How to Buy Bitcoin and store BTC in wallet

Step 1 – Get a wallet

BitcoinQT – The original Satoshi wallet from bitcoin.org

Armory – (Recommended) Armory is the most mature full featured wallet.

Exodus – This is the easiest to use and it supports multiple cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain (Recommended)

CoinJar

Coinomi App Wallet for Iphone & Android with support for Bitcoin and multiple cryptocurrencies

Step 2 – Get Bitcoins

Coinbase – Bitcoin exchange (Highly rated).

Changelly – Exchanging between crypto currencies.

LocalBitcoins.com – This fantastic service allows you to search for people in your community willing to sell bitcoins to you directly.

How To Buy Bitcoins – An international directory of bitcoin exchanges.

expresscoin – Recommended for fast, simple service.

BitStamp – A multi currency bitcoin exchange based in Slovenia. (Highly rated).

CoinJar – CoinJar allows direct bitcoin purchases on their site. They’re based in Australia but serve an international clientele.

Kraken – Recommended for fast and rigid service.

Bitbond – Earn interest with p2p lending for Bitcoins

BitPay – (Highly Recommended) – Merchant account services

CoinBase – Merchant account services

Step 3 – What can I do with my bitcoins?

Coinmap – Find bitcoin friendly merchants near you

Bitpay – Accept Bitcoin payments for businesses.

Bitcoin Foundation – The Bitcoin Foundation standardizes, protects and promotes the use of Bitcoin cryptographic money for the benefit of users worldwide.

BitGive – BitGive is a non-profit foundation that is accepting donations from the Bitcoin community and providing charitable gifts to environmental and public health causes worldwide.

Bitcoin Development Fund – A charity devoted to helping further the development of bitcoin, the open source community and causes of humanity.

Step 4 – Keeping up to date with bitcoin

r/bitcoin – Bitcoin links and discussion by the Reddit community

Coindesk – An excellent source of bitcoin news

Bitcoin Magazine – Insightful articles with deep technical credentials

BitcoinX – Bitcoin headlines, market rates & charting resources

The Video – An excellent primer for anyone curious to understand the bitcoin phenomenon

There are many wallets to choose from and here are our recommendations:– Web wallets are the easiest & most convenient to use, but are potentially less secure than wallet software run on your own computer.– Software wallets are downloaded and run from your computer. They’re considered more secure because the user has more control and doesn’t depend on a 3rd party service. Most software wallets require nearly a full day constructing a local copy of the blockchain before use.– iphone & Android apps are available.– Hardware wallets are the most secure because they don’t expose your private keys to the network.– Although it’s not yet easy to buy bitcoins, it’s getting simpler every day. Here are our recommendations:– Many people find that the best way to get bitcoins is to accept them as payment for the products or services they already sell. Just give your customers the option to pay in bitcoin.To make it easy, you may want to sign up for a bitcoin merchant account which allows you to send invoices and integrate bitcoin payments into your online order pages for most of the popular shopping cart systems.– Mining bitcoins requires an investment in specialized bitcoin mining hardware designed to process double round sha256 hash verifications at high speed. Many excellent systems are available. It’s important to point out that bitcoin mining is highly competitive and risky for would be participants. Please see our bitcoin mining page for more detail. The manufacturers who have successfuly shipped bitcoin mining hardware in volume are:Bitcoins can be used to purchase just about anything you want. Dental services, a brand new car , travel and even luxury real estate. We recommend searching the merchant directories below to locate the merchants you’re interested in. You can buy gift cards with bitcoin and spend them in most of the stores you already use.– Available from Gyft.com and spendable at:– Buy everything with BitcoinHere are some good places to keep up with bitcoin news and discussion: