A Bitcoin Wallet is essential to send and receive Bitcoins. Bitcoin wallets have a Bitcoin Wallet Address. A Bitcoin Wallet Address looks something like this:
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The address is a unique identifier for your wallet and could be thought of in a similar way to that of an email address, except instead of sending an email to an email address, Bitcoins are sent to a Bitcoin Wallet Address, and no one ever has to know who the Wallet Address belongs to.
Most Bitcoin Wallet software, both Desktop Clients and Online Wallets have the ability to create as many unique Bitcoin Wallet Address as anyone could ever want. A new address could be created for every individual transaction or a single address could be used for every transaction, or anything in between.
So in order to start using Bitcoin you will first need a wallet. You can create a wallet very easily on your computer or on your mobile phone. And the best part: you don’t need an internet connection and you don’t have to provide any information. There are wallets available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone and other systems. There are many different types of wallets and many of them are open source, this means that anyone can check the code in the software, to verify nothing suspicious is in it. learn more about the different types of wallets in the coinminer special.
It is very important to secure your wallet with a strong password. Make backups regularly, preferably saved on another drive offline. For example, an encrypted usb stick can be a safe way to store your wallet, these can be bought anywhere for under $20. Installing a wallet is a piece of cake and done within minutes. After installing your wallet of choice you can start receiving bitcoins whether you’re connected to the internet or not. Naturally, to send bitcoins you must be connected to the internet as the network needs to verify the transactions.
When the network has verified a transaction, the receiving wallet will have the private keys to send the bitcoins which were send to that wallet. A different private key is generated from your wallet software for each transaction. This is part of what makes bitcoin such a secure network. The best part is you don’t have to worry about any of that, you can just use a very strong password for your wallet. The wallet software will do the rest, being assisted by the combined processing power of the global Bitcoin network.
Now that we know what a wallet is, it is time to create one! Creating an offline wallet:
To get started using Bitcoin you will need a wallet client. This guide is a windows step-by-step to show you the basics of creating an offline wallet and how easy it really is. however if you prefer an online wallet scroll down.
*there are more offline wallet clients, we will use the Multibit wallet for this guide
The MultiBit wallet, a bitcoin wallet for Windows, Mac and Linux can be downloaded here.
After downloading, run the file and install the software.
Java is required for this wallet, a dialogue will appear to install Java if it’s not already installed. Follow the link to download and install Java. or you can click here to see if java is installed on your system.
Start the wallet. On the tab ‘Request’ you will see your own newly aquired bitcoin address. It will look something like this:
Your address: 1Mz6fXYh4YUrA8SYrNMms6Gn7v6KWUujED
This is your wallet address, your first public key.
You can see it’s like internet banking, easier even. If you want to send coins, just click on the Send tab, fill in the receiving address and Label, the amount of coins to send and hit send. The password confirmation screen is a safety barrier. Even if someone has your wallet, they cannot just send your coins away.
As we mentioned previously, you need a strong password, create one right away.
Click on File, Add password and fill in your desired password. We recommend making this as secure as you possibly can. Remember, if you lose this password, your wallet will be gone forever. This is the only master key to the coins in your wallet address. The bitcoins in your wallet will also be lost, nobody will ever be able to spend them. There is no other key to restore these losses with unless you create a backup yourself. You are the bank, this means you alone hold all responsibility.
Because accidents happen, you can make sure you are safe from accidents or other problems that might prevent you from accessing your bitcoins. As we mentioned before, you can backup your wallet to a usb-key for safe keeping in a vault or another protected safe place.
Make a backup of your wallet
A wallet backup is a copy of your Bitcoin wallet (or your wallet’s private keys) that you can use to recover your bitcoin if something bad happens to your original wallet file. “Something bad” can mean anything from someone stealing your computer, a hard disk failure or some other serious computer problem.
A good backup is a copy of your wallet’s private keys that you store off your computer. That way if something happens to your computer you still have access to the backups. IT professionals have a saying: “Data doesn’t exist unless it is in two separate places, and opentext DM doesn’t count as a separate place”.
At the very least you should have the following in place:
- Encrypted wallets (to prevent others from accessing the data)
- A new wallet created in a directory that is regularly backed up (SpiderOak, Dropbox, Carbonite, Time Machine etc)
- A USB stick with additional copies of the private keys in case your machine is stolen and you forget your backup account password
Backup your private keys with Multibit Wallet
Open your Mutibit wallet software. Choose Tools -> Export Private Keys.
