Beginner’s Guide to Cryptocurrency

Basic Beginner’s Guide to CryptocurrencyBuying either BTC or ETHFirstly you need to purchase Bitcoin or Ethereum, these are our base currencies and used to trade for other Cryptocurrencies on the exchanges. The fastest and easiest way to purchase these is via Coinbase, if you click here you’ll be taken there. (This link will give you 10 USD free if spending 100+ in your local currency)

Once you sign up for Coinbase, you will have to complete their identification process, so have your passport/driving licence at hand. Also have your debit or credit card at hand and input it into the site. (The easiest way I find to purchase ETH/BTC is via debit/credit card, however you can pay via Bank transfer but that may take longer to arrive, so in this tutorial we’ll use a debit or credit card)

Great so now click BUY/SELL in the navigation bar, or ‘buy’ if you are on the mobile application. You should then see a screen such as the one below:

Buying ETH via Coinbase.

Okay in this tutorial we’ll purchase Ethereum, I would advise you do the same, its cheaper to move around fee wise & its faster (Although you could send via GDAX to avoid fee’s but I may cover that later & want to keep this as basic as possible. So once you are on the above screen simply select Ethereum assuming that is what you want to buy and type in how much you want to purchase. I get lots of people asking me if you need to buy a whole one, you don’t, you can buy 0.1, 0.05 etc, however much you want. Complete the process and ETH will appear in your account.

Okay so now you have the base currency, lets work on getting that to an exchange and trading it for other currencies.

An exchange is where you will trade the ETH you just purchased for other Cryptocurrencies. The exchange I currently advise you to sign up for is Binance because they are listing a lot of coins, fast, fee’s are low & its just a good exchange I feel.

Sign up to Binance by clicking here

(if it says sign up is closed try again tomorrow, they allow limited daily sign ups)

(You can also sign up to KUCOIN which is like Binance but in earlier stages, could have some good coins there in the future (Binance is the best I feel though, but sign up for both if you have the time) Click here to sign up for KUCOIN)

Once signed up, click funds (top right on desktop, then deposits/withdrawals) scroll down until you can find Ethereum (if you bought BTC on Coinbase instead find BTC. Click deposit, it should give you an address such as the one below (this is your wallet address) Copy ‘ETH DEPOSIT ADDRESS’

Now head back over to Coinbase, click accounts, you should then see a screen like this, regardless if you are on mobile app or desktop:

Coinbase sending ETH to Binance. (Accounts screen)

Okay so here we can see my account balances, Click ETH WALLET, then click the ‘SEND’ button. A popup should appear looking like this:

Copy the wallet address you got from Binance into the ‘Recipient’ field then click over the USD or ETH box and click ‘SEND MAX’ next up click continue, it should ask you for a 2 step verification code depending on how your account is setup, thats it, you’ve now sent the ETH you purchased from Coinbase to Binance, now we can trade it for other Cryptos.

Trading your ETH for other cryptos on Binance.

Your ETH transfer may take 10–30 mins depending on the network, once the transaction is complete you should see it when you click FUNDS → DEPOSIT/WITHDRAWALS & you should see it in available Balance.

So lets trade that ETH for IOTA in this example, click exchange top left and then basic. You should see a screen such as the one below, on the right hand side select ETH as thats our base currency we are trading then search for whatever coin you want, in this example IOTA.

Once you’ve clicked the coin you want to purchase you will see a screen like this, Type in how many IOTA’s you want to purchase in the circled box, you can just click 100% if you want to use all of your ETH, this will buy at the current market price (can see last price at the top so if you place your order and the price goes down, you may want to leave it in or cancel it below in the open orders box. You now have purchased your first real Altcoin, congrats.

How much money should I invest? Whats a good investment?

The amount of messages I get asking the above question is unreal. I cannot answer that question for you everyone has a different financial situation, you can start with however much you want, 100,250,1000. There is no minimum investment, but of course the more you invest the bigger your returns could be.

How do I track my investments?

There’s an app for your phone called Blockfolio or even Delta, both can be found on the iOS AppStore or the Google Play store. Download the app and enter prices you purchased each coin at these can be found in your order history on the exchange (Price will be in BTC or ETH, you input that and the date in Blockfolio and it will calculate the price in your local currency) If a lot of people are struggling with this I will make a guide.

Is it easy to sell?

Yep, simply trade your altcoins back to Bitcoin (Sell the coin for bitcoin) then either send back to Coinbase & sell to them or send to your wallet on https://localbitcoins.com/ then you can sell instantly to someone for bank transfer and have the money in your account within the hour.

Other Info:

To check the market head over to www.coinmarketcap.com

Tracking your investments: Use Blockfolio or Delta from the AppStore or Google Play Store.

A lot of people ask me how to research coins, i’m not going to disclose what I look for when investing, however a basic way to get started is to type the coin you are looking at researching into google with either REDDIT or Bitcointalk after it, you’ll then see discussions regarding that coin. Medium is also a good website for tracking news for your desired coin, most cryptocurrencies have a medium account you can just search on the site or google your cryptocurrency then medium after it and you’ll find them. (Medium is this website, it maybe worth signing up so you can follow news for certain coins, you can ‘follow’ their page, while you are here give me a follow & clap my post)

I get asked ‘What Do I buy’ at least 50 times a day, well I can’t answer this for you, its up to you, do your own research I do tweet a lot of hidden gems and good cryptos to buy on Twitter

This is a very basic guide and it’s early here in the UK i’ll update and correct grammar and other issues with this post later.

Happy Trading

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