Buying Maidsafecoin & storage

Beginners
1

Hi all, I finally had the time to sit down today and look into buying some Maidsafecoin. As I am completely new to crypto-currencies I figured I could share my experience with other newbies here to aid their process of buying and also to check myself in what I am doing. I am still learning and am still uncertain of some things but so far this is what I got. I have questions too :smile:

I registered an account on Masterxchange.com (the only exchange recommended by MaidSafe I believe).

After looking through the exchange I found out that I need to own bitcoin to trade for Maidsafecoin. Masterxchange does not deal with fiat (in other words doesn’t sell bitcoin)

So how to buy bitcoins? I am in France and found through bitcoin.org the exchange Paymium.com. I registered with them, found out they don’t accept credit cards, they require documents: IBAN # BIC #, copy of ID, proof of residency, copy of bank statement. I unwillingly submitted these after which I was notified that the ID verification process would take a few days and I could possibly expect a phone call requiring additional documents. So now I am waiting.

From my understanding, after verification from Paymium, my next steps will be:

Buy some Bitcoins which will then be stored on the Paymium exchange.

Go onto Masterxchange and request a deposit address.

Go back to Paymium and withdraw the bitcoins to the above Masterxchange deposit address.

Go to Masterxchange and trade the bitcoins for Maidsafecoins.

Voila, I now own XXXX Maidsafecoins which are stored on masterxchange.

Question time :smile:

@dallyshalla made a video concerning buying MAID with BTC on masterxchange: How to buy maidsafecoins with bitcoins on masterxchange - YouTube

This video also shows how to transfer your bitcoins to omniwallet (an online wallet) which @russell points out in this thread omniwallet is only necessary if you plan on selling. @russel also says “So lets say I buy some Maidsafecoins on MasterXchange. I go to Withdrawal. Can I just send these to any Bitcoin address that I own?” @frabrunelle replies “Yes, you should send them to a Bitcoin address where only you have the private key.”

So, How do i get a BTC address? Create an omniwallet account. How and why is this any different from storing on an exchange, i am still trusting a third-party to store my coins. In this thread @19johneddy75 states “NEVER EXPOSE YOUR PRIVATE KEY”, transferring to Omniwallet requires just that! If I want to store them locally, I can download a wallet to run locally but, I am again trusting a third-parties software to store my coins. Also trusting my mac. @janitor states in this same thread “You can run any open source wallet on your desktop and it’s not going tobe “exposed” to the Internet. Most of them communicate only with Bitcoin Core.”

Does MaidSafe or @janitor have any recommendations for open-source wallets that store locally? What are people using here?

Is it possible to store my Maidsafecoins on paper?

A question I think I know the answer to but I will ask anyway: Does the wallet generate public and private keys for you?

Possibly some silly questions in there. I am a newb after all :wink: Thanks for your time.

From my understanding all this is going to be so much simpler when the network launches.

8 Likes
2

This is a great authentic story of buying maidsafecoins!

I failed to include that one would need bitcoins first in the videos that I had made; however, I did demonstrate that the “share” and the “secret” key in the video from bitaddress.org can be saved written down for example… I tend to make one offline and write it on a paper legibly, and then close the browser and delete history.

Then if you wanted to use your maidsafecoins you can take the “secret” and import it into omniwallet and maneuver your coins from there. and also send to other “share” keys that you wrote down during your offline phase.

Hope that helps.

3 Likes
3

@dallyshalla, I think I got a little lost in the question section of my post and I didn’t make much sense :blush: I got so involved in the exchange process I completely spaced on that section of your video, sorry.

To edit & clarify,

“So, how do I get a BTC address?” Go to bitaddress.org :smile: & don’t lose the numbers. :smile:

If for now I choose to not use omniwallet and would like to withdraw my Maidsafecoins from masterxchange, can I use the “share” address I get from bitaddress.org as the “deposit address” I give to masterxchange for withdrawing my coins? And those coins can be stored on that address indefinitely?

1 Like
4

You can use the “share” address from bitaddress.org as the destination from masterxchange for your newly acquired maidsafecoins to store them indefinitely.

you got that exactly right.

1 Like
5

Hello everyone !
Thanks to @jm5 for the step by step explanation and @dallyshalla for the video-tutorials!

