Hello, newbie looking for help/advice

[whofarted75]

So I'm looking to get into Bitcoin and I'm at already having problems before I was able to set up my very first account. The last several days I've been going through looking at as much as I can about it. I settled on a few things that I would go ahead and choose and go ahead and get started. So let me tell you what I've done so far.

What I'm trying to do:
1.) Purchase Bitcoin.
2.) Download to my wallet (I guess on my phone.)
3.) Store in paper wallets.

At this point I don't want to spend the money on a digital (cold storage) wallet because I don't know how far I'm going to go with this yet.

I'm looking to spend about $100 on bitcoin and I want to go through the whole process of getting it to the paper wallet (Cold storage) and then send it all the way back to the exchange and selling it. (To get a feel for the whole process.) After that I'd be looking for bigger investments but at this point I just want to get familiar with how it works and not lose my rear end on it.  

What I have decided to do:
1.) Sign up with Swan Bitcoin as the exchange. (https://www.swanbitcoin.com/)
2.) Use electrum Bitcoin wallet. (https://electrum.org/#home)
3.) Use a live thumb of Linux mint and bitaddress (a downloaded offline copy) to make the paper wallets with my printer offline (https://www.bitaddress.org/)

What I have tried so far:
When I tried to sign up with Swan, after I verified my email address then verified my phone number, the only form of ID that I could see that it was allowing me to try and use was a passport (which I do not have and right now cannot get.) So I was stopped in my tracks right there.

My Questions: ( Finally, right? )
1.) Is a passport required to use exchanges? I can't just use a drivers license? EDIT: Appears answered. Likely poor wording used in the signup process.
2.) Some wallets advertised rates to buy bitcoin. Are some of these wallets, that are just advertised as wallets, actually exchanges also? EDIT: Appears answered. Likely my misunderstanding.
3.) Am I on the right track for being able to buy Bitcoin and hold long term as far as what I've been trying to do? Exchanges, wallet and way to make paper wallets?
4.) I have heard that KYC could be a problem later down the line. Anyone know if this is true and what issues could occur? (I'm still going to look into this further myself.)
5.) An alternate for swan if I can't use that was kraken. Is that a good choice in your opinion? (https://www.kraken.com/)

Basically when it comes down to it I just want to be able to purchase a bunch of Bitcoin to hold value (since my dollars are going to be becoming worthless soon) and I'm trying to break in and figure out how to do this. I don't want anyone else to have control of the Bitcoin, I want to be able to hold it myself. Any help on this to get me started would be greatly appreciated. - TIA  

[Poker Player]

Hi, welcome to the forum, I like your nickname

1.) Is a passport required to use exchanges? I can't just use a drivers license?

I haven't used exchanges for a while but you have the answer on their webpage:

A valid US photo ID (e.g. Drivers License, ID card, Passport)

2.) Some wallets advertised rates to buy bitcoin. Are some of these wallets, that are just advertised as wallets, actually exchanges also?

Quite likely. Can you give us an example?

3.) Am I on the right track for being able to buy Bitcoin and hold long term as far as what I've been trying to do? Exchanges, wallet and way to make paper wallets?

I'd say so. I would just get a hardware wallet for storing but if you prefer a paper wallet, just do it right, in a secure way.

4.) I have heard that KYC could be a problem later down the line. Anyone know if this is true and what issues could occur? (I'm still going to look into this further myself.)

Unlikely if you just want to buy and sell through exchanges and you can prove your ID.

5.) An alternate for swan if I can't use that was kraken. Is that a good choice in your opinion? (https://www.kraken.com/)

I don't know but someone else might help you on this.

[TheMimic1]

Never use any exchange that no one knows, I don't know swanbitcoin mate and that might be your first grave mistake you trying to commit right now, how about you buying a hardware wallet and creating your first account on binance to buy bitcoin? This sounds way safer to me, anyone with me here?