- Enter your Wallet password and click ‘Export To…’.
- Select your backup location, like a usb-key.
- Fill in a Password at the bottom to lock the backup
- Click ‘Export private keys’ and you are done.
Restore your private keys with Multibit Wallet
Open your Mutibit wallet software. Choose Tools -> Import Private Keys.
Enter your Wallet password and click ‘Import from…’.
- Select your backup location, like a usb-key.
- Fill in a Password at the bottom and click ‘Unlock’ to unlock the backup file.
- Click ‘Import private keys’ and you are done.
Import blockchain wallet backup into multibit
If you do not have the wallet installed on your computer download the Multibit desktop client available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
Open your Mutibit wallet software. Choose Tools -> Import Private Keys.
1. Click the “Choose Import File” button and change the file format to *.aes.json (2+3). 4. Navigate to your backup wallet.aes.json file and open the file.
Enter the wallet password and press unlock. If required enter the second password and press unlock again. Click The Import Private Keys Button to complete the process. Your balance will be restored once the blockchain has downloaded.
Creating an Online wallet:
In this guide we are going to create an online wallet on Blockchain.info. The Blockchain wallet has at least the security level of a general large bank. To create a wallet on the blockchain, go to the blockchain website and click ‘Wallet’ in the top right corner.
Click Create My Free Wallet to create your bitcoin Wallet.
Password Strength
Create a password of at least 10 characters in length to ensure that even if our database is compromised your wallet will remain secure. A password 10 characters in length will take over 1000 years to decrypt. After creating the wallet, you will receive an email with the Wallet identifier.
The Wallet Identifier is the name of your Wallet. It looks something like this;
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The Wallet identifier will automatically be filled in on the blockchain login page on your computer, but not on others. Make sure not to lose the identifier and password and never store them both in the same place. Proceed to login by entering your password on the login page.
Wallet Home contains all the basic information to get you started right away.
Your Wallet addess is displayed in text and QR code. Many available free apps support QR code, so you can scan it with your phone camera instead of typing it over every time and possibly making a mistake.
Backups can be made with a click of a button.
Click on Email and you are done. You have received the backup in your email. You can also choose for a direct download, Click on download and choose an external hard drive or usb key. Uploading the backup to your Google Drive or creating a paper wallet are also good backup options but we recommend the offline wallet to be saved in a secure place on an encrypted usb key or disk drive.
Sending bitcoin from the blockchain wallet is just as easy, hit the send tab, enter the wallet address were you wan to send bitcoin to and next to it the amount you want to send.
The Public Note will be permanently posted on the blockchain along with the transaction. Please be aware of this as anyone can view the entire blockchain, meaning all transactions in the network and all the Public notes attached to them.
After clicking Review Payment you will be presented with the confirmation screen shown above. You can click Show advanced for all the details of the transaction.
Review all of your transactions on the My Transactions tab.
As you can see, my donation to Coinminer.nl is yet to be confirmed. This means the block in which the transaction has been added has not yet been verified and secured by the Bitcoin network.
When you receive bitcoin, please wait for a couple of minutes to get at least 1 confirmation before considering the transaction final. When receiving very large amounts we recommend at least 6 confirmations before considering the transaction final.
Restore the Wallet Backup Instructions
A wallet backup contains everything you need to restore your bitcoins even if the blockchain.info website is offline. Your browser will automatically cache your latest wallet backup. The following instructions explain how to restore a backup.
Use the Import wallet tool to create a new wallet from an existing backup.
Import a blockchain wallet backup into offline multibit wallet
If you do not have the wallet installed on your computer download the Multibit desktop client available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.
Open your Mutibit wallet software. Choose Tools -> Import Private Keys.
1. Click the “Choose Import File” button and change the file format to *.aes.json (2+3). 4. Navigate to your backup wallet.aes.json file and open the file.
Enter the wallet password and press unlock. If required enter the second password and press unlock again. Click The Import Private Keys Button to complete the process. Your balance will be restored once the blockchain has downloaded.
In the next chapter we will explain how to buy and how to sell your Bitcoin.