Planning to be a small farmer since I got to know maidsafe through a Techcrunch article this summer, the turmoil around the drop of bitcoin value made me switch off the lurking mode and want to get some maidsafecoins before the network opens :smile:.

Would you know of secure ways and reliable websites to buy bitcoins without having to submit bank accounts information, but just by using credit card (like when buying on amazon for example)?

Thanks for the info, and my best wishes to the Maidsafe team and the maidsafe community ^^

2 Likes
6

The only reliable way I know of to buy with a credit card is with Circle.com. Otherwise, you’ll probably have to use localbitcoins.com or Mycelium local trader (with a smart phone) to do p2p trades.

4 Likes
7

The other need in this topic that should be highlighted is to buy at least one more internal harddrive. (If not an external backup, although those are easier to deal with) I know Apple products are a bit of a black box, so if you don’t know how to swap or put in a new internal hard drive (or SSD), you should start learning perhaps on a PC. You need to back everything up. You can also get into encrypting your hard drive, but that’s another thread.

1 Like
8

Hi guys! :smile:

I was thinking about this exact problem a couple of weeks ago, and realised it would be a very complicated process for beginners to buy MaidSafecoin after reading about it, if they were not already comfortable using Bitcoin.

To solve this problem I have developed a website: www.instantSAFECOIN.com

From this site I am selling pre-loaded Bitcoin wallets with 100, 1,000 or 10,000 MaidSafecoin (through the purchase process you automatically get sent the public and private keys for a personal Bitcoin wallet containing the number of MaidSafecoin you selected).

I am selling them at a premium over the exchange prices (prices manually calculated and updated daily). It isn’t really aimed at people on these forums (as generally the early adopters on here would be comfortable with buying from exchanges and managing the Bitcoin processes), but hopefully it can fill a need for an “average Joe” who might stumble across some information and be interested in getting involved, but doesn’t know where to start.

I am also in the process of putting these up as classified ads on eBay and starting some advertising on Google. The site is very new (only up within the last few days), so please let me know if there is anything you like/don’t like about it, or anything that you think needs changing.

Thanks!

Josh.

4 Likes
9

JoshPorter, I assume you expect the buyers to trust you not to keep / know/ steal the private keys?

Seems like a good way to instill bad habits in newbies to me…

Or do you have some way to avoid such risk?

1 Like
10

I agree that this is a potential problem.

The benefit of doing it this way (compared to the current model where people trust an exchange) is that at least there is proof the coins actually exist in the individual’s private wallet (as opposed to trusting that an exchange is holding segregated coins for each buyer), and you can immediately move the coins if you don’t trust the site not to keep the private keys. Even though it remains a centralised exercise in trust (something the Safe network will be able to eventually solve of course), at least this way there is a verifiable trail of evidence if I was to attempt to steal a customer’s coins before they had an opportunity to burn them for actual Safecoin.

In addition, as I am using “real-world” payment processors, there is “real-world” recourse if I attempt to do something dodgy. I believe that the Bitcoin blockchain provides a valuable source of protection for both the buyer and seller (I hope!) using this model (in terms of record keeping).

If there is a better solution that you are aware of, I am very open to changing the model to improve trust! :smile:

11

Hi @gonefarmin Would you like to start another thread regarding what you mean? Why does the harddrive have to be internal? Why would one need two hardrives for small time farming?

12

I think it is a problem worth trying to solve. One way is to direct users to obtain a bitcoin address and provide this to your website as the “delivery address” for their purchase. On completing the purchase, send them to a third party page that shows that the MaidSafeCoin have been delivered to their address, such as https://www.omniwallet.org/

2 Likes
13

I have my own preferred wallets, but there are so many wallets because there are so many different type of uses (and users). Depending on your req’s what I like may be different from what you want/need.
To make it simple, I’d go to MasterCoin Web site and see what they recommend on desktop, then use that wallet.

14

a site that automates all that would be awesome

15

Thanks @janitor, I will check it out and educate myself more :smile:

16

@JoshPorter with knowledgeable folks they’d just go to the exchange; however, I want to point out that emailing people private keys is a huge flaw in security.

An alternative is to educate the person how to make a bitcoin address and have them share the share with you; it’s easy to confirm that maidsafecoins got the recipient on the block explorer; be sure to document the transaction in terms of - payment received and coins sent to avoid any disputes or to prove your reliability against any potential disputes.

