Congratulations mate.
Now, the very first rule of thumb in investing in bitcoins......NEVER EVER put your bitcoins in your online wallet, especially wallets offered by exchanges, other than a small amount that you are planning to trade or use in the very near future.
If you are planning to invest in the long term (i.e. keep and hold, instead of frequently buying and selling), then I strongly recommend investing some money in a good hardware wallet, and practice cold storage (i.e. keeping your bitcoins offline, where it can never be hacked or stolen).
There are several good and trusted brands out there, like Trezor, Ledger, Coolwallet, etc. that you can look up in Google and review yourself.
I cannot stress this enough......online wallets are NOT suitable for storage of cryptocurrencies, no matter how secure they say they are, or how many factors of authentication they use.
Cold storage, no exceptions!

Cool, I have no experience in cloud mining.
How much returns are we talking about?

Yes, only put in a small amount which you are intending to use for trading in the very near future.
In fact, I do not keep any at all in online wallets......all in a hardware wallet, in cold storage.


Good for you. Trezor is a good brand.
Personally, I use Coolwallet, and paid USD 119 for it.

That's something like RM 1k per year if you run it full time.
Not bad at all.


To store your private keys.
Your bitcoins are not really yours, unless you control your private keys yourself.
Bitcoins are pretty much like cash, i.e. whoever holds your private keys will have the full unobstructed access to spend them......hence a hacker who is able to hack into the exchange may be able to steal all the private keys stored by all the users of the exchange, and therefore "steal" your bitcoins.
In a hardware wallet, the private keys are stored offline, disconnected from the internet, and therefore can never be hacked.

In simple terms, private keys are long strings of alphabets and numbers, or somewhat like a long password as you mentioned.
In order to move any bitcoins (buy, sell, transfer, etc.), it requires two parts, a public key and a private key, and these two combined will signify that you have the authority over those bitcoins.
Anyone who controls the private keys, control the bitcoins.
Treat it exactly as cash. If you wouldn't trust your hard earned money with some random stranger on the street, you shouldn't trust an online website or exchange to have control over your private keys either, because quite simply, you just can't be sure that they will not be hacked, or go bankrupt, or just one fine day decide to close down the business and disappear with all the stored private keys of its customers.
Remember, unlike conventional banks (which are regulated by the government and have all its deposits insured), bitcoins are NOT insured and NOT protected/backed by any government, so if they're gone, they're gone.


I'm one of those more paranoid ones.
I believe that even mobile phones can be hacked.
Keeping them some place really safe, where they are never connected to the internet, like a hardware wallet, is still the safest bet.

1. Buy a hardware wallet from a respectable company, and verify that the code is open source.
2. Set up the hardware wallet. VERY IMPORTANT: Write down the recovery phrases, in case your hardware wallet is stolen or broken.
3. Hardware wallet will generate an address.
4. Send all your bitcoins into the address given by the hardware wallet.
5. Keep hardware wallet in the safest place you can find, like in a household safe.
6. Ta-da! You're done.

What this means is, instead of the online exchange/wallet provider generating the address and the public/private keys on your behalf (which means they know all those private keys), now the private keys are generated directly by the hardware wallet, offline.
Nobody knows the private keys except the person who is holding the hardware wallet.
It is practically impossible to hack or steal your bitcoins because hardware wallets are not connected to the internet.
But of course, like I said, you need to keep the hardware wallet safe, so it is not stolen. Anyone who has control over the hardware wallet, controls all the bitcoins stored there.
Always keep in mind: bitcoins = cash.

Good luck!

If the hardware wallet is broken, definitely all the bitcoins are safe; just get another wallet and initiate the recovery process, which is relatively simple. (Usually you just have to enter a 12-word or 24-word recovery phrase. But make sure you have kept your recovery phrase safely accessible somewhere, because if you lose it, then your coins are gone forever.)
Now, if the wallet is stolen, on the other hand, that will depend on whether the thief knows what he stole.
If he's smart enough to know what a bitcoin wallet is, then he could quickly do a transfer from your wallet to his own account, and then, sorry to say, your coins are gone. End of story.
But if, for example, he just ransacked your house and took it without knowing what it is, then you could quickly get a new wallet, initiate the recovery, then quickly transfer the coins to a new address, and you're safe.


