Almost ready, but ...

[pristine2]

OK, so I have:

* Downloaded the bitcoin software, and waited a few hours for my wallet to "sync". I open it every couple of days, even though there is nothing in it, to re-sync it.

* Set up an account at Campbx and bought some bitcoins. Seems like a nice platform, although the server is pitiably slow.

Now ... is there some obvious way to transfer the bitcoins into my wallet? Once I do, what happens if my computer crashes? Is there some way to back it up?

I apologise for my newbiness. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

[bitcoin44me]

Is your wallet synchronized with the blockchain? It does not matter if it is not. But basically you have 2 keys: public to receive bitcoins and private to send them. So, you just need to save the private key for yourself and give the public one to receive your bitcoins. You can generate paper wallets like that easily.


Now, with your wallet, you can save it on an other drive (USB, ...), or you can just export the private key with some software and then, if you lose it, you just have to import your private somewhere else

[bitcoinator]

OK, so I have:

* Downloaded the bitcoin software, and waited a few hours for my wallet to "sync". I open it every couple of days, even though there is nothing in it, to re-sync it.

* Set up an account at Campbx and bought some bitcoins. Seems like a nice platform, although the server is pitiably slow.

Now ... is there some obvious way to transfer the bitcoins into my wallet? Once I do, what happens if my computer crashes? Is there some way to back it up?

I apologise for my newbiness. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

are you using bitcoin-qt? if yes, then just copy any bitcoin address from "Receive coins" tab (you can assign a label to it) and withdraw from campbx to that address. backup your wallet.dat time to time. it is recommended to use separate receiving address for each transaction and backup your wallet after every 100 incoming transactions.

or you can use deterministic wallet, such as electrum. then the you only need to print out the seed (that is shown wallet generation at the first launch) and store the printed seed in the safe place.

[pristine2]

Is your wallet synchronized with the blockchain? It does not matter if it is not. But basically you have 2 keys: public to receive bitcoins and private to send them. So, you just need to save the private key for yourself and give the public one to receive your bitcoins. You can generate paper wallets like that easily.


Now, with your wallet, you can save it on an other drive (USB, ...), or you can just export the private key with some software and then, if you lose it, you just have to import your private somewhere else

Thanks, and I think I understand.

The wallet program is called "Qt". I am pretty sure it synchronised. At least it goes through the synching process every time I open the software, and the more frequently I open it, the less time it takes to start showing green. Still seems like it takes an awful long time to "verify block data integrity". Everything about bitcoin seems very time consuming thus far.

Is a "key" the same as an address? That's the word my software uses. When I click "receive coins", it gives me a long string of characters (the "address") to give to the sender.
 
Should I just give campbx an address to send the coins to myself?

When I click "send coins", I don't see a string of characters -- no address and no key.

Thanks

[dwdoc]

In this case you are both the sender and receiver.

You paste the receive address you got from Qt into the send box at campbx.  It may ask you if you want to pay a transaction fee for faster transmission.

[ProfitMaker24]

Best of luck to you!

[TiagoTiago]

The main reason it takes a long time is that that QT client does all the security checks on the the history instead of just trusting other people on the network checked the stuff before sending to you. There are some clients that boot up much faster, but it's because they skip most of the checks; that is ok as long as most people you connect to did the checks right, or received the info from someone that did etc.