This all seriously doing my head in. I am trying to get active here, figuring it all out...

I have read a lot. Many days now... this whole spending a portion of a wallet and then the balance being moved to a 3rd wallet that is not recoverable with your random word list is rather disconcerting and a serious barrier for use as far as i can see (I am an engineer, and if it is taking me this long to figure out how not to lose my wallet, I have trouble seeing how the general population is going to be able to get up to speed).

Anyway, aside from that point, I am trying to get up to speed on some of the bitcoin uses.

What I would like to to do is:

1. Buy some coin for long term investment, who knows, it just might take off in a big way.
2. Buy some coin and get into high frequency trading.
3. Transfer money between my Irish and Canadian bank accounts without having to pay the middleman (one of it's advertised features).

Now before I put some serious money into to this I need to have a firm grasp of architecture.

I think it would be most useful if someone knowledgeable laid out the bitcoin system in a comprehensive block diagram instead of trying to describe it with analogies.
With associated use case block diagrams.

Some examples of usecase and block diagram components that i think would be important are:

components:

1. bank accounts
2. exchanges
3. online wallets
4. offline wallets
5. bit coin client software (with associated credentials [password/username])
6. private keys, public keys, bitcoin addresses, seeds etc... anything and everything that is possible in terms data that must be retained by a user.

use cases:

1. Transferring BTC between an offline wallet and an exchange.

2. Can one transfer BTC between exchanges? I have had to set up so many account in the last couple days that I have no idea if my account on an exchange (for example kraken) has an associated address or not.

3. Transferring BTC between private wallets (my PC to some guy in China without the use of an exchange as an intermediary).

4. Transferring real money between an exchange and my bank account.

5. Transferring real money between my bank account and my private offline wallet. I don't think that is possible directly, how would I do it indirectly?


I think such visual information would help a lot of people.

Other questions that need to be included:

1. Speed of transfer. In a block diagram include expected potential time delays.
2. Approximate charges for a transfer between blocks (no charge, fixed value, % etc)

For example, I understand that if I remove $$ from an exchange, it could take days to process. Are there other possible delays with other transactions?




For me personally at the moment, I'd like to implement some test cases to get started.
I have Electrum installed and I am trying to learn how to use it. I'm not ready ready to go to my bank and set up a connection yet, that is a whole different can of worms that I haven't figured out yet. All I know so far is I can do it with my bank. I don't know if i physically have to go to the bank? I don't understand this 2 or 3 step verification stuff yet. I don't use paypal, i never will. Am i supposed to use my credit card here what's the deal?? Anyway I'll figure that out on my own.

Until then (that is going to take some time), I'd seriously be GRATEFUL if someone could help me out with test cases.

I have Electrum showing me some address i am supposed to use.
I'd be so happy if someone could kick me a penny or two:

14erp8z6z6hQQQ43T27Tbd9vYjTnWUDpXz
or
1Lf8GGBn8WEh6ijv5sTAJvK1epZGCM88Jy

That would at least get me going and I can test moving BTC around a bit.
(I have gone to those sites that offering free 'microRupees' if I spend a couple days clicking many ads and waiting for many timers, it's a bit ridiculous)


P.S> sorry for the long please do x,y,z post, just trying to add some constructive views here as I have already passed the point here myself that I am sure would be a barrier to entry for the layman. I will keep plugging away at it myself only because this is what I am used to doing all day long anyway. Hopefully I don't have to long to go as I'd rather be spending this time trying my hand at writing a trading algorithm.

Thank you
Ed