Well I survived another week in the crypto world. I’m going to try to catch up to the present as quickly as possible but after writing the first few hundred words in this post I can already tell that is going to be a challenge. I may try to write more frequently for a little while so that I don’t have to keep hearing the Wayne and Garth flashback sounds in my head as I type. Well, here we go….
It was September 2019 and like most crypto newbies, I opened my first crypto account on Coinbase. Now I’m not entirely knocking them and would actually recommend them to anyone who just wants to get their feet wet. It’s pretty simple to set up and use, and the best part was that they give out free crypto just to learn about crypto (I got $50 worth for just a few minutes of my time, more about this in a future episode). However, unless you go to Coinbase Pro, you are buying crypto at the current market rate when you press the button (as opposed to placing Limit/Stop Limit orders like a most stock trading applications) and paying considerable fees to trade. You also don’t have the ability to place conditional sell orders to protect your money if the market should crash while you are asleep. But if you just want to play around, it’s a decent place to start. They don’t have every coin available to buy here (only 17 available at the time of this post), but do have most of the major ones.
As I said earlier, setting up an account was pretty easy, but be prepared to provide additional details so that you can actually get your money back out (like providing a copy of your drivers license). You’ll also need to get funds to your account. The easiest way for me to do this was to just tie it to my bank account and fund it through ACH transfers (you can actually make the transfer only when you want to buy something).
A few tips I learned while setting up this account
- Create a new email account just for crypto trading – The reason I recommend this is because shortly after I set up a few accounts and turned on 2FA security, I started getting notifications about once a day from Google asking me if I was trying to recover my email account. Maybe this was just a coincidence, but once I changed them I stopped seeing those. I’ve already heard enough horror stories about lost crypto to know that you need to pay attention to security. A friend suggested using a tool like Protonmail, however after doing some research, it sounded to me like the security already built into Gmail was sufficient for my needs.
- Turn on 2 Factor Authentication – This is highly recommended by everyone! Its really simple to set up (just download one like Google Authenticator or Microsoft and scan a QR code on the screen). It’s just like one of those fobs some people had to carry around in the 90s with numbers that change every few minutes that you have to enter. One more level of security to make it more difficult for someone else to get your crypto. I’m not sure how easy it is to move if you lose or change your phone but I will play with that in the near future and provide an update.
- Figure out how you are going to store all your passcodes/recovery codes – I honestly haven’t figured out a great way to do this other than to write them down on a piece of paper and make sure that paper is safe (you should probably right it down on 2 pieces and store them in different locations). I’m still not happy with the solution I’ve come up with so far but as I improve I will continue to pass along what I come across. It’s not easy to keep up with long strings of random characters or 20 unique words for a recovery code.
- Do some research on wallets and practice – There are so many wallet options out there and none of them I’ve tried so far support everything I want to do. I started out with 2, Coinomi and My Ether Wallet (MEW). I’ve yet to find a simple to use wallet, but these 2 weren’t bad (I get a bit confused using MEW bouncing from my phone to my PC but I needed it for some coins). It was recommended that if I’m going to get serious about this (which I think I already am) that I should get a hardware wallet. The Ledger seems the most interesting to me and I’ll probably pick one up in the next few weeks ( https://www.ledger.com ). When I say practice, what I meant was after creating a wallet and setting up all of the security and recovery, I’d try sending a few tokens first to make sure you understand how to get them from the exchange to your wallet. Doing this will also help you understand some of the fees and time it takes to transfer crypto, along with some of the limitations (like you can’t transfer less than 20 XRP to a wallet the first time which I figured out after my 4th attempt).
There are quite a few more tips/mistakes I’ve come across so far, but this is already getting long and I’ve barely started so I’ll add those to future episodes. I will conclude this episode with my first crypto purchase – 0.060003 Bitcoin (BTC) @ 8,328 on Sept 28th (~ $500). It felt odd that I only got six one-hundredths of something for $500, but that’s a reality if you want to buy Bitcoin today. If you want a lot more of something, then you’ll have to start looking at the “Altcoins” which I will also discuss later.
Until Next Time!
- Busy Being Awesome
Please note: I’m trying to recall the past month as accurately as possible, however if you happen to notice something I’ve described incorrectly, please let me know so that I may correct it. My goal is to help people with this, so any misinformation would defeat that purpose. Thank you.