[NeuroticFish]

5.) An alternate for swan if I can't use that was kraken. Is that a good choice in your opinion? (https://www.kraken.com/)

I would add that on amounts of 100$ you should be very careful with the fees.
From what I've read about Swan (I didn't hear of it before, so DYOR), they have no withdrawal fee.
As for Kraken, which is a more popular exchange, from what I've read the verification may be easier, especially for small amount, the deposit is for free only if you use certain transfer methods, but there's a withdrawal fee and you'll end up paying 8.58 USD worth of Bitcoin at current prices.
Unfortunately most exchanges work with this kind of withdrawal fees (imho they try to discourage people from withdrawing Bitcoin from their vaults).

OP, I'm impressed by the way you're doing your "homework" in this matter. I wish I'd see more newcomers into Bitcoin like you!

Never use any exchange that no one knows, I don't know swanbitcoin mate and that might be your first grave mistake you trying to commit right now, how about you buying a hardware wallet and creating your first account on binance to buy bitcoin? This sounds way safer to me, anyone with me here?

I think that OP is from US, hence he will have to use binance.us. And I don't know what are the rules and fees there.
Afaik the international binance.com (where you should be able to buy bitcoin without KYC) doesn't accept US residents.

[o_e_l_e_o]

1.) Is a passport required to use exchanges? I can't just use a drivers license?

Depends on the exchange. Check their requirements before signing up.

2.) Some wallets advertised rates to buy bitcoin. Are some of these wallets, that are just advertised as wallets, actually exchanges also?

Yes, some wallets have exchange functions built in, but these wallets are usually proprietary and closed source, and are therefore a bad choice. The rates they offer are often also worse than major exchanges.

3.) Am I on the right track for being able to buy Bitcoin and hold long term as far as what I've been trying to do? Exchanges, wallet and way to make paper wallets?

I'm not sure why you need Electrum in your set up. Although Electrum is a great wallet, if your plan is simply to buy bitcoin and then move them to a paper wallet for a long term hold, then Electrum is an unnecessary middle step. You can send from the exchange directly to your paper wallets. You would only need to use Electrum in the future when you want to import your paper wallets to move the bitcoin out of them.

4.) I have heard that KYC could be a problem later down the line. Anyone know if this is true and what issues could occur? (I'm still going to look into this further myself.)

In what way "could be a problem"? If you are comfortable completing KYC and giving away your personal information to an exchange, then you shouldn't have any problems buying or selling bitcoin on that exchange unless you are doing anything illegal. It is only if you decide you want to maintain your privacy and not give away your KYC details that you would be unable to use centralized exchanges like Kraken, but there are always decentralized and peer to peer methods to trade bitcoin without KYC.

5.) An alternate for swan if I can't use that was kraken. Is that a good choice in your opinion?

I've never used a centralized exchange, but Kraken is certainly a major and well known exchange. Like the other posters in this thread, though, I've never heard of Swan.

[Charles-Tim]

There are some decentralized exchanges like Bisq, you can learn how to use such exchanges, but for ease, you can still want to use a custodial exchange to buy, and move your fund to an offline wallet like the paper wallet you mentioned. I do not know the country you are from, but if you can have access to binance.com exchange, you can use it to buy Bitcoin without no passport or ID card verification needed, but little verification will be required which you can easily provide without leaving where you are.

Make sure you run Bitaddress source on an offline computer, airgapped preferably. After you have private key and address, it will be good to run electrum also on an airgapped environment and import the private key to check if your address correspond to the one generated by the paper wallet site, this is just to verify you generated the paper wallet rightly.

Alternatively, you can run electrum offline, generate seed phrase (electrum is not using BIP39 seed phrase), but the seed phrase will work on electrum anytime you want to spend. After seed phrase is generated, create new wallet, and copy the address you like to use. Backup the seed phrase offline and have like two duplicates, then delete the wallet. This is also just like a paper wallet.

[CryptoYar]

~
1.) Is a passport required to use exchanges? I can't just use a drivers license?

Most exchanges give you 3 options.
1) passport
2) National Identity Card
3) driving license
If you get these 3 options, then surely you can verify your account through any of these documents.

