Why should I care?
Crypto currency is the hot topic on the internet right now. It is inevitable that over the next few years everyone will start using crypto, even if they're not interested in computers, cryptography or virtual currencies in general. People often think that making money off crypto currencies is not possible anymore or not worth because they didn't invest a few years ago. This is a really big misconception. The crypto space is growing at an insanely high rate, new innovative coins emerge everyday and the profit you are able to make is at least equal to what you could have made buying bitcoin years ago, if not more. A lot of people still aren't familiar with any of this, simply because it's not a topic that's being discussed a lot on TV, radio or most social media sites, yet. This will change as soon as everyone realizes how crypto currencies are suddenly becoming part of everyday life.
What do I need to know?
Before you start out, you need to figure out whether you want to be an investor or a trader. What's the difference? Let's take a look at the two definitions.
The goal of investing is to gradually build wealth over an extended period of time through the buying and holding of a portfolio. [ ... ] While markets inevitably fluctuate, investors will "ride out" the downtrends with the expectation that prices will rebound and any losses will eventually be recovered.
Trading, on the other hand, involves a more frequent buying and selling. [ ... ] Trading profits are generated through buying at a lower price and selling at a higher price within a relatively short period of time. The reverse is also true: trading profits are made by selling at a higher price and buying to cover at a lower price (known as "selling short") to profit in falling markets.
Source: Investopedia
To summarize the above, investing means holding one or more crypto currencies over a long period of time, hoping it will increase and generate profit over time, even if price might fall during this period. Trading means buying and selling crypto currencies in a short time frame, minutes, hours, days, to profit from the market moving up or down during a short window, in other works, profiting from the market volatility.
Only you can decide which path you choose, some people can't deal with the stress of daily trading, some people love the rush of making quick money. It all depends on what type of person you are.
How do I get started?
If you want to start investing, not trading, you need to do a lot of research. You need to look at every single crypto currency you might want to invest in, read blog posts, follow their social media, analyze if the idea of the coin is going to have value in the next years. This is the most important part of investing, once you did your research and you bought into a coin, you can sit back and see if it pays off. Trading on the other hand requires less long term thinking, instead you need to be able to make decisions quick and under a lot of pressure. If a coin is getting a lot of attention on the media, or if there are upcoming events that might cause the price to go up or down, you need to decide whether to buy or sell the coin. If you want to know more about the essentials of trading, I suggest you get started reading this article Trading Fundamentals.
Where do I buy crypto currencies?
There are a lot of websites that allow you to buy coins from. One of the most known ones is coinbase. Everytime you use an exchange or a website to buy a crypto currency from with your fiat money, EUR, USD etc, you will pay a small fee, because the website you are using has to make money as well. The fees on coinbase are petty low and it's easy to use for beginners. You can either leave the coins you bought in coinbase or you send them to an exchange, such as Bittrex or Kraken to exchange them for other coins you can't buy on coinbase for example. Here's a list of exchanges that you can use, pick whichever you think best fits you (List of Exchanges). If you want to trade, you will need to use an exchange because you're going to buy and sell a lot of different crypto currencies and exchanges allow you to do that in a very short amount of time, which is crucial for trading. If you are planning to invest long term, you can also store your coins in a Paper Wallet. The example here is Bitcoin, however many other coins allow the offline storage in paper wallets. They are considered the most secure. If the crypto currency you are planning to buy supports paper wallets is for you to find out. There are other ways to store your coins as well, most crypto currencies provide their own desktop wallet that you can run on your PC to store your coins in, which is not as secure, however a lot easier.
How do I research a crypto currency?
I'm going to provide you with a few links that will get you started. There are two sites that I suggest using to check what the crypto currency / coin you bough is actually worth. The first one is coincap.io, the other one is coinmarketcap. Both essentially do the same, you pick the one you like best. Both provide basic historical data and graphs of prices, as well as things like market cap, price change in the last 24 hours and a lot more. For more detailed graphs and lots of features that help you analyze the market, which is really important for trading, because you're going to look at charts a lot, you should definitely take a look at coinigy. It allows you to link your exchange account so you can use coinigy instead of your exchanges website, which in most cases don't have nice and clear charts and less tools to work with, which will make trading more difficult in the long run. In order to be a proper trader you will also need to learn a lot of technical chart analysis, which is easier than it seems at first. It's is a lot to learn tho, so prepare to invest some time, trust me, it will pay off if you master it. If you want to find out more about the basics of technical analysis, I recommend reading this.
There is still a lot to learn
What I'm trying to achieve with this post is to get more people to start researching crypto currencies. It is the future, if you like it or not. There is still so much more that you will need to figure out before you start investing or trading, but all the above is the bare minimum you will need to get started.
Good luck and always remember
"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin
Take your time, do your research, make mistakes, learn from your mistakes, profit