First time bitcoin buyer; been reading, but still not sure how to purchase I want to buy bitcoin for the purpose of making a transaction with a business that specified bitcoin. I have a Copay wallet on my desktop, but after doing quite a bit of reading, I'm still not sure about where to go to buy them and how to get them in my wallet. I would be paying with my Visa debit card or through Pay Pal. I've already calculated the amount, which would be 0.025 bitcoin which roughly comes out to $50 US. I know I have to click receive and then to 'request specific account', which takes me to a place where there's a QR code and an address. Not quite sure what the long alpha numeric address is for and about how I purchase the bitcoin and get them into my wallet. I see there is a slower and faster way to do this. Fast is good, but I"m in no particular hurry If you can help, I think that I'm almost there. I"ll keep reading in the interim.

Thanks so much,

John
The long alphanumeric address is one of your pseudonymous representations in the Bitcoin network. You may hand it out to your business partner in order to specify where you wish to receive the money.

After you've imparted your address, the sender may create a transaction which is a message to the Bitcoin network that signals his intent to sign over some of his bitcoins to you. This transaction will then be propagated through the network and hopefully incorporated into a block for confirmation. Once the transaction is written to a block, it has become part of the blockchain and the sent amount has been —bar exceptional occurrences— reliably signed over to your wallet.

Since there was really only one piece of information or step missing from your description, I hope that you're well informed at this point. ;)

To get a better overview on some related topics, may I suggest the following topics:


What&#39;s the difference between a wallet and an address?
Can someone explain how the Bitcoin Blockchain works?
I am new to Bitcoin, how can I get started?