2.) Some wallets advertised rates to buy bitcoin. Are some of these wallets, that are just advertised as wallets, actually exchanges also?

Yes. Just like Jaxx & Exodus wallet. you can exchange your bitcoin for any other cryptocurrency

4.) I have heard that KYC could be a problem later down the line. Anyone know if this is true and what issues could occur?

Yes, it is true, a very good post has been written by 1miau... Here is the link to the post: Why KYC is extremely dangerous – and useless

5.) An alternate for swan if I can't use that was kraken. Is that a good choice in your opinion? (https://www.kraken.com/)

I can't say anything about swan exchange but the kraken is a good exchange especially if you want to crypto with your master/visa card...

[whofarted75]

First of all I want to say thank you for all the great help/advice.

Second I'll answer or clear up some questions and comments.
1.) I am in the United States
2.) I heard about Swan from Max Kaiser on Tim Pooles show last monday. Apparently that's where Max Kaiser buys all of his bitcoin. He's also heavily invested in kraken. I liked it that they had an automatic dollar cost average buy-in and sell off. Plus no withdrawal fees. (I am kind of worried that it sounds like few people have ever heard of them though.  )
4.) I'm not too worried about KYC in that I'm not doing anything illegal. I just value my privacy. But from what I understand in the United States KYC is law anywhere you're going to get Bitcoin. (At least from any exchange.)
5.) I intended to link my account and wire the money to the exchange.

Hi, welcome to the forum, I like your nickname

Thanks, you're cute too. 

I haven't used exchanges for a while but you have the answer on their webpage:

Thanks, I saw that. That's why I didn't understand why the only option I got in the process was to use a passport. There was no other option to proceed. Maybe it was just poorly worded and you can use anything but they worded the button as submit your "passport" info. I don't know I might retry it.

2.) Some wallets advertised rates to buy bitcoin. Are some of these wallets, that are just advertised as wallets, actually exchanges also?

Quite likely. Can you give us an example?

I've been thinking about this one it is possible that while I was looking for a wallet, some of the links to top wallets, ended up taking me to a place that had an exchange + wallet. But since I was only looking for a wallet my had my blinders on and didn't realize they had everything. Oops. 

Never use any exchange that no one knows, I don't know swanbitcoin mate and that might be your first grave mistake you trying to commit right now, how about you buying a hardware wallet and creating your first account on binance to buy bitcoin? This sounds way safer to me, anyone with me here?

Thanks for the reply! From what I know when I looked into binance it is not available to us customers. also it appears to be less than user friendly to newbies. (at least that's what I read.)

5.) An alternate for swan if I can't use that was kraken. Is that a good choice in your opinion? (https://www.kraken.com/)

I would add that on amounts of 100$ you should be very careful with the fees.
From what I've read about Swan (I didn't hear of it before, so DYOR), they have no withdrawal fee.

That was one of the things that I liked was no withdrawal fees plus they have automatic dollar cost averaging. You can buy or sell scheduled daily, weekly or monthly.

OP, I'm impressed by the way you're doing your "homework" in this matter. I wish I'd see more newcomers into Bitcoin like you!

Thanks. Just trying to get into this Bitcoin thing without losing my rear end LOL. 

I'm not sure why you need Electrum in your set up. Although Electrum is a great wallet, if your plan is simply to buy bitcoin and then move them to a paper wallet for a long term hold, then Electrum is an unnecessary middle step. You can send from the exchange directly to your paper wallets. You would only need to use Electrum in the future when you want to import your paper wallets to move the bitcoin out of them.

Ahhh. Good info. I was unaware of that. But I do want to get a hot wallet so that if cryptocurrency does end up being used more for trade because of monetary problems I'd like to know what I'm doing now and learn how to use it instead of panicking later. Do you have any recommendations for a good open source wallet? (I use Linux Mint and an android phone).

Also this brings up a new question: Can you transfer your own Bitcoin from one wallet to another without any fees? In other words, it doesn't have to go through an exchange or anything so if I want to try out a wallet and I don't like it so I want to change it, can I just install the new wallet and pass the currency over to it without any problems/fees?

