Not Financial advice. Rambling purposes only.
Let's just take stock of where we are for a second ... in the middle of a global pandemic that has not only led to hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, but over the last 4 months has seen many countries shut down large parts of their economies, in an effort to stem the spread of #COVID-19.
Back in February/March, this uncertainty resulted in major downturns across the world's largest indices, with the #FTSE100 and #US500 (S&P) sinking to 2011 and 2017 levels respectively, at their worst points.
With fears of a second wave of COVID-19 looming, a collapsing US dollar and unprecedented amounts of job losses from powerhouse companies in the aviation, energy, banking, transportation and retail sectors ... economic uncertainty still remains like an unwelcome guest at a house party.
With all this uncertainty and the dreaded "R" word (Recession) rearing its head, investors have been fleeing to "safe-haven" assets, for example #gold and #cryptocurrency. Whilst they were not immune to the February/March COVID-19 downturn, they have since rallied tremendously, with gold hitting new all-time-high valuations and #Bitcoin breaking out of a three year downtrend ... woo hoo!
So, has the dragon finally awoken from its 3 year slumber?
Bullish sentiment for cryptocurrency is growing once again and its presence is felt both upstream and downstream:
Upstream:
On the 24th July 2020, in the federal court case "United Sates vs Harmon" Bitcoin was deemed a form of money, covered under the Washington D.C. Money Transmitters Act.
Downstream:
Bitcoin is making anecdotal appearances on Bloomberg Surveillance ... and will hopefully regain a live ticker on the programme once more.
Cryptocurrency Twitter and YouTube accounts are flooding with TradingView chart analyses, and bulls and bears are at each others throats in various forums.
The words "Moon" and "Lambo" are unfortunately spreading like wildfire once again ... shudders.
Digital currency is coming up again as a topic of conversation with friends and family.
Im not going to be the one to say whether it's a bull run or not, thats for the bigger players to decide.
I'm writing this article to tell you what you should do and what you shouldn't do if you're completely new to this.
What to watch to educate yourself:
Banking on Bitcoin (Amazon prime).
The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin (Amazon prime).
Free massive online open course (MOOC) from the university of Nicosia, taught by digital currency experts like Andreas Antonopoulos, George Giaglis and Antonis Polemitis, to provide an introduction to digital currencies:
Wallets:
You'll need a wallet to get going. There are plenty to choose from but for ease of access and conversion of fiat to crypto I would suggest #Coinbase as your first stop:
https://www.coinbase.com/join/king_6e << If you use this link, we’ll both receive £7.67 in Bitcoin when you buy or sell £76.71 or more on Coinbase.
Coinbase also operates a programme called Coinbase Earn, where you can earn small amounts of various cryptocurrencies, just by watching a few educational/introductory videos, such as:
Orchid (OXT): https://coinbase.com/earn/oxt/invite/vzrpy8hg.
Eosio (EOS): https://coinbase.com/earn/eos/invite/0m32zgjd
Once you get more acclimatised to cryptocurrencies, or if you're planning on buying large sums I would strongly suggest doing your own research on cold storage wallets e.g.
#Ledger Nano X: https://shop.ledger.com/pages/ledger-nano-x?r=2f82
Trezor: https://trezor.io/
Exchanges:
NB: Don't leave large amounts of cryptocurrency on exchanges for long periods of time. If you get round to watching the two documentaries mentioned above, you'll realise why I say this when you find out about the Mt.Gox fiasco.
Exchanges I use:
#Poloniex: https://poloniex.com/signup?c=Z2ABQMEP
I've been using Poloniex since 2016 and have personally never had a problem with the exchange. It has a wide range of cryptocurrency pairs, great trading competitions (that sometimes don't require you to risk any of your own cryptocurrency, for example their recent Futures trading competitions) and their support has a quick response time. Oh, it also has a fun little feature called the "Trollbox" which is a little live chat feature you can use to communicate with other online users. Be warned though, it can get heated in there pretty quickly.
Binance:
https://www.binance.com/en/register?ref=EVHG0NJ5 << Use this link to get a kickback of 5% on every trade you make on Binance.
I use Binance less often than Poloniex, but mainly use it to trade cryptocurrency pairs that aren't on Poloniex. It has way more cryptocurrency pairs than Poloniex and you can find both small market cap gems and also some really obscure cryptocurrencies.
The biggest lesson I learned from 2016/2017 and a word of warning to anyone new to this:
Mining companies and scams: ALWAYS! ... ALWAYS! do your own research. I made the mistake of getting suckered into two scams back in 2016/2017.
BitClubNetwork.
USI-Tech.
If something sounds too good to be true, just run away from it as fast as you can and don't let anyone tell you that you're going to miss out on something. Trust me, from the experience of someone that lost over 1 BTC to these scams ... you're not, you'll just lose your money.
In the cryptocurrency space, once you lose your Bitcoin, its gone ... there is no "financial services compensation scheme (FSCS)" that protects you from such things. There were a lot of bad actors all over #Facebook during the last bull run and I imagine if we're at the start of a new bull run, they'll come crawling out the woodwork again.
Ill leave you with two final messages:
Educate, engage and please just look after yourself out there and don't fall for any traps!
Andreas Antonopoulos puts it perfectly in this small video:
NYKNYB
Take care :)