As a beginner how to invest in Bitcoins easily and safe? What marketplace?

[Zandrek]

Hello I'm interested to invest a small amount (500 Euro, I'm a student) into Bitcoins. However I have no clue how.

I've read through this bourd for a couple of days and the more I read the more confused I get. It seems that I would need to have a university degree in informatics. I don't really understand the technical background and I'm very concerned after I've read about paper wallets, hardware storages and so on. Even though there are a lot of topics with people saying their account got compromised. So if even well informed and careful people can't protect their investment, how shall I?
Furthermore as soon as somebody makes a transaction he must be online and therefore could be hacked, right? This is very frightening.

Since I want to invest only this small amount I'm willing to take the risk, but that leads to the next problem. How? I've read that the following wallets are considered good:
Armory
Electrum
Bitcoin Core

I think I'll go for Electrom since Armory is said to be very complicated and Bitcoin Core to be a bit outdated from a technical point of view.

If I understand it correctly after downloading a wallet I pay fiat money into that wallet, is that correct?

After that I can buy Bitcoins/Ethereum and so on at a market place with my wallet, correct?

So what marketplace would you recommend? I couldn't find any recommandation on this board. On the internet I found this website: https://top10onlinebroker.de/top10/top-10-onlinebroker-fuer-den-handel-mit-ethereum/?origin=google&network=search&google_params[keyword]=bit[Suspicious link removed]gle_params[matchtype]=p&google_params[adposition]=1t2&google_params[device]=c&google_params[device-model]=&google_params[creative]=197569656423&account_id=1200&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8b_MBRDcARIsAKJE7ln_RCtiMXA3zC9Mm6mh0tHzStRD5j-SKB3y99lfghhBtWtazR41GKYaAg3WEALw_wcB

It recommands:
Markets.com
etoro
Plus500
AvaTrade
Trade.com

Since I've never heard of them I'm unsure. What would you recommand? And is this way even correct (paying fiat money into the wallet und paying with that for Bitcoin at a marketplace)?

Thanks in advance.

Hopefully you can shed some light on this confusing topic.

Best regards
Zandrek

[DaMut]

Welcome to cryptoworld,
so far,the best wallets are Trezor and Electrum because it's very easy to use.
To be honest i am not really familiar with that recommended thing(to be exact i really don't know about it at all),
if you're in europe it'll be better if you're using a well known company such as Coinbase and Kraken after that transfer it into your offline wallet.
I recommend it because it's a reputable international exchanger and many people used it as a place to buy Bitcoin,
but,if it would be better if you know about your local exchanger,because if something goes wrong you know where shold you do.

how it works :

Download the Wallet(Trezor,Electurm and others) wait for synch[Your PC] >>Send your money to your account & Buy Bitcoin in an exchanger >> Send it to your wallet.

[Zandrek]

After sleeping about the decicion to really do this, I've created a wallet with Electrum. I was not sure which type of wallet I should create, at first I wanted a two way authentication but then it was saying that means I would only have control over 2 out of 3 parts of my password and that a server would have the rest. That sounded dangerous so I chose a standard wallet.
Was that wrong?

So now I have a wallet. But how do I put money into it? I tried to find anything but I couldn't find a way. Can you please give me some advise?

[DaMut]

oh you don't know which one from 3 of those options right(For Windows) ?
Standalone Executable (signature)
Windows Installer (signature)
Portable version (signature) (security advice)

you must be confused which one is the right one for you to install right ?
choose Windows Installer

try to read about how to use Electrum for Beginner in here :
http://bitzuma.com/posts/a-beginners-guide-to-the-electrum-bitcoin-wallet/

i can not explain it in detail because it will take a time and a lot of space,you can go there for more information.
and in there you can see how to spend it or deposit your money in it.
it's very detail about how to do it all in one,

if you don't know about something you can ask us in here

[jmaresca]

You need to get an account with a bitcoin exchange to buy your coins. There are ones such as Kraken, Bittrexx and Coinbase. If you decide to go with Coinbase use this link and you will get $10 in free bitcoin if you deposit $100: https://www.coinbase.com/join/59750d034d3af202774f6d1e

Once you have purchased your coins it's preferable to move them to a wallet. Better off with an offline paper or Hardware wallet for added security.

[WildWestRider]

Great noob topic, thank you for posting so the rest of us can learn from it!

[Cryptomover]

Welcome to cryptoworld,
so far,the best wallets are Trezor and Electrum because it's very easy to use.
To be honest i am not really familiar with that recommended thing(to be exact i really don't know about it at all),
if you're in europe it'll be better if you're using a well known company such as Coinbase and Kraken after that transfer it into your offline wallet.
I recommend it because it's a reputable international exchanger and many people used it as a place to buy Bitcoin,
but,if it would be better if you know about your local exchanger,because if something goes wrong you know where shold you do.

how it works :

Download the Wallet(Trezor,Electurm and others) wait for synch[Your PC] >>Send your money to your account & Buy Bitcoin in an exchanger >> Send it to your wallet.

Your procedures would be: deposit eur in an exchange, buy Bitcoin/ other coins with the desposit eur, then transfer the coins you bought to a wallet.

For exchanges: Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp are fine for EUR
For wallets: hardware wallets (e.g. Trezor, Ledger) are offline, desktop wallets (e.g. Electrum, Armory) are installed on your machine. That means, if your computer is infected, that could be a risk by using desktop wallets. They are generally safe, though.

For your case, I would recommend using Bitstamp (as Kraken's engine is slow, and coinbase is losing reputation these days), and just store them in a desktop wallet (Electrum is by far the best in my opinion), because hardware wallet like Trezor costs 90EUR which doesn't make sense for your 500 EUR, and ledger is always out of stock and would take a very long time to ship.

[Zempa]

Get used to a confusing system of exchanges, fees and transaction times until Zempa launches in the future.
It's all worth it and very exciting, but can be a little frustrating.

Try to plan ahead with your trades and do research. Dont rely on the word of others or you could fall victim to a pump and dump.

[zsmith]

You are thinking about the wallets incorrectly.   When you buy bitcoin they send a transaction to your address but your wallet is just a file with a number, this number is the key that can spend your bitcoin.   So don't bother worrying about which wallet software to use as it does not matter as long as you can put that number into the program.   Some wallets don't let you get this number out.

Now if you are saving the coin to spend later, just put it on a paper wallet.  When you decide to spend the coins then you can pick your wallet software at that time.  Who knows what future software versions will look like so why bother even deciding this now?

Also if you pick a wallet that isn't bitcoin core there is a chance that the developer makes it incompatible with the rest of the network.  For example, an old wallet that used to be around has had the development stop, so  it's not being updated anymore but this wallet had a hard coded fee set low from way back so any Transactions from this wallet will never confirm so the money can not be spent. You can't get the number out either so the only way to get the money out would be to update the software by coding it yourself.  This guy got screwed out of his bitcoin because he didn't want to use bitcoin core or a paper wallet.  Consider all alternative wallet software to be experimental in nature to test features that might one day make it into core and not something suitable for long-term storage.  If you decide what wallet software to use at the time you spend, it would be unlikely that you would choose obsolete incompatible software.

[Zandrek]

Thank you for your great help! Especially the link from Damut is very detailed and explains a lot. I haven't had the time to read it all yet, because I'm going to move to another country tomorrow (to do my semester abroad). Once I'm settled I'll continue and let you know how it goes. Hopefully this can help other beginners in the future too.