So I’m new to LTC, have done research over the last week and decided I want to take the plunge and buy in, I feel like I missed out already but hopefully there is still some good profits to be made.
I have created a wallet using Electrum-LTC on my desktop.
I have stored the Electrum passphrase on paper, plus added an additional passphrase also stored on paper.
My wallet is encrypted.
A few questions:
Can I lose my wallet and forget the wallet password, but still maintain my coins as long as I have the passphrase? So basically just passphrase is the ultimate thing to protect?
What is the fastest and cheapest way to get Litecoin? I see people saying coinbase is taking several days to clear funds deposited, or is this only because they are doing bank transfers or something? I will be buying with AMEX if that makes a difference. Also there is quite a big surcharge of 4% or something on coinbase which is pretty substantial, how to avoid?
How do I make my coins as safe as possible? Seems like all that is protecting my coins when the wallet is on my desktop is my encryption password, is the wallet supposed to be removed from the computer when you aren’t using it or how am I supposed to ensure they are safe?
if you loose the recovery phrase and your computer crashes your coins go with it…your password is only needed to spend
you cannot avoid surcharges without mining coins yourself…why does it matter? you buy one LTC for $65 and in an hour you made $5 profit so there’s your money back…
your only complaining about fees because you don’t understand how much profit you can make ( or loose) from trading yet
just be happy that you don’t need a broker to trade…crypto is suppose to be “decentralized” atr least bitcoin and litecoin are so if someone is charging you a fee for a coin they mined…it is nodifferent than buying something at wholesale and reselling it at a premium for profit…except here when you buy you profit only when you sell at a higher price too…you can either wait for the market to got up or charge someone a higher price in trade outside an online exchange…localbitcoins is known for this as bitcoin is almost 10K through some sellers on there…doubt they ever get a sale but they have a sell order in place for when the market price gets that high…
on to keeping coins safe…encryption and lots of backups
your private keys are what you want to keep safe…electrum only gives you a seed ohrase which is not a private key…electrum is a 3rd party server…which usually does not give access to private keys unless they offer an export function that includes them
to use true core software. Download litecoin core at litecoin.org for your device…however you need 25GB of drive space to run a core node but you have access to you private keys this way…3rd party apps generally don’t give you access to your private keys but some do
if someone gets your 12 word phrase they can restore your wallet and steal your coins just like any private key as well…in fact it is easier to steal coins with a seed phrase
that said…it is up to you to manage your own keys as cryptocurrencies that are decentralized give you the ability to “be your own bank” and no one but you has access to the information unless you grant someone access
here is a link to what a private key is on wiki to give you a general idea: Private key - Bitcoin Wiki
the only way to ensure your coins do not get stolen is to store your private keys offline and use a very long jumbled passphrase that you wont loose…
check out armory which is a offline client for storing bitcoin
what I usually do is open my core wallet and go to console and dump my private key and write it down…don’t print it because then its in the printer cache and then I can take that and hash it if I want separately so only I know how to unlock it later or using the included passphrase function with core wallet before I dump the key…can also add up to 15 multisig address’ to one address which is basically adding 15 layers of encryption all which need to be unlocked to spend the coins…Segregated witness puts the signature towards the end of the transaction making it easier to verify
Hope I could help and did not confuse at all…always here to answer questions
Thanks for the reply. Still unsure of a few things.
I thought I saw people say you can buy bitcoin from a website with no fee or lower fee then swap for ltc, I will look into it more I guess. Also if buying through Amex is it going to have a delay or it will be instant purchase?
I kept my passphrase offline on a usb and on paper (not printed) it has the 12 word from electrum as well as additional passphrase I added. I am still unsure if I need to backup my wallet or is the wallet not important at all?
Electrum can export your private key but I read you should never do it for safety.
I haven’t done any send/receive yet so I may not understand the process entirely but with my wallet being on the desktop encrypted can’t someone just get past the encryption and then take my coins? In this case if I’m holding for long period of time wouldn’t it be better to delete any trace of the wallet from my computer and just use the passphrase to recover it later when it comes time to sell or purchase more? This is assuming the answer to above is that the wallet is not important and doesn’t need backing up
yeah you can trade litecoin for bitcoin on just about every exchange out there
YES BACKUP YOUR WALLET
if your computer or device crashes or is stolen your coins go with it and your backup is the only way to get them back
the passphrase does not recover anything…only backups recover coins…passphrases are only used when spending/sending coins to another address
a 12 word seed phrase is a backup for electrum because electrum is a 3rd party server and if their server goes down so do your coins…
if you download a core wallet form liteocin.org which is the core software designed by the main developers…you get a decentralized server that only you have access to…your private keys are saved on a backup file when using a core wallet and can be recovered either using the private keys just like seed phrases can or by copy and pasting the file in the appdata folder…
Don’t come back crying that you cant access your coins 2 years form now when electums server goes down and your address are no longer found on the network…only use wallets like that for temporary storage…
if you want long term cold storage you need to obtain the WIF format private key for a Litecoin address that you create using a decentralized core wallet (not a 3rd party wallet) and write that private key, public key and value down and that is a physical coin and can be recovered using any software that allows for sweeping of paper wallets or importing
Another option for cold storage is you can go to liteaddress.org and download that and use it offline or just trust the site…
Hello! If you are new in this sphere there are some tips which will be useful for you. For example, you should learn information about day trading cryptocurrency. In my opinion, this kind of trading perfectly suits newbies
I recommend reading the article about the (possible?) mission of Bitcoin and check some other articles from this blog. There is many information about basic questions related to the crypto and some certain trading-related articles, as well.
