An Encompassing Introduction to the World of Bitcoin and Crypto Currencies: Getting You Started

Important Note: Never trust anyone in the cryptoverse. Not even me. That's right, don't trust this article. Research it more and verify it for yourself. Verify, verify, VERIFY. This is all your responsibility now. There is no one to cry to if you mess it up. You're the only one that can mess it up for you.
Important Note No. 2: This article does not constitute investment or financial advice, and should not be considered as such. Please undertake your own research and come to your own conclusions before investing in anything. As always, never invest more than you can afford to lose.

Roll Up, Roll Up! Welcome to the Cryptocurrency Theme Park!
Step On Up!
Don’t be afraid! We’ve the greatest roller coasters ever made! Death-defying plunges and dizzying heights, the most haunted of houses and the ricketiest rides, all for you to try!

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Below is a reading list to get you started, but first I want to lay out the theme of what you are entering into with your money:

The links and documents below will help you get a better understanding of what the cryptocurrency space is about. At the end of the day, it is not really an investment in the monetary sense it is an investment in the future. It is an investment in a money, data and identity revolution. It's about giving people back control of their money, their data and their identities. It's about banking the unbanked, taking your personal data and identity off of all the servers around the world and controlling it yourself. Taking mass data out of the hands of the likes of Google and Facebook. Yes, money can be made in this space, but that wasn’t the intention of the concept, if you stick with it and adoption comes about then you have the (likely) chance of becoming rich. This gives you the capitalistic incentive to foster adoption and spread the knowledge of why and how cryptocurrencies and the blockchain are excellent things for society and the future.

It’s gonna be a wild ride so do not put in more money than you are willing to lose. Reread that last sentence. DO NOT put more money in than you are willing to lose. In fact, kiss goodbye to the money as soon as you invest it and hope for the best because you’re probably going to leave it there for a while and could potentially never see it again. Don’t mess about with your investments when things go up and down, don’t give into the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) like you’ve already given into the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), we always bounce back from the FUD. It’s the newer and more naive investors (you) who react to it and pull their money out (usually at a loss) then go away whining, hurt and sore, cursing and hating the crypto-sphere for their own lack of understanding and testicles. HODL your coins and follow those who perpetuate the ecosystem and become an advocate yourself, this is the best way to secure the success of your investment for the future. Things in this space are going to change rapidly and they will go down as fast as they go up, this is a long-term vision not a get rich quick program (they don’t exist). We want mass adoption. What we need is the world to realise that this is a better system than the one we currently run on and you’re the next person aboard the train to help us do it. Finally, do not begin reading this list before you’ve read this whole piece.

Become the “Bitcoin Sign Guy”

That's your warning. Start working your way through these below, do them in order and it should, more or less, work as a progression of knowledge:

• Bitcoin Whitepaper This is the original document that started all of this. As always, start at the start, Don’t worry if you don’t understand much of the technical, mathematical stuff (I don’t either), it’s the concept and the way it works that is most important
• How Blockchain Actually Works Watch it. Come back to it and watch it again in a day or two. You’re going to want to watch it a few times
• Private and Public Keys What are they and how are they created?
• Why are Private Keys and Public Keys so Secure? An entertaining visualisation of sorts
• Cold Storage Defined Don’t use Coinbase’s cold storage like this suggests. Get yourself a Trezor or a Ledger
• Smart Contracts Explained
• ERC20 Tokens ERC20 Are the standard used for creating tokens on the ethereum network, if a project you are interested in is not built on its own blockchain chances are that it’s an ERC20 token.
• ICO The way startups are crowdfunding their projects in the crypto space, usually for ERC20 tokens
• Hard Forking A hard fork is when someone takes a snapshot of a blockchain and then starts running their own blockchain from the time of that snapshot. Usually, those who were holding the coins on the original chain will receive equal amounts of coins on the new chain. Both chains keep on running independently of each other and are only similar by their history before the snapshot was taken and the fork made. Hard forks are often done for development reasons and these result in no new coins being created, but sometimes (and increasingly) hard forks are done by developers who don’t agree with the current direction of the project and tensions reach a breaking point so they head out to enact their vision of the project. This is something you’re going to need to know about in this space. If you want the best example: Bitcoin Cash
• Scaling Currently the biggest hurdle for mass adoption of blockchain technology. Google it, search it on CoinDesk and other news sites and see what results you get, it’s getting hotly debated and new solutions are being proposed, tried and tested all the time.
• 2017 Year in Review Go through this and pick out any headlines that interest you. These are some of the best minds in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world giving their two cents on the extremely eventful year of 2017.
• HODL Not something you need to know by any means but lighthearted and funny. This is the origin of the term used in the cryptosphere.

