Been doing a bit of research on bitcointalk and have came across some interesting things. I would like to know your thoughts. As I have been looking for a exchange to trade cryptos between, the main ones I have found are btc-e, coinbase, cryptsy and a number of smaller ones. Some people think btc-e and coinbase are all the rage but after further searching I find that btc-e would be the only one I can trust. Some of the smaller exchanges are fucking terrible, scams, etc. They can take a long time to withdraw your coins and have been caught out rejecting peoples requests but then accepting them at a lower rate (this includes coinbase) I can see two problems with btc-e, for one it can take you 24 hours to get the money off the exchange (confirming your identity can speed things up) and there isn't a huge range of coins to trade in. The only coins btc-e trades are btc, ltc, nvc, nmc, ftc, pcc and trc There is also Cryptorush which shows the website homepage missing a section on the right side like a cropped image. This doesn't make me feel secure at all. What do you use in your trades?
careful trusting btc-e, have heard many people with issues and support tickets never resolved. i have used them though and they seem fine, except account gets frozen for 48hrs when updating your password. i personally trade on bitstamp, cryptsy and poloniex without any issues - plenty of trades executed. crypto-trade is also ok, but not so good at responding to support requests.
Only trust you own protected wallets. Trust NO exchange or other company. Trust BTC-e WTF!!!. Like any other business, BTC-e may fold today. Coins "trusted in wallets you don't ultimately control" are not really yours. Any of these exchanges/businesses may have various issues. Coinjar is a reasonable option for purchasing bitcoins. Transfer then to YOUR wallets. Bitcoin 101: Don't trust centralised third parties with your coins. WARNING COMPLETE.
Thanks for the reply, this is originally what I was going to do but was thinking starting small until I get a better hold at trading. I have heard lots of smaller offline coin wallets are hard to trust(Forgot the exact term, but like bitcoincore), the offline storage ones, can carry viruses. This wouldn't be good to get on a computer I use for financial transactions. Thoughts?
Ditto. I move coins in and out, I would never keep a balance on there. Anonymous operators that refuse to divulge any information about themselves. Whole operation could literally be switched off overnight and no-one would even have a first name to work from.
So the general feeling I get here is people do use exchanges, although when they are holding bitcoins they transfer it to a desktop wallet. Correct? My main worry is moving my bitcoins out of the exchange into my cold storage wallet. Have heard so many stories of things going wrong.
Here is a tutorial vid I made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI8pli2xTfU New developments in multi-signature wallets are emerging. Paper wallets if you have some wealth tied up in the future. But for now, use the Electrum wallet with a very strong password (you can utilise a few of them for extra security). Thousands of people have lost out via various companies folding. Coinbase has had security issues. Don't join the long list. **Trusting yourself with your coins is a foreign concept to many people because we are used to paying banks to do security for us.
bitstamp is one of the most reliable. I've used btc-e several times, but now only use them to trade LTC. This exchange is not very transparent, and operators are anonymous. They are based in Russia though. BTC China is the best to use to trade between BTC and LTC, as there are no fees for crypto-crypto trade. Only a small fee when dealing with fiat. I do not trust the reliability of cryptsy at all. There were a lot of problems with alt coins in the past. coinbase is not really an exchange. Once you sell btc, the fiat goes directly into you bank account, no way to "store" them on coinbase. It takes a week to move fiat in either direction, so there isn't any instant trading.
You would never store your coins on an exchange and make sure to use a reliable exchange I used to use btc-e but now I use mcxnow and cryptsy I find both mcxnow and cryptsy do everything I want, mcxnow pays dividends on coins and cryptsy has all the decent coins I like on it