Home » My first Bitcoin purchase experience – my first 0.00020407 BTC ?

My first Bitcoin purchase experience – my first 0.00020407 BTC ?

As of this writing, 1BTC is Php 2,376,934.13. It is annoying that when Bitcoin started back in 2009, I was fully aware of it. I could have made some way to acquire them back then. Back in 2008-2012, I was offering my service as a Web Developer from various forums (mainly on https://forums.digitalpoint.com/). And boy, most of them were happy to pay in Bitcoin. Imagine if I have at least kept 0.5BTC, I should have been a millionaire now. ?

Today, or tonight, I finally need to learn how to use and trade Bitcoin.

The Goal

The goal is:

  1. Get a local Bitcoin wallet. I should have full control over this wallet. This should not be managed by any Bitcoin trading platform. All my BTC should go to this Bitcoin wallet.
  2. Purchase Bitcoin, I should not spend more than Php 500.00 tonight.
  3. Test that my local Bitcoin wallet can receive Bitcoin.
  4. Check how much are the fees.
  5. How long it will take for the Bitcoin to appear on my local wallet.

Getting a local Bitcoin wallet

  1. I Googled “How to get Bitcoin wallet” and I ended up with a little web app https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet Its a helper to determine which Bitcoin wallet is best for you.
    I filled up what I need and it referred me to https://electrum.org/
  2. On my Windows 10 PC, I downloaded and installed the software.
  3. I watched a Youtube video on how to setup Electrum, it’s an old video, but I get the idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5T6u0iWUPc
    Now I have a Bitcoin address
My bitcoin address – send me some if you can ?
  1. I set up with Seed phrase and added password encryption to make it more secure.
  2. Now, I need to test how I can migrate these data to another machine. We do not want to lose all our precious coins if we lost our machine as well. So on my Mac, I installed Electrum and check if I can restore my wallet there. Lo and behold, I can restore my wallet via the Seed phrase generated:
My bitcoin wallet on Mac – restoring to another machine is successful ?

Purchasing Bitcoin

So now, we need to acquire Bitcoin and we will get it by purchasing one. I have searched for any Filipino-based experienced and I stumbled upon this video: https://youtu.be/-K1m6qfrWng?t=717

  1. I registered to Paxful and registered a new account. If you want to register to Paxful, feel free to use my invite link: https://paxful.com/?r=DgY4D5gMaYJ
  2. I initially tried to purchase via Paypal ($10) and set location to “Worldwide” but the top results don’t reply fast enough. Note that in Paxful, once you initiate a purchase/trade both party should finish the transaction in 30minutes.
  3. I instead tried to use Bank Transfer and set location to “Philippines. And the first guy I messaged with replied within 5 minutes. He sent his UnionBank details along with his instructions. I was planning to use BPI online banking but UnionBank is not on the list of allowed banks as the recipient. Fortunately, BDO online banking has the option to send to UnionBank.
In Paxful, sellers have their own Instructions on how to pay them. They will manually check and verify if you followed their instruction.
  1. I sent Php 500.00 plus Php 25.00 for the BDO fee, took a screenshot and sent it to him.
Sent the seller a screenshot of my online banking payment.
  1. The seller released the Bitcoin and then Paxful updated my balance to Php 485.71
My Paxful balance after purchasing Php 500.00 worth of Bitcoin
  1. To wrap up, I have spent Php 525.00 and got 0.00020407 BTC, which is 0.00001593 BTC less than the exchange rate (based on Google)

Transferring the Bitcoin I purchased to my local wallet

Now we want to test how to transfer these Bitcoin outside of their platform and put it on our local wallet so we have full control. We do not want to lose our Bitcoin if Paxful decided to shut itself down right?

  1. I went to my Paxful wallet, under Bitcoin clicked “Send”
Paxful allows you to send Bitcoin to another Bitcoin address
  1. I tested the smallest amount of Bitcoin I am allowed to transfer, which is 0.0000546 BTC. Then Paxful will deduct another 0.00008 BTC for its fees.
Paxful – transferring my Bitcoin to my local Bitcoin wallet. Yep, the handling fees is bigger than the amount I wish to transfer ?
  1. I approved the transaction, then the remaining Bitcoin I have in Paxful is 0.00006947 BTC

Confirming I have the Bitcoin in my local wallet

  1. After 11 minutes, Electrum showed a desktop notification that my wallet got the Bitcoin
Electrum desktop notification – we finally got the Bitcoin
  1. I can confirm that this is the case on the Electrum app installed both on my Mac and Windows PC
We got our 0.0000546 BTC

Conclusion

We have now experience on purchasing and securing our Bitcoin. I guess the next step is to send Bitcoin from our local wallet (via Electrum) to another Bitcoin address. Being able to send our Bitcoin from Electrum to another address will finally confirm we have full control of our Bitcoin.

I can also as well open a Gcash or Paymaya account as based from what I hear their fees alot smaller compared to BDO.