Thanks very much for the offer mate, but I'm not considering it at the moment.
I suppose it is most suited for people who already leave their computers switched on most of the time.
I rarely switch on my computer at home, so to leave it permanently on just for the sake of this, I am not entirely sure the returns are worth the trouble? (i.e. the electricity bill, etc.)

Some hardware wallets do allow you to set a PIN as a password to access it, but also many that do not.
I suppose you are referring to the famous Mt. Gox incident, but since then, there were quite a number of exchanges that got hacked to various degrees, and many lost a significant amount of bitcoins.
One thing to ponder about: the more famous the exchange, the more users it would have, and consequently the more bitcoins it would have. That would make them the prime targets of hackers, as the potential returns are astronomical. With the level of sophistication of hackers these days, it's only a matter of time before they find a fatal flaw in the security system and gain access.


Different hardware wallets handle this differently, but usually they would be capable of creating several different accounts and private keys.
Personally, I use Coolwallet, which is capable of having up to 5 separate accounts, with each account capable of generating practically an unlimited number of private keys.
But there are many good brands out there, such as Trezor, Ledger, Keepkey, depending on your objective, budget and preference.
There are many online wallet providers that claim to provide secure wallets with multiple factors of authentication, and many now claim that they themselves do not have access to your private keys......but being the paranoid person that I am, I just do not trust them.

Check out this webpage for more basic information on the various types of wallets.

https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/wallets...ardware-wallets

Sounds like blockchain.info?
Anyway, it doesn't matter which wallet you use, the concept is the same.
The most important thing to remember is that bitcoins=private keys=cash.
Each type of wallet has its pros and cons, and you have to decide for yourself what level of security you need, in order to feel comfortable.
The more secure and private, the higher the responsibility you must assume yourself to take care of your private keys.
You are your own bank, no one else can access your funds......but if you lose your keys, no one else can help you recover them either, and they will be gone forever.

You give me too much credit!
I'm just an average Joe like everybody else......we're all here to share and support each other, eh?
Besides, spreading awareness will hopefully get more people interested and start to trade bitcoins, thus increasing the Malaysian bitcoin liquidity, which will benefit everyone.
Happy investing!

Yes, Trezor comes with a PIN function.
So, even if a thief steals your Trezor and tries to send all your bitcoins to his own address, he cannot complete the transaction unless he enters the PIN.
And if I'm not mistaken, it is set up so that the reset time increases exponentially every time you key in a wrong PIN.
So, don't worry, it's pretty secure.


It's difficult to judge if any website is "secure enough" but with the 3-factor authentication that Blockchain.info uses, I would have to say it's about as safe as an online wallet can get, at the current moment.
In my opinion, it's "good enough" as a temporary holding vault, e.g. when you are doing a couple of trades within a short span of time......but anything over a few days, I'd insist to take my coins offline into cold storage.
Of course, nothing is really 100% secure, not even hardware wallets.

Personally, I've not tried them yet.
They seem to have very good reviews.
But then again, in my personal opinion, secure as they may be, they are more mobile wallets than cold storage vaults.
They are great to be used as a day-to-day bitcoin wallet for general usage, but I wouldn't trust my life savings there.

What alt coins do you currently have?
I've toyed with the idea of getting some ETH but have not taken any action yet.

Yes, totally right.
Never leave your bitcoins on exchanges.
That's the first place that hackers will target.

As with any investment, it could go up to USD 5k, or even USD 100k, or it could go down to zero.
History will tell whether you made the right decision or not, 5 years down the road.

