Category Archives: Blog

Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Blog, Coinomi, Electrum, Fork

How to Claim Your Bitcoin Gold

November 18, 2017 flippener 3 Comments

Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain that gives you the opportunity to double your number of coins.

However, unlike previous forks such as Bitcoin Cash (which made me 0.8 BTC, currently worth about £4k), this one seems to have been very disorganised. It has been weeks since the official blockchain snapshot was taken and only now is there an official wallet available – and that’s painful and resource hogging to use.

Further, this delay led to extensive trading in BTG futures so the current value of BTG is fairly low – it started at about $500 but is now hovering around $150.

The process to claim is a bit fiddly so you need to decide if it’s worth the effort of claiming – in fact, I would say that unless you own at least 0.1 BTC it’s barely worth it because you’ll lose too much in fees.

To begin, check to see if you’re eligible for the new BTG coins – essentially that means you held Bitcoin in a wallet you controlled (i.e. for which you have the private keys) on Monday 23 October 2017 (officially Block 491407).

Let’s do that for the Electrum Wallet account we set up previously:

Electrum Transaction Complete (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

(Just as a matter of interest note the value of that account showing there, 0.0227 BTC, has a value in the screenshot footer of £102.60. Now, less than a month later, it’s £134.37).

We go to the Addresses tab and look for the address that holds our BTC. If you have done many transactions it may be split across addresses – in this case you will have to make multiple claims. Right-click on the appropriate address and choose Copy Address to get it into the clipboard.

Go to the Bitcoin Gold Website and paste it into the claim box (‘Check Your Address Balance Before Block 491407’). With a bit of luck you’ll get a confirmation similar to this:

Bitcoin Gold claim confirmed (Image: BIUK)

The BTC Balance column may be empty if you’ve moved out your BTC since, which is fine. In fact, this process of claiming BTG will expose the private keys of your Electrum Wallet so you are advised to move out your BTC to a new wallet anyway; this is just to avoid the small possibility of hacking.

(Note: We will be using a respectable intermediate wallet so the risk is fairly low – I won’t go through the process here for simplicity since the amount risked is also low. However for my personal BTC stash I won’t use the source Electrum Wallet again without wiping it first).

At this point you need to decide if you want to claim or not. In this case the claim is worth 0.0227 x $149 = £3.38 so it’s not really worth it (fees will be about £4), but I’ll go through it anyway to illustrate the method.

The process is relatively straightforward, if a bit fussy. You install the Coinomi app on an Android phone and give it your private keys so that it can access your new BTG. Coinomi is used as it’s one of the few respectable wallets that currently support BTG.

There is an infographic available that covers this part of the process quite well:

Import Your BTG on HItBTC (Image: Goldenshow.io)

One thing that’s not made clear is how to get your Electrum private key in a form that Coinomi can recognise. To do that, in Electrum go to Wallet -> Private Keys -> Export, enter your password and wait a few seconds. Look for the line that matches the address of your BTC in the left column, and the key is in the right column – you need to type this into Coinomi as described in the infographic.

When it asks, hit Confirm and you should see your new Bitcoin Gold:

Coinomi screen BTG received (Image: BIUK)

Open an account on the HitBTC exchange if you don’t already have one – again it’s one of the few exchanges that support BTG. It doesn’t have a great reputation so I wouldn’t recommend using it for large amounts of BTC.

Go to the Deposit page (via the menu in the top bar) and click Deposit in the BTG Bitcoin Gold row. In Coinomi select the Send tab and type in the Wallet address from HitBTC and press Use All Funds. If it asks you to confirm coin type select Bitcoin Gold, then Send, enter the password and Confirm.

You’ll see the amount leave your Coinomi Wallet. Soon after you should see a wait cursor (rotating yellow circle) appear on the BTG line in HitBTC next to Main Account. Once the BTG appears, click on the arrow next to it to move it into Trading Account so you can sell it.

HitBTC screen showing account balances (Image: BIUK)

Click on Exchange in the top menu bar. To sell BTG look under Instruments for the BTC tab – click on Name to get the altcoins into alphabetical order and select BTG. To sell at a good price is, of course, an art in itself – you can use the chart on the left to judge whether it’s a good time to buy or not (has it just gone down or up, for example, what is the trend, etc.). However since i think BTG is generally going to trend downwards, as more people work out how to sell their free coins, let’s just sell immediately.

