US Crypto Buying Guide
Choose an exchange
In the US there are a limited number of exchanges you can choose from. The US requires certain financial institutions need to “Know Your Customer”. This adds additional requirements and processes that exchanges must to abide by to sell you cryptocurrency.
Coinbase (This is an affiliate link. We’ll both receive $10 in Bitcoin)
Binance (This is an affiliate link. You’ll get a 5% discount.)
We’ll cover Decentralized Exchanges (Dex) in the intermediate tutorial after you have some experience buying and transferring.
Get a software wallet
After you purchase your coins on an exchange, do not let them sit on that exchange. Exchanges are NOT banks. Your funds are not in your control or necessarily safe. There is a whole list of things that can happen to your coins if you leave them there.
Make sure the wallet is from a respected company or group. Here are some great wallets to get you started.
Mobile
Desktop
Electrum (https://electrum.org)
Get a hardware wallet
To keep your funds the safest you can opt to move your crypto to cold storage. You do this so that the only way to move that money to another account involves a piece of hardware that you enter a pin number into. The private keys are not accessible without this hardware wallet, therefore no one can move your funds without the use of this device. There are several popular options I’ve put several of the safest and most popular below. These devices run between $55 -$100 and are well worth the investment if you’re going to continue purchasing crypto currencies.
Ledger (https://www.ledger.com/)
Trezor (https://shop.trezor.io/)