Why Do I Need a Cryptocurrency Wallet?
Pretty much every person today has a PayPal account and uses it to make purchases or send and receive payments from other people. A cryptocurrency wallet provides the same functionality, but with a couple differences.
Coinbase is for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin and not for currencies such as USD or EUR.
Coinbase is used as an exchange between your local currency and cryptocurrency. So if a person wanted to own Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin as a investment they can simply buy the currency with USD and hold it in the wallet. If the price goes up you can then exchange your cryptocurrency back to USD for a profit.
One of the reasons I use my cryptocurrency wallet is to have my cloud mining proceeds deposited in BTC daily. I can then exchange my proceeds to USD or leave as BTC in hopes of a price increase relative to USD.
Creating Your Coinbase Account
When you go to Coinbase.com to create your wallet a screen will be presented where you can enter your first/last name, email address, and password. Select the checkbox and then click the Sign Up button.
Once your wallet is created there are a few steps necessary for security purposes and to link your bank account, PayPal, and credit/debit card so you can start exchanging your currency for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin.
Phone Verification
Add Payment Accounts
Validate Identity
Phone Verification
Phone verification is necessary to serve as a secondary authentication source to further protect your wallet. The one caveat to this is you will need to enter your cell phone number. Once you enter your phone number you will receive a text message with a verification code to enter on the site. Enter the code and verification is now complete.
Add Payment Accounts
Now that our phone number is validated we need to link a bank account, credit/debit card, or PayPal to transfer money into and out of the Coinbase wallet. I chose to link both my PayPal (for funding my account) and bank account (for withdrawals). This allows me to have funds available immediately when transferring to my Coinbase wallet that I use when purchasing hashpower at Genesis-Mining.com.
During this part of the setup process I would recommend linking your bank account as no ID verification is required for that step.