In the Sell BTG box click on your Balance to select all your BTG. Review the current Price (in BTC) and the resulting Total (in BTC). If you’re happy, press Sell Limit. You should get an acknowledgement and the BTG should be sold within a minute or two – you can confirm this in the My Trades tab under the chart. Note a small amount of BTG may not get sold and just be left behind in your BTG account (so-called ‘dust’).

If the market is falling your BTG may not get bought, for obvious reasons. If so you can find your BTG trade in the Active Order tab, cancel it, and try again at a lower price.

Your new BTC will now show in the top menu bar, and its equivalent value in dollars (USDT). To withdraw it click on the Account tab and in the BTC line press the arrow next to the BTC Trading Account value to move it into your Main Account. Press Withdraw and enter the amount to transfer.

At this point you enter the address where you want the BTC to go – if it’s back to your Electrum Wallet then you would find the address there by selecting the Receive tab to display it – copy and paste the address into HitBTC and press the Withdraw button.

As ever there will then be a delay as the transfer takes place and the BTC appears in your Electrum Wallet. (In fact, in the example I’ve shown here the amount of BTC gained from the trade isn’t enough to pay the fairly high minimum fee – £2 – to move the BTC out of HitBTC so I’m leaving it there until I can add more to it with further forks or airdrops).

And there you have it – your original BTC coins have increased by an amount equal to the value in BTG of the same amount of BTG coins, less trading fees.

Although it’s not worth going through this process with a small amount of Bitcoin, as demonstrated, it can be quite lucrative with a larger amount of Bitcoin. My personal account gained about £400 and some people will have made much, much more (“to whoever has, to him more shall be given…”) and all effectively for free.

Airdrop, Blog, EtherDoge (eDoge), iBTC

Airdrop Tidy-up

November 15, 2017 flippener

I have registered for loads of airdrops recently, so many that I have not done a very good job of keeping track of them. Often they are barely worth the trouble of claiming so last weekend I decided to take stock.

I knew I had received EtherDoge (eDoge) and iBTC coins so I decided just to dump them as I couldn’t see any long term value in either of them. They are both Ethereum based so I headed to EtherDelta.

First to go was iBTC. Here you can see I had received 3312 iBTC in my attached Ether wallet:

iBTC balance on EtherDelta (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

I deposited them into EtherDelta and was pleasantly surprised that I was able to sell them for 0.116 Ether:

Selling iBTC (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

That’s worth about £27 so not bad for a complete freebie.

Next I offloaded my eDOGE. My impressive 5 million eDOGE, however, turned out to be nothing like so valuable. They had almost no trading value and selling the lot only got me 0.005 ETH, or about £1!

Selling eDOGE (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

In fact it was worth than that, as it looks like the transaction cost me 0.02 ETH (45p) so wasn’t really worth the doing.

Never mind, I’m very pleased with the iBTC outcome.

Bitcore (BTX), Blog

First Weekly Bitcore Airdrop Received

November 11, 2017 flippener 1 Comment

As I pointed out before, the Bitcore coin (BTX) has a great ‘unique selling point (USP)’ that if you hold it you get 3% extra – effectively ‘interest’ – added weekly.

This week is the first time I’ve held enough BTX in my wallet (10 is the minimum quantity) to qualify for the airdrop. However, just like last week’s 25% one-off airdrop, it arrived on time and with no fuss.

Bitcore Weekly Airdrop received (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

An added bonus is that in that week the value of Bitcore has gone up from $6 to $10 – so my £100 stake is now worth £227. Now maybe you can see why I’m a BTX fan!

Blog, SolarCoin

First SolarCoin Claim Arrives

November 5, 2017 flippener 1 Comment

If you have solar panels on your house you are eligible to receive free SolarCoins in proportion to how much energy you can generate (specifically each year you get your solar system’s capacity in kW multiplied by a fixed ratio of 1.314). I have previously described the process of installing a SolarCoin Wallet and shown how to register a claim for SolarCoins.

I went through these steps for the two solar arrays on my house (front and rear, installed at different times). Officially you should receive any coins you claim in the first week of the month following your claim.

I am pleased to confirm that my coins came through this week exactly on schedule. The amounts are almost exactly what I expected (the small discrepancies likely relate to whether you calculate the time the panels have been operating in years, months or weeks, for example).

