You choose your option and want to start buying!
So in the last two posts we have talked about how to get an address for your new digital gold https://steemit.com/portfolio/@demianvrij/step-by-step-tips-for-starting-your-own-crypto-portfolio and we have talked about where to get crypto currencies https://steemit.com/crypto/@demianvrij/step-by-step-tips-for-starting-your-own-crypto-portfolio-part-2
As you might remember from the Beginners Introduction (https://steemit.com/crypto/@demianvrij/a-beginners-introduction-to-the-cryptoverse) there are a lot of different cryptocurrencies. Although again, I am not an investment advisor, I do want to give you some information on how to start out in this new Wild Wild West.
Many of the crypto’s outside Bitcoin definitely have their value and use cases. And some might become huge players in the world economy one day.
A lot other cryptocurrencies however are being used mainly to speculate and are being manipulated by so co called pump and dumps. This is what happens when whales, aka large players, manipulate the price of often small coins with low trade volume. It is always wise to do as much homework on a coin as you can, to see the difference between valuable coins and ‘shit coins’.
A good introduction could be this trilogy:
This is not to say, that this writer is correct. I myself for instance see overlap, but have some different strategies then he has as well. I would not focus too much on the exact coins that he mentions, since a lot happens in the space. His advice on SDC for instance is already useless since SDC rebranded itself and no one knows where it will lead to. I don’t want to bash the writer for that however, since this rebranding came out of nowhere, and the writer was actually pretty pissed, as was most of the SDC community.
Again a reminder that cryptocurrencies are full of risk.
For more investor tips, you can check out my Crypto Advise (https://steemit.com/crypto/@demianvrij/crypto-advise-that-i-have-gathered) this is a post I created where I compiled useful advice I have come across.
In Crypto Checklist https://steemit.com/checklist/@demianvrij/a-checklist-for-new-crypto-projects you can find a list of questions you should get answered for yourself when thinking about investing in a coin.
It has some obvious and less obvious questions like: Why is this coin unique? Has it’s code been tested by outside parties? Who are it’s team members? What are the 24 hour volumes? And more.
When you want to invest in altcoins Poloniex and Bittrex are good places to start. Poloniex does not ask for ID verification (yet), so it is possible to trade under an alias. One of the downsides is that you cannot trade with euro’s so you will have to buy Bitcoin first and send it to your address on your Polo account. This does mean you could in theory be anonymous, by buying bitcoin through a localbitcoiner and then trade on Polo under an alias.
You can also buy altcoins through websites like Litebit but the fee you pay is often lower on exchanges than it is on these kind of websites.
I’ve had enough of my crypto. I want to sell!
To be honest. I have not heard of this statement yet. Most people who get into crypto start to see the promises it gives and get excited by the decentralized nature of it all. This ecosystem is far from perfect but seeing instant transactions and no third parties claiming a parts of your work (like Steemit vs. Reddit/Facebook or SwarmCity vs. Uber) does something with people. After that it is hard to go back to waiting the whole weekend to see a transaction being processed by a bank… Or having to pay huge amounts for sending money over to a family member in another country.
This means that many people do not sell their crypto for euro’s, but sell the crypto they don’t believe in anymore for another crypto.
Still! It should always be possible to sell your crypto back to euro’s. Again, this can be done by the same on ramps you used to get into crypto.
- You can sell it via a local.com site
- You can sell it through a website like bitonic or litebit
- You can sell it on an exchange like kraken and withdraw the funds to your bank account
Some useful links and extra info
A link to a list with almost all crypto’s is www.coinmarketcap.com
This website is open on almost all traders desktops 24/7. You can choose to switch the prices from dollars to euro’s. And when you click on a coin you will get to see more info. This will range from statistics like the Marketcap of the coin, how much volume is being traded each day, how much coins are already on the market and if it has a limited amount of coins/total supply. On the left side you will see links to the website of the project, sometimes a link to a blockchain explorer with which you can check all the traffic that happens on their chain, you will be able to find their announcement link, often done on the most popular forum (Bitcointalk) and maybe some info on what kind of coin it is. Is it a currency or an asset etc. All in all a really handy website.
Websites that are similar are http://coincap.io/ and https://www.coingecko.com/en which is a website to compare coins on their developer, liquidity, community and other stats.
There are multiple apps you can use to track (almost) all new bought crypto. The most known ones are coincap, blockfolio* and cointicker. This will save you the trouble of tracking each single coin and all their volatilities. There are many apps like these, and many other tracking tools to be found as well.
- (update, it was found that blockfolio does store all your info in the backend and could use this to predict market swings and sell the data. Their official response was that they do not save individual data, only meta data and that they have not yet sold any data as of 7.2017)
A lot of people really get overwhelmed when they get into this crypto space. Since it is so new, and so experimental, new projects pop up every day and new breakthroughs happen often. To keep track of all this news and to stay on top you might feel like there is never enough time.
And trust me. There isn’t. My backlog of articles I still want to read and projects I still have to research grows every day.
So it is key to time manage and try to be as efficient as you can.
I will now give you a list of some really helpful websites that I myself use often.
