I bought BTC with USD via Coinbase, then deposited the BTC from Coinbase into a newly created Cryptsy account, and then traded the BTC for DRK on Cryptsy.
I don’t think that there are any online wallets for DRK yet. At any rate, I wouldn’t recommend you to use one even if some have popped up—I’ve personally been burned (and so was gwern) by the first online wallet for Dogecoin (Dogewallet) back in December.
My recommendation is to download one of the wallets from their page (I used darkcoin-qt for linux), encrypt it with a long passphrase (you will either be prompted to do so or there will be an option to encrypt it in settings), wait for it to sync, transfer your darkcoins to an address in the wallet, make a few backups (usually from file>backup) and optionally even delete the actual wallet and forget about it for a while (in case the wallet code has vulnerabilities).
This sounds like more work than it is, however, it really isn’t and you really shouldn’t rely on a buggy exchange like Cryptsy (or any exchange for that matter) for longer than you need to, nor an online wallet recently created by unknowns.
This sounds like more work than it is, however, it really isn’t and you really shouldn’t rely on a buggy exchange like Cryptsy
To follow up a little on this: where there was smoke, there is fire. I swore off Cryptsy use after I noticed while trying to buy a little bit of Doge to hedge that Cryptsy was so buggy that it would let you go into negative balances. I discussed this on #lw-bitcoin with some other LWers also noticing bugs on Cryptsy; we decided that this bug alone was probably exploitable through trading but we didn’t want to risk being wrong or committing a crime*. Some months afterwards, reports began popping up of Cryptsy being ban-happy and not letting people withdraw… Finally, the hammer has dropped.
Lo and behold: http://blog.cryptsy.com/post/137323646202/announcement They were hacked over a year and a half ago for 13,000 bitcoins. They had no cold wallet, and they ran all of the scamcoin daemons, written by con artists and random Internet people and used by a dozen people, on the same server as the real bitcoins, and all it took was one trojan dropped in a super-obscure altcoin to steal everything. Then naturally they decided to keep running fractional while lying their asses off to try to pull things back (how they ever expected to recover 13,000 bitcoins, I don’t know, so probably they were lying about their motives too to keep the salaries flowing).
Priceless quote:
This worked fine for awhile, as profits decreased due to low volume and low Bitcoin prices, we would adjust our spending accordingly. It wasn’t until an article from Coinfire came out that contained many false accusations that things began to crumble. The article basically caused a bank-run, and since we only had so much in reserves for those currencies problems began.
* The bug was that you could sell an amount twice. So you could deposit 1 bitcoin, and buy 2 bitcoins’ worth of an altcoin, leaving your account in a state of −1 bitcoin (!) and +2 altcoin. You couldn’t withdraw until you repaid your −1 debt, but this still seemed exploitable. The exploit would run: deposit bitcoins; go into negative balance on Bitcoin by overbuying some volatile altcoin like Litecoin; if the altcoin happens to double or triple, you then cash back into Bitcoin for profits, but if it doesn’t go anywhere, you can cash back at no loss, and if it drops, you just abandon that account and create a new one. In effect, you are speculating with free margin/leverage.
I bought BTC with USD via Coinbase, then deposited the BTC from Coinbase into a newly created Cryptsy account, and then traded the BTC for DRK on Cryptsy.
Make sure to also get a DRK wallet and to transfer your coins there in the end, instead of leaving it on Cryptsy.
Any recommendations on where to get a secure online DRK wallet, a la a BTC wallet with blockchain.info?
I don’t think that there are any online wallets for DRK yet. At any rate, I wouldn’t recommend you to use one even if some have popped up—I’ve personally been burned (and so was gwern) by the first online wallet for Dogecoin (Dogewallet) back in December.
My recommendation is to download one of the wallets from their page (I used darkcoin-qt for linux), encrypt it with a long passphrase (you will either be prompted to do so or there will be an option to encrypt it in settings), wait for it to sync, transfer your darkcoins to an address in the wallet, make a few backups (usually from file>backup) and optionally even delete the actual wallet and forget about it for a while (in case the wallet code has vulnerabilities).
This sounds like more work than it is, however, it really isn’t and you really shouldn’t rely on a buggy exchange like Cryptsy (or any exchange for that matter) for longer than you need to, nor an online wallet recently created by unknowns.
To follow up a little on this: where there was smoke, there is fire. I swore off Cryptsy use after I noticed while trying to buy a little bit of Doge to hedge that Cryptsy was so buggy that it would let you go into negative balances. I discussed this on #lw-bitcoin with some other LWers also noticing bugs on Cryptsy; we decided that this bug alone was probably exploitable through trading but we didn’t want to risk being wrong or committing a crime*. Some months afterwards, reports began popping up of Cryptsy being ban-happy and not letting people withdraw… Finally, the hammer has dropped.
Lo and behold: http://blog.cryptsy.com/post/137323646202/announcement They were hacked over a year and a half ago for 13,000 bitcoins. They had no cold wallet, and they ran all of the scamcoin daemons, written by con artists and random Internet people and used by a dozen people, on the same server as the real bitcoins, and all it took was one trojan dropped in a super-obscure altcoin to steal everything. Then naturally they decided to keep running fractional while lying their asses off to try to pull things back (how they ever expected to recover 13,000 bitcoins, I don’t know, so probably they were lying about their motives too to keep the salaries flowing).
Priceless quote:
* The bug was that you could sell an amount twice. So you could deposit 1 bitcoin, and buy 2 bitcoins’ worth of an altcoin, leaving your account in a state of −1 bitcoin (!) and +2 altcoin. You couldn’t withdraw until you repaid your −1 debt, but this still seemed exploitable. The exploit would run: deposit bitcoins; go into negative balance on Bitcoin by overbuying some volatile altcoin like Litecoin; if the altcoin happens to double or triple, you then cash back into Bitcoin for profits, but if it doesn’t go anywhere, you can cash back at no loss, and if it drops, you just abandon that account and create a new one. In effect, you are speculating with free margin/leverage.