Completely new to Bitcoin in general, and I'd appreciate help

Okay so, I’ve decided bisq is just the best fit in general. It’s mainly instinctual, for some reason.

I’ve never really exchanged these currencies before.

  1. You’re able to send currency from one machine to another, and they’re able to do the same right? In funds received and sent? What’s to say people won’t bypass the normal buy/sell function to use the funds received/sent area?

  2. You only need to give the person the receive funds code to receive funds right? Are you able to change this every once in a while to maintain privacy on platforms you may put the code?

  3. What is needed from me to send funds? Just their code?

  4. And I am completely lost on the security deposit. Can you receive payment without one?

Hi @Saowo. Welcome to Bisq :slight_smile:

  1. As you may know, cryptocurrencies are transferred and “stored” on the blockchain, not in the individual devices. Bisq handles sending and receiving BTC to and from your trading peer automatically, so you needn’t worry about that. However, if a particular trade involves sending bank transfers or cryptocurrency other than BTC (altcoins) to the trading partner, you would need to initiate a bank or altcoin transfer to the credentials specified in Bisq. You cannot bypass the normal buy/sell BTC process because you never see your trading peer’s addresses. As mentioned before, Bisq handles transfers to and from automatically.

  2. If we talk about altcoins, you can change your altcoin addresses as frequently as you please by creating altcoin Bisq account. An altcoin address is everything you or your trading peer would need to initiate an altcoin transfers. With bank account and anything that falls into the realm of traditional finance, changing your credentials would be difficult because each time you change them, you lose your reputation in terms of account signing and subsequently, the trade limits.

  3. Answered above.

  4. Any trade on Bisq requires both parties to put up a security deposit in BTC, there’s no way around it.

Overall, if you’re very new to BTC, Bisq might not be for you because it has not been built with simplicity in mind, if I’m being completely honest. I strongly recommend getting BTC or other crypto elsewhere first, just to learn how it works. Then, once you have a better understanding of decentralised currencies and finance, try having another crack at Bisq.

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I appreciate the response! You’re amazingly helpful! :slight_smile:

  1. I mean, to trade bitcoin and altcoin, can you send/receive these in the tab called Funds, rather than the buy/sell bitcoin tabs? Can you receive/give it in those tabs? To essentially bypass the normal buy/sell method? The reason I ask is because if the other person doesn’t have bisq, how would I buy it from them?

/4/ keeps saying 2. So how does that work? How do we put money in the account at the start for a security deposit?

  1. Bisq is Bitcoin-centric. You can use either the Funds tab to deposit funds to your Bisq wallet or you can use the trade wallet address you’re given when you set up or accept an offer. This should be documented on https://docs.bisq.network/. Please, read the docs. For altcoin trades, you usually specify the address of another wallet you have that supports altcoins. Try https://exodus.io/ as it supports a ton of altcoins and is super-user friendly
  2. If by “how” you mean “to what address”, you either use the provided trade wallet address when you create/accept the offer or via the funds tab. If by “how” you mean “where do I get Bitcoin”, the answer is “Elsewhere”.

Again, I highly recommend you to learn how to use Bitcoin and other altcoins that you may be interested in first before starting with Bisq. Bisq is great because it respects privacy and it’s one of the few truly decentralised exchanges, but the trouble is that it’s not for absolute beginners.

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Is it safe to let a non trusted person send bitcoin as a startup?