.

I didn't mention the web interface as a factor in choosing an exchange to trade. That's because serious traders should not use the exchanges' web interfaces - they are not well suited for trading. One should use either self-rolled software (if you can write it) or a professional software trading platform like our Medved Trader - that has superior charting, technical analysis, alerts, scans, DOM, visual trading etc. etc.

We connected it to GDAX so far, will release Binance integration very soon and our goal is to connect it to all exchanges whose APIs are reasonable. So we know these APIs intimately in all their ugliness.

Any gov that bans bitcoin will pass power to their competing countries who allow this innovation and then investors will just move.

Open a coinbase/gdax account, submit good docs and wait to get verified. Deposit BTC to coinbase, xfer to gdax and sell using limit order based on current price. Withdrawal USD to coinbase, then out at rate of 5k/day to your bank account.

There are millions of bitcoin users worldwide. South Korea will have 5 exchanges. Coinbase in the U.S has millions of users. Its the people that give bitcoin value.

The government would not ban bitcoin because it's a technology that will revolutionize the world. As most if not more than the internet.

Also, it's decentralized and they have no way to enforce it. Plus, any government that embraces it will have an edge on countries that ban it.

Case and point Venezuela. They banned yet so many people have it.

We have seen cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero gain +10,000% returns over the last several years, and they simply continue their climb against all of the harping of bankers, economist, and purported ‘experts’ of finance. They have declared cryptocurrencies are a scourge and something to be detested; a grievous wound against all of society, and they must be destroyed. Again and again we hear from them that this is a bubble, that it has no social value, and that it is going to ‘crash’–and yet we find that the honey badger of money continues its slog upward and to the right despite all of their raging cries.

This is by no mistake, as cryptocurrencies are fundamentally better at storing value than any fiat currencies in existence today. This is because the fixed and known monetary supplies and inflation rates of cryptocurrencies; but more importantly, the social consciousness and consensus that allows for them to exist. People can now control their wealth with nothing more than the power of cryptography. Cryptocurrencies are rewriting the entire way that money is understood and used–and with that, who gets to control and benefit from these systems.

Saving in fiat money is for chumps

    “Why would anyone outside of a lunatic asylum want to hold money? What an insane use to put it! For it is a recognized characteristic of money as a store of wealth that it is barren; whereas practically every other form of storing wealth yields some interest or profit.” –John Maynard Keynes

Today, each and every form of fiat money is nothing more than a legal tender that holds value simply because governments command it. However, if we look over the course of history; again, and again, we see states fail, governments collapse, and their money inflate to nothing. This is not by mistake, but by design. Just look at what has happened in Venezuela over the last few years.

What those in contemporary finance and government fail to see is that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are a radically departure from state-sponsored financial systems and the tyranny that they enable. For the better part of modern human history we have simply had to deal with the fact that government officials could show up at our places of business or our homes, rob us at gun point and call it legal. That they could fictionalize up mountains of money and give it to their corrupt banking and corporate friends, and tell us it was for our own good.

Again and again, we see the powers-that-be prod us down the road to serfdom, and tell us it is the yellow brick road to the Emerald City. We have seen what happens to those who follow that path, and the poverty it creates for all of us.

The revolution that we have all been waiting for is finally here, and it is the radical divorce of state and money from each other. Governments were never entitled to steal the wealth of the world for themselves and for their barbaric and unholy purposes. We finally have a way to resist their tyranny and fight back with economic means alone. Just as we once saw the radical divorce of church and state fundamentally change society for the better, we will once again witness such a radical epochal change–but this time it will be from the separation of money from the state.

Those of us who hodl crypto know and understand that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have nothing to do with money. The true purpose of cryptocurrencies is to create a new form of economic power that will be the harbinger of a new society. A society where economic power is outside and beyond the control of the state, and the monstrous banking and financial sectors that they have fused with. It is from this base of power that we are creating that a whole new society within the framework of the web.

Bitcoin will become the most value asset in history not only because it is a better form of money, but because of the astounding personal economic power it creates. Through tearing out the economic base of the corrupt systems of fiat money; we can create a new and more egalitarian society using the power of the blockchain and the internet. The banners we will raise in this new society will have the following inscribed upon them for all to see and choose to follow if they wish:

To each according to their code, to each according to their keys!

This is another thing that will save you lots of time and stress. It requires some major discipline at first, but it is so useful after the habit has been established. Between school, working out, and marching band, I didn't have enough energy to pursue anything else other than sleep. I changed that by automating my schedule. Take some time this week to sit down and write out all that needs to be done during the week and all that you want to do. Review your goals while you're at it. For me the only work that is absolutely dreadful to do is my schoolwork. So what I assigned all of my work that I know will be assigned or that I'm currently working on to specific days. I study math Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I work on physics on Monday and Wednesday nights and so on. After you've assigned all of your work to different time slots, take some time off of anything else that requires major discipline and focus completely on this. It protects you from procrastination and also by having a regular schedule, gives you more energy to pursue other things.

XRB, XBY, PRL, REQ.

It all comes down to using the right tool for the job. If you are in a situation where you do not need to manage your time, then you have little use for a schedule. It sounds like you are on the equivalent of a vacation/break, and you are satisfied with the amount of things that are you completing.

I schedule my time precisely so that I CAN have unscheduled time, if that makes any sense. By getting the important things done, I have some unscheduled time in the evening where I can do whatever I want.

If I was in your exact situation I'd probably schedule everything for the first couple hours of the day (or however long it takes) and then do whatever I wanted for the rest of the day. Obviously, you don't NEED to do this to get everything done, it would just make the rest of the day more enjoyable (for me personally).