Confused about offline wallet

I’m waiting for the hardware ledger wallet to arrive, until then I’d like to get some tokens now and keep them on a software wallet. Now I have a friend who tells me to get 2 wallets (for example) online on Coinbase and offline with Exodus.
I’m getting confused now - you only just have 1 wallet where you’d operate from?

Each wallet supports different types of coins. For instance, Nano Ledger S current supports the following

https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/ledger-nano-s

If you want to buy (and store offline) any altcoins that are not shown on their list, you will need a different digital wallet which supports that particular type of coin. So you'll need to do some research on various digital wallets you might want to buy, and then cross reference which coins they support with what coins you plan to buy.

waterworks said:

Each wallet supports different types of coins. For instance, Nano Ledger Supports the following

https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/ledger-nano-s

If you want to buy (and store) any altcoins that are not shown on their list, you will need a different digital wallet which supports that type of coin.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, I just need to know if you need an online wallet as well to trade or to transfer tokens to your offline wallet

Your online wallet is at the exchanges you sign up for. So if you sign-up for Bittrex, you will have a ton of online wallets associated with your account because they offer a ton of different coins for trading. I don't believe you have to use the online wallets first as you could probably just enter the digital wallet address provided by your hardware wallet you bought, when you are buying coins.

I could be wrong on this as each exchange operates a little differently.

So you would keep a few (long term) stored on your hardware wallet and the tokens for quick trading in an online wallet ?

Yes, you can split up however you want, and move however much you want.

Once you get into the exchange stuff, buy a very small amount of coins. Maybe like $10-$20 worth or whatever the minimum is and then practice buy/transferring that tiny amount of coins. Learn how to buying / transferring / and trading with the most minimal amount of fees possible. Practice with that before buying and moving large amounts of coins so you don't mess up and lose coins.

One thing that bothers me with this stuff is it seems too easy to make a mistake when transferring coins from one address to another.

offline wallet - only you have the private key

online wallet - third party has your private key


As Sathoshi has once said: "The owner of a coin is just whoever has its private key."