- https://letstalkbitcoin.com/ This is a great source of information. It is a website with multiple podcast shows. Due to the huge growth of altcoins and blockchain projects the website will soon be rebranded into “Let's Talk”. My own personal favorites are: LetstalkBitcoin itself, Epicenter, The Ether Review en The Crypto Show
- Reddit: reddit has many subreddits dedicated towards cryptocurrencies. Most of the questions and discussions are being done on this website. A couple I follow myself are:
r/bitcoin (This is the first bitcoin subreddit. It is sadly heavily scensored… a good explenation on this can be found here https://medium.com/@johnblocke/a-brief-and-incomplete-history-of-censorship-in-r-bitcoin-c85a290fe43#.yiuv2uz4n ).
r/btc (the subreddit that was created as a response to the censorship),
r/cryptocurrency
r/ethereum - When it comes to news websites, there are loads. There are even websites dedicated to just one crypto in particular like www.ethnews.com/ and www.dashforcenews.com/ . I myself use an app that gives you the news of a multitude of crypto related websites. This app is called BTCnews. I do want to warn you that there are a couple huge players in this media world that have dubious backgrounds. These have been bought by big crypto companies and bring forth a slur of biased opinions. It's almost like in the real world ;) Cointelegraph and Coindesk are examples of this
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php A huge forum that is being used by many many enthusiasts. It does have censorship problems as well… (Same guy is running both forums)
- https://bitco.in/forum/ that’s why this forum was created.
- I do use bitcointalk for their announcement page. Most of the censorship is happening on the bitcoin related threads. The part of the forum that is dedicated to announcing new cryptocurrencies is really useful. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0 These announcement pages are the place where the developers and their team present their new coin and often tell the details and a link to the website or their whitepaper (the document in which they explain their project). What I often do when I want to look into a new coin is check this announcement and look at how much pages the thread has. If there are many pages then it either is a very old coin or has a very talkative/active community. This last part is often a good sign. If there are almost no pages it means that the coins is super new or it never gained traction and the community never took off. What I do is check the first couple pages, to see how the initial response was (very critical? Are people going into the actual tech? Or are people just saying “yeaaah to the moon! (that the price will skyrocket)”, were there a lot of bugs/problems at the start?). I also check the latest couple of pages to see what the status of the project is (what do people say now? Are people warning for an exit scam of the developers? Is the community still active or are people asking if someone will finally answer their questions? Is the original poster, which is often the main developer still communicating?)
- https://coinjournal.net/ pretty unbiased news website
- CryptoCompare, this is a nice, and even quite neutral, website that tries to become some kind of homepage for cryptocurrencies. Lots of news, blogs and reviews going on here.
- www.99bitcoins.com another website with useful information.
- https://bravenewcoin.com/ likewise.
- http://taifuindexes.com/ a market index of all crypto together
- Last but not least, for real inside info on crypto’s, join their own slack channels. These are the most direct if you have questions or want to follow the development of a team/crypto. You can often find a invite link on the crypto’s website.
(If you think I missed some really useful links in this list, let me know in the comments!)
As you can see I have not included Facebook in this list. There are definitely some crypto related groups on there, but to be honest, compared to the other forums, it is just a lot of low content arguing.
So there you have it
This was my trilogy on how to start your own crypto portfolio. We have gone from getting a first address to store coins at, on to where to get these digital currencies to what good strategies might be. We ended with a list of good websites that will help you stay on top of it all.
Let me know what your progress has been. What route have you chosen? Which option gave you the most headache? What would you advise people yourself, now that you are a crypto owner?
Upcoming stories
I started my own portfolio back in 2015 and have gone down the rabbit hole ever since. There is something about this decentralized way of working together that is just fascinating. Because of this I have quit my job and started helping people understand this new mind boggling experiment by writing understandable blog posts. They used to be only for friends and family but now that I have also started giving workshops and meet-ups, I wanted it to be more open to the public. So you can expect more content to come :)
One of my creations for instance is a Wiki about the crypto environment.
If you ever think, wait a minute, which crypto was Monero again? Who was Vitalik? What does Hash Functions mean? I created a document that I regularly update (in part to help my own memory a bit), it’s called Cryptocurrency Wiki (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zIrLEel8K7qX3MlLR06Tzp_OJaA0lhwy9_SN4fJiqdU/edit).
This document has 4 parts;
- Jargon/Definitions
- Coins
- Companies/Organizations
and last but certainly not least: - People.
It explains who/what they are, with whom they work together etc. The way I go through it when I want to search something is by pushing command/control (depends if you are on a pc or a mac) + F on your keyboard and then type in the thing you are looking for.
It could very well be that I have written something about it. This is often way quicker than scanning all those forums, websites, wiki’s and blogs.
Please don’t get mad at me if I got something wrong, I’m only human. Better yet, if you do find some wrong or inconclusive info, let me know!
Success!
Ps:
Found this helpful? Want me to continue?
Knowledge empowers us all and will help us get closer to the decentralized world we all want to live in.
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If you have enjoyed reading, a donations is appreciated :) This will help me to keep expanding this archive of information.
You can donate crypto to any of these addresses:
BTC: 126d69Wsfax4P5QU9dg6uZ6oqrzYFWqBuB
ETH and all ERC20 tokens (GNT, REP, etc.): 0x2736F5d632fD6920dEA5F8AfAE7323287f5212fA
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NXT: NXT-HYBR-5H8M-ENJ2-3G9SC
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