1. Do i do the same and open various wallets and buy the coins that way or do I have to use an exchange like Coinbase or Binance to buy the coins?
2. If/when I want to sell the coins do i withdraw via the wallets or do i go onto an exchange and sell? Then transfer the money to my bank account.
3. Is there a secure wallet I can get with can hold all the coins in 1 place or do i have to open multiple wallets?
I am really sorry if these are basic questions for you but I fell my knowledge is very very limited weak in Crypto, the more I read on this forum the more confused i'm getting. I would like to buy and hold the coins long term but would also like to sell short term if I don't feel i have chosen the correct coin/s.
Can you please help/direct me on my journey?
OP welcome to the forum. I would advise you to buy bitcoin first and you should invest in a long term maybe 4-10 years and above.
1. If you are buying bitcoin, it is good that you create a self custody wallet like electrum wallet or blue wallet. For small quantity of bitcoin, you can keep it in electrum online wallet or blue wallet. You are to go to an exchange and register with them by creating an account on Binance or Kucoin. After that you are to use p2p for the purchase of your bitcoin, which the merchant bank details would be seen and you pay directly to his account the amount of bitcoin that you want to buy. After that, you should transfer your bitcoin into your electrum wallet for safety, because you are in control of the private keys of an electrum wallet. If you leave your coins in an exchange, it can get stolen by hackers, or the exchange might pull an exit scam.
2. If you want to withdraw your coins, you go to your electrum wallet and transfer the bitcoin to your exchange bitcoin address and you can sell via p2p, just like the way you bought your coins.
3.For bitcoin self custody wallets are the best because they are open source, and if you have a big amount of bitcoin, it is good that you use hard wallets like Trezor or passport. For altcoins there are no open source wallet, so you can use feather or unstoppable wallet, or trust wallet.