First SolarCoin claim received (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

The amounts I received were:

Rear roof: 33.9 coins (3.7kW x 7 years x 1.314)
Front roof: 18.6 coins (3.2kW x 4 years x 1.314)

The total came to 52.4775 SolarCoin which at their current value is worth about $18, so about £14.

Airdrop, Bitcore (BTX), Blog

Bitcore Airdrop arrived this week

November 4, 2017 flippener 2 Comments

I have been following Bitcore (symbol: BTX) for some months. It seems to be one of the more interesting new altcoins as it seems to have momentum. It has regular airdrops and community discussions which is more than most here-today-gone-tomorrow altcoins.

I first heard about it because it had an airdrop that allowed you to claim free Bitcore if you had Bitcoin in a private wallet on a specific date (26 April 2017). On that day I had 2.8 Bitcoin in my Ledger so I decided to claim. I assume this airdrop is still open so if you had some Bitcoin then you can still claim yourself.

The process is pretty straightforward – download and install a Bitcore Wallet from the Bitcore website as per the usual process (much like I detailed in How to Make a Bitcoin Wallet). You then need to sign a message using your Bitcoin Wallet to prove you own the Bitcoins, and then you register for the airdrop by providing the Receive address for your Bitcore Wallet, plus the message, on the Bitcore Airdrop page.

For me an additional complication was that my old Ledger Nano can’t sign messages so I had to import the account into Electrum and sign it there. I therefore didn’t make the claim until August.

From that original airdrop I received 2.8 BTX. They have held their value fairly constant at about $6 so that was worth $17 or about £13. Not as great as some airdrops (e.g. eBTC) but not bad.

I missed a trick, though, as Bitcore provides free airdrops weekly worth 3% of your current balance. That certainly beats the 1% per year you might get with a conventional fiat savings account! However, you only get the airdrop with a minimum balance of 10 BTX which, of course, I didn’t have.

Anyway, when I heard of proposed changes in BTX airdrops from 30 October I decided to do something about it. The airdrops would only be available to those who registered, but would start with a free 25% airdrop which seemed rather attractive. Therefore last week I bought £100 worth of BTX (so 19.77 BTX) – that brought my total to 22.6 which was more than enough.

I have covered the process of buying and transferring the BTX previously.

My reasoning was that £100 was enough to be worth doing – since I would get about £25 free for the effort of registering – and that I didn’t have the nerve to do what I maybe should have done. Which was buy £10000 worth of BTX and make £2500 overnight. Of course, the latter would have left me open to big losses if BTX devalued quickly.

Bitcore Wallet - recent transactions (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK) — Bitcore Wallet – recent transactions (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Anyway, I’m pleased to report the free 25% BTX (5.64 BTX so worth about £30) has arrived in my wallet. And the price has remained relatively stable so I should really have bought much more…

I plan to keep hold of my BTX for some time (whereas I usually sell airdrops fast) because of the weekly airdrops I should now get. Of course, Bitcore know that’s what people will do and I credit them with coming up with a very clever way of keeping their currency stable and with significant value.

Blog, SolarCoin

How to Claim SolarCoins

October 29, 2017 flippener 2 Comments

If you own a solar array you can claim free SolarCoins. To do so you will need the MCS Installation Certificate provided by your installer (or equivalent) in electronic form (e.g. PDF or JPG).

Once you’ve created your SolarCoin Wallet you need to go to SolarCoin.org to create an account.

SolarCoin Website (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Click on the Login / Register button to get to the Log in page, then select the Create new account tab. There enter your Email address and your preferred Username, and click to enter the prompted security code.

SolarCoin Create New Account screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

You will then be sent an email to verify your email address – click the link in this email to activate your account. You will then be able specify a password on the site (as usual, I recommend creating a new one at PasswordsGenerator.net).

Login and you’ll see your My Account page. Click on the link to add a solar facility; this is also available as a menu item in the right sidebar – Add Solar Facility.

On the Create Solar Facility Registration page enter details as follows:

Facility identifier: this is just the name you want to give your solar array so you know what’s being referred to – it could just be ‘my solar’ or, if you have multiple systems, perhaps the property address and, say, ‘front roof’, ‘rear roof’, etc.

First Name, Last Name, Email address : these are self-explanatory. The Address is that of the property with the solar array.

SolarCoin Registration page (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Facility Nameplate Capacity: This is the power of the solar array in kW, and should be specified clearly on the Installation Certificate, typically as Declared Net Capacity. For most UK residential systems it will be between 2.0 and 4.0.