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Always research your investments. Don’t take my word for it, don’t take someone else word for it, this is you. This is YOUR money, YOUR gamble, YOUR push. DO YOUR RESEARCH! Look at the project, look at the team, look at the partners and the advisers. READ THE WHITEPAPER. Make notes on the white paper whilst reading it, you won’t want to go back and read the whole 30 pages again when checking for one piece of information. Does their solution need the blockchain? Will a blockchain improve the industry they’re working in? If not question it’s purpose, longterm goal and what impact it may have if any. Look at the distribution of funds, Look at the roadmap, how much have they raised? are they active on social media? what kind of stuff is on their telegram channel? Are they an active part of their community? Look at their slack. Look at their GitHub and see how often their code is getting added to. Look at their Reddit, look at their Twitter. FOLLOW THEM! Emails, Twitter, Facebook, etcetera. Do their advisors or team members have Linkedin? check them out. There are many other ways you can research, get creative! Last but not least, become a part of the community. If you want your investment to succeed then help propel it into future success!
There are Ponzi schemes out there trying to take your money so beware. BEWARE!! DO YOUR RESEARCH! In the words of Charlie Lee:

“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a Ponzi”

That’s your warning. Heed it. The internet is a vast and dangerous ocean and if you’re reading this then you’re probably not a cypherpunk or coder (neither am I). So, like a penguin in the desert, you’re on foreign ground my friend. Watch your step.
Bookmark, bookmark BOOKMARK!! Once you’ve found a website save it! The simplest of spelling errors can take you to a bogus website that looks exactly like the real thing. Once you’ve entered your details you and your funds are fucked. These are copies of the links I have bookmarked but don’t take them for granted. Don’t trust me, don’t trust anyone! Verify, verify, VERIFY.

Verify, verify, VERIFY.

• Coinbase This website will be your gateway. Here you can use your bank account or debit card to buy, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin (I don’t advocate Bitcoin Cash) from there you can send that to your chosen exchange and there you can buy other cryptos. Don't use a credit card to buy crypto, Mastercard and Visa just started levying high charges on crypto currency purchase on credit cards (they're scared that they're going to be made obsolete,and they will be if they don't evolve and embrace)
• Bittrex This is the exchange I use. I like them. They’re USA based and are not too quick to list coins and will scrutinise them closely. As a result they don’t have a huge huge listing but they’ll have most of what you might want
• HitBTC This is one I’ve just started using, I know some others who really like it. It has a much larger variety of coins than bittrex and if you’re looking for other coins maybe you can find them here
• MetaMask Google Chrome Extension. Download it from the Google Web Store. MetaMask is an Ethereum wallet built into your chrome browser. It can interact with websites to facilitate payment in ETH and ERC20 tokens. It’s very useful and widely used.
• MyEtherWallet The best ethereum wallet out there. You can create an account yourself and store your own private key or (as I would recommend) do it through a Trezor or a Ledger
• Bisq A decentralised exchange for many native blockchain tokens (BTC, ETH, LTC, etcetera). It does not have a high trading volume right now but the more we use it the higher it gets! It also allows you to use national currencies to purchase crypto. I have not tested this option but I would not be adverse to using it. Coinbase was forced to provide the IRS with details of some of its customers and their transactions last year and eventually they’ll be forced to provide details of all of them. Bisq could be a way around that. (Needs more research on my part, now your part also if you so desire)
• Coin Market Cap Probably the most important one on this list. Coinmarketcap gives you the prices of all coins aggregated across exchanges, but this isn’t it’s most useful tool. I use Coinmarketcap to research coins. I use it to find links to the coins I want to research and potentially purchase. Find the coin, click the coin and click the link “website” this will lead you to the coins homepage. Bookmark that page! That can then be your secure link to them. You can be more assured that you’ve signed up to the correct mailing list and that you are downloading your wallets from correct sources. Play around with this site you can get some interesting insights from it.

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Some places for news, updates and research: Twitter, Coin Telegraph, Coin Desk, Reddit, sub Reddit’s, bitcointalk.org, The Merkle
Twitter is probably the most important one on that list. I created a twitter account just to stay up to date with my crypto investments, I highly HIGHLY recommend you do the same. Follow the coins, follow the news channels, follow the people who created the coins, follow the people who work on the projects, follow the people who report on the crypto-space. Last but not least follow the people who’s opinion doesn’t match your own! Don’t lock yourself into your own little bubble, keep yourself open to outside opinions. If you read a piece and don’t like it question why you don’t like it and whether your distaste has any grounds or if you’re just dismissing it because it doesn’t fit for you. Here are some Twitter handles to get you started: @lopp @WhalePanda ‏ @fluffypony @SatoshiLite @maxkeiser @LegendOfCrypto @CoinMarketCap @iamjosephyoung @jcp @ChrisConeyInt @CryptoTutor @bitcoincoreorg @bisq_network @ToneVays @crypto_rand @metamask_io @VitalikButerin @myetherwallet @ethereumproject @welshiewelshie
That Last one is me. I’m nowhere near as useful as the others but friends are always nice :) Remember: Follow your coins and whatever foundations and people may be involved with them!
BIG BIG BIG side note: the @Bitcoin handle has been bought by some people marketing Bitcoin Cash and shitting on Bitcoin. Basically just creating FUD about Bitcoin and trying to move people over to Bitcoin Cash. Follow them but remember their awfully misleading and conniving purpose.

