To hold cryptocurrencies, you must have a so-called crypto “wallet”. You can think of a wallet as an email account. The email address is public and you can share that with people so they can send you crypto (wallet public address) and there’s a password which you use to control the funds in your wallet (wallet private key).
As with email accounts, there are many providers that help you set it up and use your wallet. We have made this guide for one particular one called Yoroi. However, you can follow the exact same steps for some other wallet providers that we recommend as they are all user interfaces to access the same backend infrastructure (the blockchain).
It is easy to set up the wallet to other providers later, using the recovery words (also known as “seed phrases”)! These may be better if you are interested in accessing more advanced features or using decentralised applications. We don’t add a link and instead recommend you find the place
After creating the wallet (see below), you will need to find the public key so that people can send you funds. Once you have some funds, you will also want to “stake” with a pool. Staking is kind of like buying a stock: you get dividends every 5 days, called “staking rewards”.
However, in this case, you are rewarded each time the stake pool you chose to stake with won a lottery and hence were given the privilege (and reward) to add another block to the Cardano blockchain.
NEVER write your spending password or recovery phrases anywhere online. We do not even recommend taking a picture of it. Only use it with Yoroi when you are 100% certain it is truly Yoroi app or the browser add-on (as opposed to some copy).
No one should ever have a reason to ask for your recovery phrase. Not me. Not IOHK. Not Yoroi. Not Cardano. Any website that prompts you to fill in the recovery phrase is likely trying to steal your money.