Facility Interconnection Date: This is the date the solar array started generating, and will be specified on the Installation Certificate.

Documentation: Press the Choose file button and navigate to and select your copy of the MCS Certificate, or equivalent supporting documentation. If you have an online system that monitors your solar array then you can also enter its website address here, but it’s not required.

SolarCoin Public Wallet Address: This is an address in your SolarCoin Wallet where you want your free SolarCoins to be deposited. To find it, start up the Wallet app, wait for it to synch, then press the Receive button.

SolarCoin Wallet Receive screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Initially this will just show a single Address value – this is what you need so right-click it and select Copy Address. Go back to the SolarCoin website and Paste. Valid addresses begin with the number 8.

(NB: You can have as many receive addresses as you want, so if you have more than one solar array you can choose to press the New Address button and create more, one for each array. In this case you should also right-click in the Label column, select Edit and give each address a name to help identify it.)

Optional: Were you referred by someone to register with SolarCoin? (Click to open): Click on this to open it up – it would be appreciated if you could fill this in with my details. It won’t cost you anything and will earn me about 10p per referral.

Referral Resource Contact Email: Copy flipener@gmail.com and paste it there.

Referral Resource SolarCoin Public Wallet Address: Copy 8ccFy7EaMPziwwe2qH3SkfEtJB4k6qL9gt and paste it there.

The remaining entries can be completed or not as you wish. Click Save. Your solar array is now registered and you will have an entry in the right-hand sidebar under My Solar Facilities.

Next: First SolarCoin Claim Arrives

Airdrop, Bitcore (BTX), Blog, Cryptopia

Upcoming Bitcore (BTX Airdrop)

October 24, 2017 flippener 2 Comments

There’s an airdrop coming up on 30 October for the Bitcore cryptocurrency (symbol BTX). This airdrop promises 25% on top of your BTX holding, followed by 3% per week. That’s pretty generous!

I have a small amount of BTX from a previous airdrop (which depended only on you holding some Bitcoin on 26 April this year – more details here). This time I’ve decided to go in bigger and buy some BTX ahead of the airdrop date.

Bitcore Homepage (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

BTX is primarily traded on Cryptopia so I registered there and transferred some BTC from my Ledger to my new Cryptopia account. I decided to go for £100 (0.0238 BTC) so the 3% would be worth something.

Cryptopia Homepage (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Although it was the first time I used Cryptopia the deposit was easy to do:

Depositing Bitcoin to Cryptopia (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

It went through smoothly, though it took nearly an hour.

I bought the Bitcore and transferred to it to my wallet (which only took about 10 minutes), to join the 2.8BTX already there from the previous airdrop:

I registered my wallet address following the excellent detailed instructions put out by Hashers. They also cover downloading and installing the Bitcore wallet if you don’t already have one.

My Bitcore is now ready sitting in my wallet, with the address registered with the Bitcore site for the airdrop. Now I just need to wait for the free Bitcore!

Bitcoin (BTC), Blog

How to Start in Bitcoin

October 22, 2017 flippener

Here’s a quick guide to how to get started with Bitcoin. You’ve heard about it, you like the sound of it, and you want to get your first Bitcoin or part of one.

If you just want to buy and own Bitcoin you just have to do the first two steps below. If you want to take it off the Internet and store it on your own computer and have full control over it, then also do the last two steps:

Any questions, just ask in the comments below.

Blog, Coinbase, Electrum

How to Send Bitcoin to a Wallet

October 22, 2017 flippener 3 Comments

Online Platforms and Wallets

Once you’ve bought Bitcoin on a cryptocurrency exchange or other online platform it is advisable to transfer it to your own wallet.

If the currency has low value then you could take a chance and leave it online, but there are three risks to be aware of:

The exchange could collapse (it has happened before, e.g. Mt Gox).
You can’t get access to your currency as fast as you need it (e.g. to sell in a falling market). Currently Poloniex can take 24 hours for a withdrawal to go through, Bitfinex 12 hours.
The exchange gets hacked and a third party withdraws your Bitcoin.

Here we’ll cover the process of moving your Bitcoin from an online platform to your own wallet. It will be similar on most platforms and wallets – here we’ll assume:

Bitcoin has been purchased on Coinbase and is sitting in your Coinbase account as described in How to Buy Your First Bitcoin on Coinbase.

