Wallet address best practices

In order to be able to receive cryptocurrency into your wallet, you will need to provide the sender with a wallet address. A wallet address is a unique series of numbers and alphabets that links to your wallet, to which cryptocurrency can be sent.

Here are a few best practices to protect your assets when receiving cryptocurrency:

1. Check that the wallet address is for the right cryptocurrency

Buycoins currently supports thirty one cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, USDC & NGNT, which can be sent to both internal and external wallets. All other coins can be sent within Buycoins users. Therefore, you should make sure you are generating the right cryptocurrency wallet address as they all run on different blockchains.

2. Copy and paste the address — or send the QR code

This is so you are sure you are providing the correct wallet address to the sender. Typing or writing down a wallet address to send later leaves room for typos or errors. Since all transactions to wallet addresses are irreversible, it’s best to ensure you are sending the cryptocurrency to the correct address.

3.  Use a new wallet address for each Bitcoin & Litecoin transaction.

For Bitcoin and Litecoin transactions, we advise that you use a new wallet address for each transaction. Although a wallet address links to your wallet, don’t think of it as an account number, but rather as a reference number for each transaction. As such, using a different address for each transaction protects your privacy and ensures that a third-party can’t trace transactions associated with your wallet using a blockchain explorer. It also ensures that your cryptocurrency gets delivered securely, thereby preventing the loss of your assets.

To help you with this, Buycoins generates a new wallet address each time you receive coins into the current address i.e when you make a transaction. Please note that using a new address does not invalidate your old address, you can still use one address for as long as you wish if this suits your use case.

For coins on the Ethereum network such as ETH, USDC and NGNT, wallet addresses are more similar to account numbers. As such we generate new addresses every sixty days for all active wallets (wallets that have received cryptocurrency within that time). This is in line with global standards for Ethereum transactions.

4. Check the transaction on a blockchain explorer

After you are sure the cryptocurrency has been sent to your wallet, check the progress of the transaction on a blockchain explorer. You can do this using either your wallet address or the transaction hash. There, you can see how many confirmations the transaction has. Ideally, your coins should reflect in your Buycoins wallet after 3 confirmations.