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STAY AWAY FROM THE FOLLOWING!

• etherdelta.com This was an excellent decentralised exchange using smart contracts to conduct the sale and purchase of ERC20 tokens. It was recently bought from its creator by some investors and they are looking to monetize it (they started an ICO). As a result, I no longer trust or use their services.
• bitfinex.com These guys have stopped serving customers from the USA due to their lack of regulatory compliance. The main worry with them is that they are heavily connected with Tether (a quick Search or twitter of Tether will tell you what you need to know) I wouldn’t use them, I expect them to come crashing down like Mt Gox (Search it. It was the first crisis to hit the bitcoin and cryptocurrency world)
• CNBC Money Just don’t listen to them they have no idea what they’re talking about. Here’s a good example, read it now before the paragraph afterwards explains it and see if you can see why following them is like the blind leading the blind.

They’re selling you Tether as being a good investment because it had risen 3% despite everything else taking a hit. Yet it was, at that point, worth just over a dollar so logically, being tethered to the dollar, it’s going to go back down to a dollar. If you look at the Coin Market Cap chart for Tether you’ll see what I mean. This is an example of someone making a story from nothing on the back of the crypto hype i.e. the words crypto, blockchain and bitcoin. This can be common. Remember, not all news is good news and not all news is actually news.

The market is currently tanking and has been for a few days, we could be hitting the bottom soon which means you could be coming in at a good time. But in reality who knows? If I could predict the future I sure as hell wouldn’t be writing this. But it is a time to buy in that’s better than two months ago, imagine being those people that bought in at the high of $19,200 for 1 BTC! No really, actually sit there look at the current bitcoin price and imagine being them. It could be you in a month. You’ve imagined buying and watching it rise (that’s where you encountered the FOMO) and now imagine buying and watching it fall. There’s nothing to say that all of this won’t go south for all of us.
But if you believe in the technology, which is proving itself more every year, and if you believe in the concept then there’s no reason for you not to put your money where your mouth is.
I implore you to set up a node. You don’t have to mine the coins and waste tons of money on energy but you can contribute to the evolution and strength of the network by buying a big hard drive and setting up a node. Here’s a guide from Bitcoin Core (the title of the decentralised group of bitcoin developers) if you need more help ask the internet. Search it or get onto Reddit or bitcointalk.org people are more than willing to help you perpetuate the ecosystem. It doesn’t have to be a bitcoin node either, if there is a different coin you favour then you can set up a node on that network.

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Finally some suggestions from me.
But first: Don’t trust me. Don’t jump into these feet first. Do your research first!
Bitcoin BTC, Ethereum ETH, Litecoin LTC, Dentacoin DCN, NEO NEO, Cardano ADA, Ethereum Classic ETC, Rivetz RVT

Now it’s all down to you with one final, and most important, warning: Never ever, NEVER EVER, give anyone your private keys or mnemonic phrase. Never ever, NEVER EVER, create a digital copy of your private keys or mnemonic phrase. Do not even take a photo of it. This is how they get stolen and that is how you lose all of your coins. Write it down (if you have your mnemonic phrase you don’t need your private key). Store it where no one else knows where it is, not even your family or your loved ones. Write out a second copy and give to someone you completely trust, a parent or a sibling probably fits this category best. Why do this? Well, if your house caught fire then your money literally went up in smoke. You are your own bank if your keys fall into the wrong hands and your stuff goes missing then there is no-one to blame but yourself.
Good luck out there and Happy HODLing! :)

If you feel like sending me love for this it’s always appreciated and can be received here:
BTC: 33YJKoNGpjpL9Tf2PSUCRTkubCZfrU575S
ETH: 0x97C40cBb647920Ed83c456661d5a537557bAE38D
LTC: MTZx66VxTmo4Ed8WAi2kCTT8d6UBYVBZYp
ETC: 0xb6B553B400770F40c37F7596db6CaE1b8fE68578
ADA: DdzFFzCqrht2nBt9DbskPVFsC4bKUYpra9xvPg2agFi39eUbwa9MMPjuo2EfnduYN3PnWTTgAixihgpbLdqhNGDs4Br9owXSYnA378UC

Important Note: Never trust anyone in the cryptoverse. Not even me. That's right, don't trust this article. Research it more and verfiy it for yourself. Verify, verify, VERIFY. This is all your responsibility now. There is no one to cry to if you mess it up. You're the only one that can mess it up for you.
Important Note No. 2: This article does not constitute investment or financial advice, and should not be considered as such. Please undertake your own research and come to your own conclusions before investing in anything. As always, never invest more than you can afford to lose.