Bitcoin (BTC) is officially ten years old, this year, and is the world’s most prolific and established cryptocurrency. Over the last decade, BTC has repeatedly defied its doubters and despite a string of setbacks, from Mt Gox in 2014 to Quadriga earlier this year, nothing has so far managed to derail it.

The simplest way to acquire BTC is to buy it on a BTC exchange, such as Coinbase or Binance. Once you’ve passed the anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) checks, you will be allowed to deposit cash at your chosen exchange and the exchange will convert that into BTC (or other cryptocurrency of your choice). Most exchanges also offer to store your BTC for you in a personal wallet (more of that, later).

(First published in the September 2019 edition of RECOVERY magazine and reproduced with the permission of R3 and GTI Media.’)