You want to move it to your personal Electrum wallet, created as described in How to Make a Bitcoin Wallet.

Receiving in Electrum

Start Electrum and select File -> Open and choose the wallet you created previously. Enter the password you recorded at the time:

Electrum Password Screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Electrum will open the wallet and the History tab will show all transactions so far – none in this case:

Electrum Wallet Screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Each wallet owns a series of Bitcoin addresses where coins can be deposited. Select the Receive tab to show the first address available in your wallet, listed as Receiving Address.

[A quick detour into addresses: Note the subject of addresses is quite a complex one that we don’t need to go into here – just be aware that most wallets will manage a series of addresses for you. For example, many wallets will use a different address for every transaction for enhanced security. Also, since a sending address may contain more Bitcoin than is sent from it the ‘change’ may get sent to a third address. You don’t need to worry about this, you just rely on using the addresses the wallet suggests. If you want to see the addresses that are being managed ‘under the bonnet’ have a look at the Addresses tab to see the various Receiving and Change addresses handled by your wallet.]

Electrum Receive screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Copy this address to the clipboard: you can either select it and copy or click on the Copy icon at its right-hand end. Enter a Description, e.g. ‘Initial transfer from Coinbase‘. With that done we are ready to receive Bitcoin to the copied address in this wallet.

Note that the sending platform is in control of the transaction, Coinbase in our example. It doesn’t matter how much Bitcoin you want to receive, you’ll only receive what is sent – so the other items here (e.g. Request amount) are irrelevant for our purpose. By all means click Save to record your description of this transaction, but otherwise it isn’t necessary.

Electrum Receive screen after saving (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Sending from Coinbase

Go to Coinbase and login to your account. Click on Accounts. This should show the Bitcoin you bought previously.

Coinbase Accounts screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Click on the Send button under BTC Wallet. to bring up the Send BTC screen. On the day I wrote this it had a message about delays in sending Bitcoin – you may or may not get that.

Paste the address copied from your Electrum wallet into the Recipient box. Check that Withdraw From shows the BTC Wallet. Under Amount click in the BTC box – this will bring up a Send Max button. Click on this to transfer out all your Bitcoin in this account (the fee is shown at the bottom). Add a Note such as ‘Transfer to my Electrum wallet‘. Press Continue.

Coinbase Send BTC screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors.co.uk)

Next you’ll see a Confirm Send screen. Check that all the fields are correct. You may need to enter an SMS code depending on your account settings.

Coinbase Confirm Send screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Press Confirm. You should then get a brief confirmation message saying the transaction is going through. Go back to the Dashboard and you should see the transaction is listed under Recent Activity as Pending.

Coinbase Send Pending (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Transaction Confirmation

Now you have to wait. You may get an email confirmation from Coinbase that it is going through.

A transfer can take from minutes to hours depending on how busy the network is and how much Coinbase spent on fees to transfer the money (they probably default to a low fee). A transaction has to be confirmed by a number of different nodes on the blockchain and these transactions will come through one by one. If you click on the transaction in the Coinbase you can see how many Confirmations have gone through.

The first sign that the transfer is definitely happening may be seen in Electrum on the History tab. With luck this will show the transaction as it is confirmed, with the Description that you entered above and saved.

Electrum History screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

If you double-click on the transaction you can see the confirmations counting up.

Electrum Transaction detail (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

As the confirmations come in the ‘Unconfirmed’ message changes to a clock face that fills in segments and goes from red to green.

Electrum Transaction Being Confirmed (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

When the transaction is complete it will show a green tick (you can see the details on the Addresses and Coins tabs and by double-clicking the transaction line):

It will also be shown in Coinbase as no longer pending (and if you double-click it there under Recent Activity it will be marked Completed).

It’s done. Your Bitcoin has been successfully transferred from your Coinbase account to your private Electrum Wallet. There it can only be transferred out using your private seed or password, otherwise there is no way for anyone to access it.

Blog, Electrum

How to Make a Bitcoin Wallet

October 22, 2017 flippener 2 Comments

There are lots of ways to hold your Bitcoin but they can mostly be divided into exchanges and wallets. If you put your Bitcoin on an exchange like Poloniex, Bitfinex, Bittrex or Kraken then really you’ve handed your Bitcoins over to the exchange provider to look after.

