Introduction

The image above is what keeps me motivated and inspired. The crypto world has become a real obsession of mine. I love the concept and recognise its potential to bring about drastic change in the world for the good of all humanity. Its already disrupting the status quo across the world of finance and a number of other industries. I believe this revolution is in its infancy and we all have a chance to jump on it early and create long term, sustainable wealth. A kind of rebalancing of sorts, decentralising the financial/economic and hopefully soon to follow political powers and eventually dismantling the traditional institutions as we know them and shifting it in a direction that's right for the collective.

With this, an immense number of people are becoming captivated by the potential that investing in cryptocurrencies offers. And in fact in my personal view, these perceptions certainly have merit behind them. As the market seems to increase exponentially, so do the number of family members, acquaintances, colleagues and friends asking me for help on how to get started and make their first investment in the space. So far the conversion rate has been absolute. 100% of the people who got involved are fully convinced in its power to change their lives. I've seen this pattern several times now, despite being a relative newbie myself. This curiosity is of course driven by the increasing hype, the quick cash and FOMO (fear of missing out) of potentially life changing profits in a very short time.

The crazy thing is, it is somewhat justified, as unlike any other past 'bubbles', Bitcoin has been through several crash and rally cycles in its 8 year history. It is also finite in nature and can both serve as a currency and a store of value, which is also decentralised and cannot be controlled by central authorities. The volatility is not dissimilar to Gold's early days, a precious commodity used by people hedging their wealth against market uncertainty during tough economic periods, war, political tensions etc...Yet its set apart by one very important difference: only 21,000 coins will ever get mined into existence. Also due to this attribute, as it's utility increases and more and more people adopt its use, the value in theory will continue to increase overall for a while to come. With that said, alternative or ALT coins are also becoming very popular as there are a number of developers, corporations, banks etc. who are also harnessing the technology to build decentralised programs or applications to change the way humans do things. So the potential for growth at this point is enormous as we are just hitting the $500B market cap size.

With that in mind, my journey led me down a path of learning, which was both fun, time consuming, costly and educational, nonetheless, I feel obliged to help out by writing this blog for those who are looking for the best way to get involved and save time, money and get the best entry prices for their hard earned $dollar. The more cash you save in the process, the more value retained for your portfolio and the quicker you start turning profit from your trades or just "hodling".

What is the easiest way to buy my first Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin?

For those just starting out, especially across Australia, you should avoid a number of large conglomerates selling at inflated prices with high buy-in fees of around 3%. The upside is the speed you can purchase at and that Coinbase allows you to use a credit card to instantly buy either Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin. I used this service to begin with and found them very reliable and trustworthy. The downside is the higher fees they charge and the choice of only 3 coins. I do however continue to use Coinbase as it allows me to remain nimble exchanging my fiat $ into crypto and then transfer it into an exchange or cold storage (hardware wallet). There are also rumours flying around they will be introducing new coins in the not too distant future, though their vetting criteria is the highest, so its hard to say how long before it happens. Of course, any new coin introduced on their platform will surely be another hit, given they have one of the largest number of users. The interface is also very simple to understand and use. The limitation is, if you are in Australia, or anywhere outside the US, you won't be able to sell back to them, hence the need to look for other exchanges. Once people send their money across, it generally drives them to being more curious about other tokens and the potential 1000% gains within a really short period of time.

For users in Australia there is an answer to Coinbase...

Following Coinbase, I quickly discovered Coinspot, which is an Australian based business allowing Bpay & POLI pay deposits, however credit cards are not in play. They take a decent cut, and until there's more competition in this space to cater to the growing demand and as people are continually distracted by the seemingly forever rising prices, they can justify charging a premium. One awesome feature Coinspot do offer is the wide range of coins you can directly buy into from your fiat $. This is awesome as you would generally lose cash on exchange fees if you bought on Coinbase and sent it to another exchange only to get charged again to exchange for the currency of your choice. Of course, there are a number of scenarios where this cannot be avoided, particularly if you have watched Youtube tutorials or read articles on a particular project and you believe in the potential of it, you just got to have the coin at all costs.

Exchanges & trading

The very same sentiment propelled me to register with numerous exchanges. But I'm only going to mention the very best of them, as on balance it offers the most variety, efficiency, trustworthiness and other technical features that help me assess where to enter the market, position sizing and target entry/exit prices. Of course, I also have quite a few long term positions that I exchange and don't intent to trade and instead transfer straight to an offline wallet and allow to mature in time. While exchanges are great and necessary, they are also penetrable and have been hacked for millions of $$$ in the past. You definitely don't want to be one of those people! Nevertheless, if you are going to use any exchanges, you may as well go for one of the biggest, where the market has sufficient liquidity to set your own prices and greatly increase your profits over time. I often hear from people they are engaging in arbitrage, which essentially buying low on one exchange and selling high on another. While this may work some time, I would not recommend going down this path as the volatility of cryptos can backfire. And short term profits are very real and possible just by simply letting your investment sit and HODL for a few days...So after an exhaustive search I have settled on Binance, which has some of the most reasonable fees and best variety of coins. It also has regular trading competitions or other promotional offers where users are rewarded with huge bonus token giveaways, referral programs and other benefits. It's also one of the friendlier user interfaces, which does not require a lot of use to master and the analysis tools are unreal. The most recent promo offer is giving away ADA - Cardano tokens to the people who deposit the highest amount within a month. So if you are going to sign up to an exchange, this has to be the one!

