Exchanges are where you go to convert your dollars into crypto and vice versa. They are similar to banks except your money isn’t insured there so it’s not recommended to store your coins in an exchange. We will talk about other ways to store your coins later but generally if you follow the security advice above you should be fine to leave them on the exchange.
The following exchanges are what we recommend and the security settings you should use. It’s not the worst idea to spread your crypto to the various exchanges (different passwords for all of them) so you don’t have a single point of failure.
Wealthsimple Trade -> This is the best one to send your money to through email transfer or bank wire. They are Canadian and you should set up 2FA through your Google or Authy. If you want to increase your risk with alt coins - this one has the worst selection so I'd avoid them.
Newton.co → Another Canadian exchange with really low fees that we like and we also like the fact they offer more interesting coins than Wealthsimple.
FTX Pro -> This one is a futures exchange that can be a bit more complicated but great if you know how to use it. Make sure you set up “Whitelisted Addresses” only which means that if someone got into your account they would only be able to send crypto addresses you pre approved.
Binance -> Set up 2FA here, this is the world’s biggest exchange and they have an Earn function where you can earn up to 20% on your dollars while you wait for your signal.
Gemini -> Make sure to set up 2FA here. Gemini is a very safe exchange and it connects directly to your bank account to make transfers easy.
Coinbase -> This is the exchange that everyone uses, you can easily buy and sell crypto here but they only have Ethereum, Bitcoin and Solana as the networks you can send crypto on. The fees they charge are also high.
When you’re ready to sell your Bitcoin the process is just the reverse, you send your Bitcoin to the exchange, sell it and then transfer it to your bank account.