Hi, I'm a bit of a newb with BTC although I've done a bit of research.
I've decided to use Kraken as the exchange (first on google rank!) and so I guess they must have some credibility.
The bigger question is that of an offline wallet?
According to:
https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet, there are 6 to choose from:
Bitcoin Core, Armory, Electrum, mSIGNA, MultiBit, Green Address - all of which have a weakness of some sort.
(My general approach for BTC is to just buy a few and hold them. If BTC goes global, I'll be happy, if not, and BTC becomes obsolete, no big loss.)
So, let's suppose I chose Electrum, which seems to be one of the easier ones to use.
If I download the wallet to a computer, can I then move the BTCs to an external HDD? Or, do I have to store them only on the computer? It's just that I have a netbook I don't use much with Windows 7 starter and thought I could use that. The question is, what happens if the HDD on the netbook fails, do I lose the BTCs?
I'm also a bit unclear about BTC addresses? When I buy the the BTCs on Kraken, for example, I have to give an address from my offline wallet? How is the address generated?
Thanks in advance.
Electrum is by far the best wallet if you are not dealing with a life changing amount of btc. I hope you will consider our service
instead of Kraken. We have a much smaller spread and btc payments go to offline wallets allow the site's live wallet to be easily insured. There are tons of other great features like Bulk Orders.