In part two of the series, we learned more about Bitsquare and how it can help you get in and out of the #cryptocurrency ecosystem without going through a centralized bitcoin exchange.

We also learned how to secure the application, and the necessity of keeping a backup, in order to not tempt fate.

And finally, we learned how to set up your legacy banking details in #bitsquare, and how the program secures this information - both on your computer (by encrypting the details on your local storage), and to the larger Internet (by not transmitting the information up to the point where it becomes necessary, and only to the person who needs to see it (your trading partner)).

Today, we will learn how to fund your Bitsquare wallet, so that you have funds (bitcoins) available to exchange to fiat.

Remember, the reason we are doing this is so that you can convert your hard-earned Steem Dollars to fiat money sitting in a bank account -- whilst avoiding centralized bitcoin exchanges, and improving your privacy.

(To learn more about why centralized bitcoin exchanges are bad news for your privacy, read this (section "What is wrong with Bitcoin Exchanges?")

Funding your wallet

We begin by opening up the #bitsquare application.

If you followed my advice (ignore at your own peril) and set a strong, random password, you will be prompted for your bitsquare password.

This will allow the program to decrypt the information stored in your hard disk, essentially making it possible to make sense of it.

Gathering the necessary information

After the program initializes, I want you to go ahead and click the "Funds" icon on the top (left side).

You will be presented with something like ..

Click the "copy to clipboard" button (highlighted in red, lower right, same line as "Address"), which will copy this bitcoin address to your clipboard.

Executing the trade

Now go ahead to the blocktrades website, and then:

• Select Steem Dollar on the left (highlighted in red)
• Select Bitcoin on the right (highlighted in red)
• Enter your bitcoin deposit address (from the previous step)
• Finally, click the "Get a new deposit address" button.

You will see something like this..

Followed by ...

Now head over to #steemit once again, go to your wallet, and transfer some SBD to blocktrades.

Do not forget to make sure the memo matches, this is how their system matches the order!

Head back to the blocktrades site (the tab you left open from the previous step), and you should see something like the following.

Confirmation

Now go to the #bitsquare application, make sure you are still in the "Funds" section, and minus the wizardly stuff (and hopefully a larger balance..) this is what you should see:

If you click the transactions tab (still in the Funds section), there is a history of operations available, which can give you a clearer overview once there is more than a single transaction.

Here is how that looks like.

Conclusions

We have now funded our #bitsquare bitcoin wallet, allowing us to exchange said bitcoins for fiat money sitting in a bank account (or OKPay, Perfect Money, etc)

Stay tuned for the next post in the series to find out how to actually carry that operation out.

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Links

Decentralized Trading Guide

Part 1: An Introduction to Bitsquare
Part 2: Installation and Initial Configuration

Computer Security

How to Protect your Password Manager Application

Philosophical

Why You Should Not Use Centralized Bitcoin Exchanges as The First Choice