If, however, you want complete personal control over your Bitcoin then the only way to ensure that is to create your own wallet and hold your Bitcoin there. The difference from an exchange is huge – only you can deposit and withdraw money there because you’re the only person who knows the passphrase or seed (like a complex password). Whereas with an exchange you have to ask the exchange provider to deposit and withdraw money – you can’t be sure they will, though they usually will, and it’s up to them how long they take to carry out a transaction.

Electrum Home Page (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Here I’ll explain how to create a Bitcoin Wallet that is entirely yours to control. The example I’ll use is Electrum which is one of the biggest and most respected. Like most Bitcoin Wallets (and related software) it’s a software app that’s free to use.

To download the software go to https://electrum.org/#download and choose the most appropriate version for your device. I’m on Windows and have gone for the Windows Installer for the Latest Release (2.9.3 at time of writing). You could instead choose the standalone executable if you didn’t want to install it (you could then put it on a USB stick, for example).

Download the Electrum Wallet software (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Once downloaded run the installer as appropriate for your device (note that if you have an older version of Electrum installed it’s clever enough to upgrade the program without losing your data).

Electrum Installer completed (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

When that’s complete, close the installer and run Electrum (e.g. in Windows via an icon on your desktop). Then select File -> New/Restore. Choose a suitable wallet name (or accept the default if you plan to only ever have one). This will create a new wallet (the option to Restore only applies if you’ve previously created an Electrum wallet and want to reuse it).

Create a new Electrum Wallet file (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Next you will be asked ‘What kind of wallet do you want to create?‘:

Standard wallet
Wallet with two-factor authentication: this requires a second device, typically your smartphone, as an extra security layer
Multi-signature wallet: this is where two people are required to confirm a transaction (a bit like joint signatures on a bank account)
Watch Bitcoin addresses: this allows you to monitor a Bitcoin address elsewhere (e.g. in a hardware wallet) but not make transactions with it

Choose Electrum Wallet type (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

In most cases you should choose Standard wallet. If you are going to hold a lot of Bitcoin in this wallet you could research and choose Wallet with two-factor authentication. Here we’ll go with Standard wallet.

Next you’ll be shown the wallet generation seed. This is like a complex password, one that is made up of 12 individual words. Record this as it is the key to your wallet – lose it and you could lose the Bitcoin in the wallet.

If you are only going to hold small amounts of Bitcoin in this wallet then you may choose to store this seed electronically, e.g. copy the words to a Word document. However, if you are going to hold any significant amounts in this wallet then take the advice on the screen and write the seed on a piece of paper.

Electrum Wallet Seed (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

This avoids the risk of your device being hijacked (e.g. by malware) and your seed – and all the money in the wallet – being taken (an interesting property of Bitcoin is that if someone has your seed they don’t need to access your wallet – they can create a new wallet on their PC containing your money). Keep that piece of paper very safe – it could be far more valuable than your passport, bank cards, etc.

On the next screen you type in the seed so Electrum can confirm you really did record it! A bit painful, but a valuable check.

Once you’ve done that you have to enter a password to encrypt your wallet. I recommend you don’t make one up yourself (humans are very poor at creating passwords that can’t be cracked by computer). Instead go to Passwords Generator and create a new one with the following settings:

Random Password Generator settings (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

Press Generate Password then write down the password and the mnemonic below it (to help remember and confirm it). You can write this on the same piece of paper as the seed since in most cases your Bitcoin can be accessed with either.

Type in the password (not the long mnemonic) – don’t be tempted to copy and paste it (what gets used by Electrum needs to match how you read what you’ve written down). Leave Encrypt wallet file ticked and press Next.

There is a brief ‘Electrum is generating your wallet addresses‘ message then Electrum opens on its main view. It will default to showing a History tab listing transactions on the wallet – at this point it will be empty.

The bottom status bar will show the current Bitcoin value – if this is showing in dollars (USD) you can set it to pounds (GBP). Go to Tools -> Preferences -> Fiat -> Fiat currency and select GBP:

Electrum Preferred Fiat Currency (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)

That’s it – you now have a Bitcoin wallet up and running ready to receive, store, and send out your Bitcoin. Its various features and the methods to send and receive Bitcoin will be covered in future posts, e.g. Receiving in an Electrum Wallet, and Sending from an Electrum Wallet.

Online Platforms and Wallets

Receiving in Electrum

Sending from Coinbase

Transaction Confirmation

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