DeutschAnyone who is involved in buying cryptocurrencies will realize, at the latest after the first successful purchase, that an even more important task awaits with the custody of the coins. If you buy cryptocurrencies on a crypto exchange, you do not have access to the coins yourself. Instead, you have to trust the provider to handle your coins correctly. The FTX bankruptcy has shown the risk you take if you do not send your coins to your own wallet.
So what do you have to do to keep your coins safe? After you have traded digital currencies on a crypto exchange, for example, you must transfer them to your personal wallet after the purchase. In principle, all you need is the public key, which is comparable to an account number. You also need to specify the amount of cryptocurrency to be transferred. Nevertheless, there are a few things you should be aware of before sending your coins to your own wallet.
Where Can I Trade Cryptocurrencies?
Before we go into how you can transfer coins in your possession to your wallet, we would like to briefly explain where and how you can trade digital currencies at all. Apart from trading in Crypto-CFDs, which is a special case, it is possible to trade digital currencies on special crypto exchanges. On these platforms, however, you can usually only trade, i.e. buy and sell cryptocurrencies. However, custody and management in a wallet is usually not provided for on these exchanges. Although you can leave your coins on the crypto exchange, you are not protected by most regulations. With CFDs, you cannot send cryptocurrencies to your own wallet, as you do not really own the cryptocurrency, but only speculate on the price of the cryptocurrency.
How Do I Send the Coins to My Wallet?
So, if you have just bought Bitcoins on a crypto exchange, for example, we recommend that you send your coins as quickly as possible to your own wallet, which you have access to.
For this purpose, you have the option on every crypto exchange to initiate a transfer of the coins. To do this, you only need to enter the public key of your respective wallet. This is comparable to a bank account number and consists of a long sequence of digits and letters. Although the process varies depending on the crypto exchange, you should see a button labeled “Send”, “Transfer” or “Senden” in your portfolio with most providers. Select this button. If you are not sure how to proceed, it is advisable to contact the provider’s customer service.
In addition, you must of course select the number of coins you want to transfer. That’s it. The entire transfer process usually only takes a few minutes or is completed after a few seconds. The private key – the so-called private key – is not necessary in this case, because you only need it if you want to transfer coins out. If an external platform asks for the private key in order to transfer your coins, it is most likely a scam.
Which Wallets are Available to which I Can Transfer My Coins?
There are now several forms that are suitable for storing cryptocurrencies. These include in particular:
- Online Wallet
- Offline Wallet as Paper Wallet
- Ledger
Experts are unanimous in the opinion that offline wallets are preferable to online counterparts due to the higher level of security. While the data in the online version is actually stored online on servers and access by hackers is therefore possible, this is not the case with the offline version. On the one hand, there is the paper wallet, which is characterized by the fact that it prints out the public and private keys in a simplified way and thus stores them independently of the network. Another possibility, on the other hand, is the ledger, which, simply put, is a special USB stick on which you can store the necessary transaction data for your account balances and which, as an external medium, is therefore also not connected online.