Cashing out

I often get asked the question how the cryptos can be monetised to fiat $. These are usually people very new to crypto currencies and investing. Firstly, they tend to be driven by fear of loss, and tend to pull the trigger too quickly should the price move against them.. Once they level up and understand the potential of keeping their funds compounding for longer or possibly to generate passive income, they tend to drop this topic altogether. Nonetheless, there are a number of easy ways to convert back to fiat. My favourite, and most lucrative way of doing this has to be Local Bitcoin. The reason this is lucrative is because it allows you to sell directly to people in the neighbourhood for cash or get a direct bank deposit from an ATM instantly from another person who is desperately wanting to get their hand on some crypto and wants to do it away from the prying eyes of the government. Don't get me wrong, they still do their due diligence, however, this site has proven to be one very reliable and profitable way to enter/exit the market when I needed to do so quickly as I was taking profits or re-entering the market and needed my funds in there pronto.

Being aware of scams in a largely unregulated space

There are plenty! Firstly, ICO's or initial coin offerings are widespread and a high percentage of them designed to take advantage of people's greed to exploit them for easy money which they will potentially never see. Of course there are many legitimate new project on the scene too, that have proper utility and will be of crucial value to the development of the underlying infrastructure. It also means that they can be snapped up at a bargain price and potentially see large future returns. But beware of committing large amounts of cash to just any old ICO. Use reputable sources to do your research and only bet with money you can afford! I deliberately used the word bet to emphasise the character of most ICO's: they are mostly a gamble.

One of the longer running 'scams' that some of my friends have participated and made some decent money with is Bitconnect. So is Bitconnect a scam, ponzi or pyramid scheme? This site has been around for a while now, and continues to pay dividends. You can stake your Bitcoin and lend it out on their platform, and in return you receive compounding interest daily from their Volatility Bot which trades 24/7 to keep profiting from the swings in the market. There are only two types of people out there. People adamant on Bitconnect's legitimacy who swear by the system's ability to create long term-risk free passive income, and those who believe it is a scam or ponzi scheme. Nonetheless, the nay sayers so far are losing the battle, as their token's value keeps appreciating and many of my friends have collected $1000's within weeks. There are also a multitude of Youtubers dedicating hours of their content to recruiting and investing into this platform. They are proudly showing off their growing balances, some in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars. There is no denying it, it has a certain appeal. I have elected not to join them as I remain a skeptic. But regardless of what I think, people out there are making a lot on this. Proposing you can remain disciplined, it is entirely possible to double your money and cash out your initial investment then let your profits run and work for you. I'd also argue that if you are not the analytical type, and simply want to allow your money to keep earning you daily compound interest, thisone may be for you.

How profitable is mining Bitcoin?

I'm certainly not the dumbest when it comes to technology. However, I have to accept that there are just some things I'll never even attempt to do. Building my own mining 'rig' is definitely out of the question. Firstly, the cost of it is prohibitively expensive, and so is the electricity bill which would literally cost more than the profit I stand to make. That's why I've decided to look around for cloud based mining services. There is definitely a LOT of them out there. There is a lot of independent sites that allow you to review them, but the one I'm about to recommend, I have dealt with for some time now and can assure you it pays out and will return your investment in spades! I have purchased hash power with them a while back and they have never missed a payment. Their contracts were initially lifetime, but the popularity of their service and reliability is also somewhat undoing them as they struggle to keep up with demand and scale up to cater for the 'herd' at their doors. Their servers and equipment are based in Iceland, a great climate if you want to run high powered rigs 24/7 without having to artificially cool. So as far as I'm concerned, they have been great with payouts and definitely helped me build my portfolio. The company is called Genesis Mining and you can find them here: genesis-mining.com If you are interested in getting started, use the following code and receive 3% off: wFM1aN

There are also a number of sites dedicated to calculating mining profitability, independent reviews of cloud mining companies that can be useful when deciding what you should commit to mining. I currently use cryptocompare.com to do a lot of my research.

Resources
The top resources out there would have to be.....well there are far too many to call out here. But just to help you get you on your journey I will mention the main one's I've been checking into on a daily basis...Firstly, I have an eager mind, and needed to learn everything I could about the technology driving cryptocurrencies and smart contracts. Not being from a computing background, I felt it was necessary to learn the fundamentals. I never imagined I could actually learn the programming language and eventually start doing it myself, but it may come to that in the not too distant future. This site is an absolute gem, and probably the best investment you can make in yourself! You can find the link here: www.blockgeeks.com

Another favourite of mine is coinmarketcap.com, which offers information such as pricing and trend lines on market cap, how your coin is performing against major coins, developer Git hub, and website address so you can conduct further research into the company you are looking to invest in.

Coindesk is also a great site to bookmark if you want to keep on top of the latest news in the space.
One of the best source of information and community engagement where I have monetised some of my opinions, comments and likes (just like you do on Facebook), has to be steemit.com which lets you earn for your participation, and get paid in Steem Dollars - a decentralised cryptocurrency that can be traded for real cash. Basically a decentralised equivalent to Youtube. If you are into creating content, or feel opinionated and would like to collect some money for it, this is definitely the place to be!

Conclusion

There are a plethora of opportunities out there to make money, and this is simply the beginning. As an increasing number of people get involved and discover the power behind this tech, it will further bolster investment and continue to drive innovation and the value of your investments. Whatever you decide, you can not afford not to research it further and take action sooner rather than later! For me Crypto means a more egalitarian system, more freedom to choose what I do with my time, using our available resources more wisely and of course a whole lot more time at the beach😉

Useful links:

My 3 favourite Youtubers:

@Crypt0: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdUSSt-IEUg2eq46rD7lu_g
@boxmining: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=boxmining
@cryptobud: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cryptobud