First I want to be clear, I am by no means an expert. I've just learned enough to help some of my friends IRL, so I figured I'd try to help any gabbers that may be interested in, or new to, the Digital Asset space.
Question 1) from this post gab.com/muricangnat/posts/104565089068211877
1) What is an account?
I'll be speaking from my personal experience with about a dozen different assets, but in general this should roughly apply to most any digital asset with some possible minor exceptions.
When you setup a new wallet, whether cold, hot, or paper, there will be a process that creates an account on the ledger/chain. The account is essentially your "address" on the ledger. It is the alphanumeric string that you use to check your balance, see your transaction history, and that you use to send assets to. Some assets use something that looks like an email address, or a username, most use a long string that looks like an encryption key, and in fact it is the public side of a public/private key pair. Whatever that sting may look like, it must be unique on the ledger and in most cases, that I've run into, it gets generated for you.
A few examples of what account addresses look like.
XRP: rf1BiGeXwwQoi8Z2ueFYTEXSwuJYfV2Jpn
ETH: 0x931D387731bBbC988B312206c74F77D004D6B84b
Bitcoin: 3DjemruRRvunHTHxNJbwoRCzCFWagw6vo2 (This is GAB's real BITCOIN address, so send away)
In general, you don't want people to know the account address of the wallet you store your assets on, because it could make you a target of social engineering scams, or even armed robbery, to try to free you of the burden of owning those assets. So, if you publish a public address for people to send you assets, you should use a separate receiving account and then send the assets to an exchange account(i.e. bitrue.com) and then from the exchange account you can send it to your storage account. Which I highly recommend is protected via a cold wallet such as a Ledger Nano S.
Here is a bit more reading regarding XRP specifically. xrpl.org/accounts.html
Comment below if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer.
Join the 'Digital Assets' group if you are interested in learning some of the basics of their care and feeding. gab.com/groups/4617
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6:10(NKJV)
Having money is not a sin, beware of loving it.