Please do not send private keys by email. There has been a history of email admins finding information about wallets and private keys and those coins being gone;

1 Like
17

As you may know by now @jm5, “internal HDD is better than an external HDD” is just speculation at this point. Apart from waxing on about backing up your data (I’d create a separate thread for that), I suspect internal hard drives will be given a higher rank by the distributed MaidSAFE network brain because they are considered a more permanent fixture in a laptop or desktop, not to mention their link to the devices BIOS. (For example, we might partly prove my hypothesis by trying to install a Windows 7 operating system on an external hard drive [no matter the size] – you’d run into roadblocks. I’m assuming we’ll be able to install a MaidSAFE module on a 4 TB external hard drive for example. However, with the BUS speeds, USB port dependencies, I doubt its performance will come close to an internal drive (all other things being equal in this hypothetical scenario).

1 Like
18

I’m sure it is possible to set up RAID on USB 3.0
4TB RAID USB 3.0 - up to 210MB/s

Supported RAID levels : 
Preconfigured RAID 0
Modes: RAID 0 (Fast) / RAID 1 (Safe)
Easy RAID selection

serial internal HDD transfer speeds;
SATA III; II; I speeds - SATA 3 (6Gb/s) speeds are from 301MB/s to 600MB/s; SATA 2 (3Gb/s) speeds are from 151MB/s to 300MB/s; SATA 1 (1.5Gb/s) speeds are from 1MB/s to 150MB/s.

19

Maybe also worth mentioning when you go to bitaddress.org. Save the websitepage and disconnect completely from the internet. Click a few times on generate new address when you open up the saved webpage.

I would also advice that you split up your privatekey on 2 or 3 email addresses that way you got a back up.

I would split up the privkey above as follows:
email address (1) 5JvvFFq2ewDUyWjY4sP (1)
email address (2) 74ivCaBxts3iCjR (2)
email address (3) g6QSjjkvkYdrfLuT1 (3)

You could email these numbers to 3 family or friends. Don’t save your private key as a whole file this just makes it easy.

In the future you’ll have to access your coin, this is how you do it. I’m gonna use the Bitcoin Core for this example. But this can be done with other wallets as well.

Open up Bitcoin Core goto (help) / (debug window) click on tab (console)

Type (help) in the console and you’ll see a few commands. The only one that’s important to get at your coins is:
importprivkey “bitcoinprivkey” ( “label” rescan ) using my example privatekey above, you would type the command:

importprivkey 5JvvFFq2ewDUyWjY4sP74ivCaBxts3iCjRg6QSjjkvkYdrfLuT1
after this, you click on the enter button. Since your wallet has to sync with the bitcoin network it will take a while before you can see your coins.

After you finish and everything is synced up, you’ll see your public address show up in the (receive) tab in Bitcoin Core. Close your Bitcoin Core because if you don’t somebody can still see/access your privatekey when they goto (help) / (debug window) click on tab (console).

You can also password protect your privatekey. Through (settings )/ (Encrypt wallet). If you do this don’t forget your password. And before you type in:
importprivkey 5JvvFFq2ewDUyWjY4sP74ivCaBxts3iCjRg6QSjjkvkYdrfLuT1

You have to type the command:
walletpassphrase “here you type your password” 300 and press ENTER
The 300 is a timeout for 5 minutes, you can get it to something else 600 (10 minute time out) within this time period you should type in:
importprivkey 5JvvFFq2ewDUyWjY4sP74ivCaBxts3iCjRg6QSjjkvkYdrfLuT1

I would advice to pull this stunt on a totally clean computer with antivirus. A vps / tailslinux or whatever you prefer… Importing you privatekey can also be done with other wallets ofcourse, maybe in the future I’ll dig more into it.

6 Likes
20

I personally prefer to generate my cold storage addresses on a fresh linux install on a USB stick, while my harddrives and internet cable are disconnected. Afterwards the USB stick doesn’t get into any machine again until I’m ready to move the MaidSafeCoins out for exchange to Safecoin. Unless the install would have some crazy virus that saves the private key to the motherboard’s ROM, it’s physically impossible for the private key to get into contact with the internet.

I don’t have much faith in “clean” installs alone, if the machine has persistent storage that afterwards gets into contact with the internet again, I don’t trust it. I’ve heard too many stories of fresh OSes from legal and trusted sources that were in fact infected from the start.

2 Likes