My Ether Wallet (MEW) is a great resource for anyone who is interested in sending or receiving ethereum or ERC-20 tokens. ERC-20 tokens are ethereum based tokens that meet a specific set of criteria. If you want to learn more about ERC-20 tokens and what they do, you can read my steemit post about them here: https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@crypto0ne/what-is-an-erc-20-token. Getting started with MEW is easy. All you have to do is go to myetherwallet.com and you will automatically land on the "new wallet" tab of the website.
Once you are on the home page of MEW you will be prompted to enter a password to create your new wallet. Enter a password that is least 9 characters in length and then hit "create new wallet". The next page will ask you to download the "keystore file (UTC / JSON)". Make sure you download this file and save it in a folder where you will not lose it. After you save your keystore file you click "I understand. Continue." The next page will ask you to save your private key which is another important step to creating your new wallet. You do not need to "Print Paper Wallet" but doing so will add an extra layer of security to your wallet.
For the purpose of this tutorial I have shown the private key of the new wallet that I just created. Please do not share your private key with anyone if you plan on using the wallet that you create. The easiest way to save your private key is to copy paste it on a word document. After you have saved your private key and your keystore file, I would recommend creating a new folder where you store both. I created a new file folder on my computer called "My Ether Wallet", so that I have quick access to these files.
Once you have your private key saved you can click "Save Your Address" where you will be taken to a page where you can unlock your new wallet. When you see the page down below you simply click "Keystore / JSON File" and then click "Select Wallet File" from the bottom right hand corner.
When you click "Select Wallet File" a window will pop up where you will be prompted to select your Keystore file. The keystore file is the one that starts with the letters "UTC" as shown below.
Double click the UTC file and you will be asked to enter the password that you created earlier. After you enter you password you will be taken to a page that looks like this:
This page shows your public wallet address which is the address you use to receive ethereum and ERC-20 tokens. The greatest feature that MEW has is that it allows you to buy ERC-20 tokens on the EtherDelta exchange. EtherDelta is a decentralized exchange that gives you the ability to buy new tokens at a cheaper price before they hit major exchanges. To use EtherDelta deposit some ethereum into your ether wallet that you just created and then go to etherdelta.com. In the top right corner of the website click the "Select account" dropdown menu and then click "Import account":
When you try to import and account you will be prompted with this screen:
Simply enter your public address and private key from the ether wallet you created and you will be able to buy ERC-20 tokens on the exchange. If you have already sent ethereum to your ether wallet it will automatically appear in the top right corner and the left side of your screen:
If you find that you have ethereum in your wallet you simply type in the amount that you want to send to the exchange for trading into the white box under "ETH" and then you click deposit as seen below:
Each transaction is completed by a smart contract so your transactions will be a bit slower than normal exchanges but your funds will be much safer. After you decide on an amount to send and click "deposit" you will be greeted with a screen that looks like this:
After about 30 seconds you should see your ETH go from the "Wallet" column to the "EtherDelta" column of the exchange window in the top right hand corner of the exchange:
As you can see I just used a smart contract to deposit 0.005 ETH from my "Wallet" into "EtherDelta". Now I have a total of 0.007 ETH in the EtherDelta exchange that I can use to trade with. The next step is simply to use the dropdown menu in the top-left of the webpage to find the token that you wish to purchase with your ETH. In this case I chose the token "HGT" which is the cryptocurrency "HelloGold":
After you click on the exchange for the token you want to purchase you will be taken to a screen that looks surprisingly similar, that's because it's the same. From this screen you find the "Order Book" column in the middle of the page and click on the sell offer in red that you wish to purchase:
In most cases you will want to click on the lowest red sell order because that will be the lowest possible price. The only time you will need to buy a sell order higher up the list is when you have enough ETH to buy out the entire lowest order and then some. When you locate a sell order that can satisfy the quantity of the token you wish to purchase simply click the red sell order and this screen will pop up:
In this case I will only be buying 55 HelloGold (HGT) tokens because I only have 0.007 ETH in my EtherDelta trading account. Once you figure out how many tokens you can buy, including the cost of the fee, hit "Buy" and you will be greeted by a familiar screen:
This screen reminds us that we just created another order that will be executed by an ethereum smart-contract. We can view the progress of our trades and deposits / withdrawals from the "My Transactions" column in the bottom-center of the webpage:
From this box we can see that my trade only filled about 51 of the 55 HGT tokens. This was because I overestimated the amount of ethereum that I had in my balance. Although it did not fill the entire amount, you can now see that the trade was completed successfully and the tokens are now sitting in my EtherDelta trading account. When you want to transfer your newly bought tokens to your ether wallet, you will simply use the same process that we used to load ETH onto the exchange except now you would use the withdrawal tab in the top left corner instead of the deposit tab:
After about 30 seconds the tokens will be transferred to your wallet. Keeping tokens stored on MEW is actually quite safe as I have kept hundreds of dollars worth of tokens there for months and have never lost them. Although keeping tokens stored on MEW is relatively safe I would not recommend it as a long-term storage option as there are people who have had their wallets hacked. The safest thing to do would be to buy a Ledger Nano S which costs about $150 or download the Eidoo wallet which is available on the IOS and Android appstores. If you plan on storing your tokens long-term but do not want to buy a hardware wallet I would suggest downloading Eidoo and creating a wallet to store your ERC-20 tokens. One thing to keep in mind when using EtherDelta is that each transaction is executed by a smart contract which requires gas to resolve. This means that you will be paying small fees on each transaction because each transaction must be confirmed by the ethereum block-chain. The fees can add up quickly on EtherDelta so make sure you keep about 0.025 worth of ETH in your wallet at all times just to be safe. Although the fees are annoying they are tolerable because they are keeping us safe. Please also remember that learning to use EtherDelta is a great idea because you can pick up tokens cheap before they hit major exchanges. As you can see I have been accumulating a decent amount of HGT because I believe it will go up in value. If you have any questions about using MEW or EtherDelta please contact me on twitter: https://twitter.com/CalebFardig. I am almost always available and will be happy to answer any questions that you have.
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