A Noob's initial experiences upon entrance to Cryptocurrency: Part 4

If you want to get into trading of cryptocurrency, take a full day of signing up for every exchange you can find. Go to TradingMarketCap.com and make a list of all the exchanges that trade coins you are interested in and then sign up for them one by one. Make sure you have a scanned or copied photo of your ID, Driver’s License, and Passport (front and back of all) on your computer ready for upload. Also make sure you have a decent web cam that can take clear pictures. Then go to town. It can take minutes, hours, days, weeks, and maybe even months to get fully approved on some of these markets. Make a tracking sheet so you know what you have done for each, what is pending, and what remains.

Now that you have done that, send some coins around to different exchanges. You may be surprised to find out that some exchanges (cough, cough, Coinbase!) will require more verification. (Coinbase is trash, so keep your eyes open for an exchange that is more to your liking). GDAX.com is linked to Coinbase but operates at a reasonable speed, so use that instead for wire transfers and sending crypto.

Of all the exchanges and entry points that I have signed up for, Coinbase still remains the most difficult to use in terms of it actually working how one would expect. Point Forward I will not use Coinbase if I can help it. Their system for linking a bank account is nerve rattlingly frustrating. There ID verification is unreliable. Even transferring coins to other exchanges seems like they think it is heresy. Coinbase seems rather unpolished and thus unprofessional. Coinbase makes me uncomfortable. So, again, use GDAX or something else.

So, I tried to transfer Litecoin from Coinbase to Poloniex and was informed by Coinbase it would take 72 hours unless I verified by ID. I did it twice and got an email say it was successful. And yet, my withdrawal to another exchange says that it is still pending ID verification. I canceled the transfer and decided to purchase coin from GDAX.com and transfer directly from there. Now it shows pending in Coinbase as a normal transaction. Coinbase blows.

You will find as you start to work with other exchanges, that some of them can be rather frustrating, like they were created for the 1% of crypto customers that understand everything there is to know about cryptocurrency, including how to code their own blockchain. Do your reading and be careful.

You really only need one point of entry into crypto. A place that will sell Bitcoin or Ethereum for US dollars (assuming that is your fiat of choice). These are the 2 main cryptos accepted for trade at most exchanges. So if you want to get your hands on some crazy new crypto out of Bumphuk Nowhere, you probably will need to transfer BTC or ETH into their exchange to get it.

So far I have registered for 14 different exchanges. When I started, I used a gmail account for them, but then realized that I should use an email provider that isn’t so “popular” and that I don’t use for anything else. I found an email provided that uses 2 Factor Authentication and used them. Important thing to know is that it is easier to pull your own teeth with 2 spoons than it is to change your email address on most of the exchanges. So make sure you have the email account you want set up first. I have 3 (possibly 4) accounts that are dead to me because they have my gmail and I cant change it.