Is Bitcoin.com Safe or Legit?

Bitcoin.com, which is owned by the really famous but controversial crypto personalities, Roger Ver, is one of the top Bitcoin-related websites in terms of search traffic due to it’s really valuable domain name(bitcoin.com).

The Bitcoin.com website and business in general was once a decently reputable website to go to back in the days, but is today receiving a lot of flak from the Bitcoin community.

Why?

Roger Ver’s switch from Bitcoin(BTC) to Bitcoin Cash(BCH)

Roger Ver is a heavy advocate of Bitcoin being a fast and cheap peer-to-peer cash. While that should be a reasonable goal for a peer-to-peer currency, unfortunately, Roger Ver and company’s approach was to sacrifice network decentralization and security for more speed, hence the birth of the Bitcoin fork Bitcoin Cash(BCH). This move from Roger Ver immediately renamed him from “Bitcoin Jesus”, to “Bitcoin Judas”.

Bitcoin.com’s reputation

Bitcoin.com is one of those bitcoin exchanges that while most people in the community didn’t use it, no one disliked it either. It’s reputation used to be decent. until Roger Ver decided to do some really questionable marketing. Roger Ver, or whoever made the decision to push through with this move, started naming Bitcoin(BTC) as “Bitcoin Core”, and Bitcoin Cash(BCH) as “Bitcoin”; taking advantage of the new and less-informed people in the Bitcoin space. This effectively and understandably caused an outrage in the Bitcoin community.

This decision caused some people to unintentionally buy Bitcoin Cash(BCH) instead of Bitcoin(BTC).

Here are 2 unfortunate cases we’ve found on Bitcointalk.org:

• Topic: Electrum no receiving my bitcoins
• Topic: Help a newbie find their transaction

While Bitcoin.com now has listed Bitcoin Cash(BCH) as “Bitcoin Cash”(and no longer “Bitcoin”), though still bad, still ever so slightly better, the hate and sour taste of Roger Ver and Bitcoin.com never left the community’s mouths.

But, is Bitcoin.com secure?

Based on our research, there hasn’t been a single hacking and scamming incident on the Bitcoin.com exhange, at least as of yet. So we could say that it’s probably safe to buy bitcoin(BTC) from that website.

But knowing the website owner’s reputation and questionable practices, it’s going to be completely up to you’re going to trust and support the said website.

Final Thoughts

With all that said, while you can freely use their service, we heavily recommend using other more reputable services like Coinbase and Kraken instead. Though while these exchanges are a lot more reputable and it’s safe to assume that they’re more secure, we heavily suggest against leaving funds on these exchanges, or all exchanges in general.

Also, if you prefer to not submit KYC/AML documents, we heavily suggest trying out Bisq and HodlHodl. The only downside is that the user experience with Bisq and HodlHodl are definitely worse than centralized exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken; but unfortunately, if you want privacy, you’re going to need to make some sacrifices.

Where do I keep my funds instead?

Hardware wallets. We heavily heavily suggest the usage of hardware wallets especially if you own coins and tokens that are worth significant amounts of money.

Hardware wallets are small devices made specifically for securely holding your coins and tokens, and is small enough to fit in your pocket. We heavily heavily suggest using a hardware wallet instead, if you’re holding a significant amount of cryptocurrencies. A hardware wallet is definitely your best choice for holding coins and tokens without fearing of getting hacked.

Advantages

• High security – your wallet’s private keys never leave the device. Hence, you could really do transactions even if the computer device you’re using is infested with malware and viruses, as long as you make sure that the coins are being sent to the right address.

Disadvantages

• Less convenient – You need to plug in your hardware wallet to your computer to make a transaction; though fortunately the new Ledger Nano X has bluetooth functionality, giving you the option to send transactions using your mobile phone instead.

Some great hardware wallets

• Ledger Backup Pack (recommended)
• Ledger Nano X (recommended)
• Ledger Nano S

Must read: The Types of Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency Wallets