Instead of just being an investment, think of bitcoins as a hedge.
In that sense, it works somewhat similar to gold, but in digital form......it's intrinsic value is purely determined by what the global population perceives its value to be, and it could be an effective hedge when global fiat currencies are too volatile, for example during an economic crisis.
This is why we see such a sudden demand for bitcoins in countries like India, Venezuela, China, etc. where their governments started enforcing currency controls.
Or in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and other African countries with high and volatile inflations.

Actually there are many cryptocurrencies from Canada, like CAD-COIN, Canada eCoin, just like the many cryptocurrencies from various countries around the world.
Personally, I've not heard of CCP.
As I understand, with the exception of the top 5 cryptocurrencies in the world, none of the others have any real meaningful market capitalisation, and are not really widely adopted.
Investing in those cryptocurrencies is inherently riskier, as nobody can really say whether they will take off.
For investing, I strongly suggest keeping to the top 3 only.

Well, that's the beauty about cryptocurrencies......they are decentralised, and the value depends on whatever people think they are worth.
If that hypothetical situation really happens (USD crash), then my prediction is that the bitcoin value will soar exponentially.

Think about it this way.
Currently, the USD is only worth what it is worth at the moment, because all the other countries in the world use it for international trade, and everyone collectively say it is worth this much, at this time.
If the US dollar crashes, that just means that people think it is not worth this much anymore, and nobody wants to keep it anymore, meaning people are selling it off for cash in their own currency.
All those cash need to go somewhere (people don't trust banks anymore as the bank interest rates are generally barely enough to beat inflation) so they would then place them into other investment vehicles, and bitcoin is one of the fastest growing ones, gaining popularity on a global scale.
At the same time, American citizens would realise that their own savings in USD is getting devalued at a crazy pace, so in order to stop their losses, they need to convert their savings into something that is not as volatile, and again, bitcoin offers exactly that.
Traditionally, people in these situations put their money into gold, as it is seen as a safe hedge during economic turmoil, but these days, bitcoin offers the same, with more security and versatility.
The problem is, there are only limited numbers of bitcoins available, and only 21 million bitcoins will ever be available, EVER.
So, the more money pours into the bitcoin market capitalisation (i.e. the higher the demand), the higher the price will go.

Above is just an extremely simplified scenario (much more factors are involved), but I hope it sort of answers your question to some extent.

Ah OK, yes you made a good point also.
I probably should have pointed it out sooner.
If just starting out and buying 0.001BTC then it makes no sense to invest hundreds of ringgit in a hardware wallet.
I've once heard of a general rule of thumb of factor-5.
Meaning, if you are going to buy bitcoins worth 5 times more than a hardware wallet (which costs approx. USD 120 these days) then it's advisable to get one.
Thanks for pointing this out.
Don't want to scare people away from bitcoins by thinking they have a very heavy upfront hardware investment!

At the moment, the smallest division of bitcoin sub-unit is the satoshi, which is equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC (one hundred millionth of a bitcoin).
But you're right, if the value continues to go up, perhaps one day it might be necessary to divide it even smaller.
The blockchain technology is designed so that further subdivisions are possible in future.

Don't think about what "could have been" by looking in the past.
We always have perfect vision in hindsight......back then, while the value was still low, there were not so many companies and businesses that agreed to adopt bitcoin as an acceptable form of payment, so if things didn't work out, you could very well have seen the USD 300 value drop to USD 0.30 per bitcoin.
On the other hand, if the value goes to USD 10k per bitcoin in future, you will be thinking to yourself, "Why didn't I buy more bitcoins when it was so cheap at USD 1000 per bitcoin...???"

Perhaps you can consider to exercise dollar cost averaging.
And if it helps, maybe you can try to think like this: if the future price of a bitcoin will go up to RM10k per bitcoin (for example), will it still matter so much whether you bought it at USD 1000 or USD 1080 now?

Hope that helps to ease the pain a little......

This post has been edited by wengherng: Feb 21 2017, 03:39 PM

If you don't mind sharing, what's your target amount, that you mentioned above?
Thinking of joining the Million Club?