Make sure you run Bitaddress source on an offline computer, airgapped preferably. After you have private key and address, it will be good to run electrum also on an airgapped environment and import the private key to check if your address correspond to the one generated by the paper wallet site, this is just to verify you generated the paper wallet rightly.

Yeah, I watched a YouTube video on how to do the securely. Disconnect from the internet, shut off Wi-Fi, use a live CD (live USB) for the Linux operating system, all that kind of stuff. Thanks for the help though.

4.) I have heard that KYC could be a problem later down the line. Anyone know if this is true and what issues could occur?

Yes, it is true, a very good post has been written by 1miau... Here is the link to the post: Why KYC is extremely dangerous – and useless

Thanks, I will look into that.

Thanks again for the help/advice everyone!

What are your favorite "hot wallets" that are open source?

[UserU]

Can you transfer your own Bitcoin from one wallet to another without any fees? In other words, it doesn't have to go through an exchange or anything so if I want to try out a wallet and I don't like it so I want to change it, can I just install the new wallet and pass the currency over to it without any problems/fees?

Nope, all transactions are powered by miners so you have to pay the miner's fee. Currently they're quite high (from several to close to ten) due to the price but to avoid stagnant or super slow transactions (unless you don't mind waiting), it's best to go with the average. Certain wallets or web services allow you to choose the fee options.

[LoyceV]

Welcome to Bitcointalk

Since most of your questions have been answered already, I'll share my 2 cents satoshis:
You don't "download" Bitcoins, you transfer them.
You should learn about transaction fees and adjust your setup to your needs. If you want to store several Bitcoins on paper wallets, you may want to create more than one, so you don't have to spend/sell the entire amount when you're ready for it.
That brings me to my next point: when using paper wallets, always sweep the full balance (unless you really know what you're doing)! Learn about change addresses, learn how it works, and don't lose your funds because of it. You wouldn't be the first.
Several paper wallet websites are scams and steal your money! I've never seen anything bad about Bitaddress.org, but it's always good to stay vigilant. A compromised wallet generator isn't safe when used offline either!
You should consider how to secure your paper wallet(s): you don't want to lose them (fire/water/theft), but you also don't want anyone else to find them.

I've never heard of the Swan site, but I've used Kraken. I'm not a US citizen though, but they're based in San Francisco.

For Linux desktop use, I'd recommend Electrum for easy use, or Bitcoin Core if you want to run a full node. In that case, I'd say read up before installing it. If you want a simple wallet, use Electrum. Again: be careful with the fees it recommends, it's often much more than needed.

There's much more to tell, so if anything: just ask.

Don't tell anyone your private keys. Ever!

[o_e_l_e_o]

But from what I understand in the United States KYC is law anywhere you're going to get Bitcoin. (At least from any exchange.)

For an exchange, yes, but there are other ways to buy and sell bitcoin without going through an exchange. Just as nobody is asking you for proof of ID when you pay with cash in a store or sell something to a friend or neighbor, you can trade bitcoin directly with other people without completing KYC.

Thanks for the reply! From what I know when I looked into binance it is not available to us customers.

I don't have a Binance account, but as far as I am aware you can use binance.us provided you do not live in CT, HI, ID, LA, NY, TX, or VT: https://www.binance.us/en/terms-of-use

Do you have any recommendations for a good open source wallet? (I use Linux Mint and an android phone).

Yeah, Electrum is a good choice, for either Linux or Android. You can sweep your paper wallet directly to Electrum when you are ready to spend it. For maximum security when doing so, you can read about airgapping one of your devices and creating a watch only wallet on the other, which will allow you to sweep your paper wallet while still keeping your private key offline.

Can you transfer your own Bitcoin from one wallet to another without any fees?

No.

What are your favorite "hot wallets" that are open source?

Again, Electrum when used on an online device is a hot wallet. Electrum when used on a permanently airgapped device can be a cold wallet.