Sorry if this post would be better placed in another category.
I’m new to mining and based in the UK. I have one L3+ miner currently using litecoinpool.org, I’m also looking after two other peoples L3+ miners (11 miners in total including my own). I’m learning whilst going and feeding the info back to the other two or point them in the right direction.
At the moment we’re using Coinbase individually as a wallet. The machines have only been running a little while and haven’t amassed a great deal of rewards and LTC is low value at the moment so obviously nowhere near the cashing out stage yet. But I’m wondering if Coinbase as a wallet is ideal in this scenario as somewhere to store rewards/coins (not trade). Coinbase cannot transfer funds (when the time comes) in GBP to a UK bank account and can only transfer Euros using SEPA.
I’ve seen hardware wallets such as USB sticks but cannot get my head around how the coins get on there in the first place (so bypassing coinbase and going straight from litecoinpool.org to the hardware wallet). Also is it possible to back up hardware wallets?
I’ve tried to download the official LTC wallet app for android but every time I click the link it Google Play Store says it’s not available.
When it comes to cashing out, do you sell LTC or just convert to your currency (or is this one and the same thing?)
Short answer: Buy a hardware wallet or use a paper wallet, do not use coinbase.
Here you will find detailed advice about choosing bitcoin wallet. The same rules apply for Litecoin, but different options available (some wallets can handle both bitcoin and litecoin at the same time).
You can also read this:
My personal choose is to use a Ledger Nano S hardware wallet together with a SPV (view-only) wallet like electrum-ltc.org
Yes, hardware wallets can be backed up, by simply hand writhing 12 to 24 seed words that are used to generate receiving addresses and spending keys.
About this, you only need to generate your receiving addresses on your wallet of choise (one or many addresses, as needed). Once generated, you can give it to anyone so he can send coins to you. You only need to use your wallet to spend (transfer/sell/exchange) your coins, you it can be kept in rest in a safe place.
Make a peer to peer sell; give Litecoin somebody you trust in exchange of cash.
Use an escrow or exchange service: Deposit your Litecoin in a website/app, your counterparty will deposit fiat currency and the buy/sell operation will be performed; at the end you’ll need to withdraw your fiat currency.
Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it and it’s really helpful.
So let’s say for example I purchased the Ledger Nano S (which I’ve read up on after following your links and really like it).
Would the Ledger Nano S or it’s companion app generate it’s own receiving address for LTC? And I can enter this address into litecoinpool?
On litecoinpool, you set the threshold of when to receive payment and at the moment with coinbase it doesn’t take long before it shows in the account. How does this work with an offline hardware wallet like the Nano S, would payments just float around on the web until the Nano S is next connected to a device with the companion app? Or would I have to disable the auto-payment and manually trigger the payment when the Nano S is connected?
No. Paymets will simply arrive, no matter if your wallet is “online”. In fact, no wallet needs to be connected to receive payments, you only need the wallet (i.e. the private keys) to spend your money.
This also means that, if you happen to lose your wallet and your seed words, your received coins will be lost forever; so please keep your backup safe.
No need for that. You could just let the autopaymet turned on and, as I said before, when you want to spend accumulated coins, you then plug your wallet in.
In my personal opinion, Ledger Nano S + Electrum-ltc is the winning match.