You've heard of Bitcoin, Ether and Litecoin. Maybe Neo, IOTA, Dash? Did you know that there are over 1,300 other coins with a combined market cap over USD300 billion?
Bitcoin is an amazing story. Satoshi literally registered the website a month before Lehman Brothers collapsed - check out my post here on its beginnings.
The idea of cryptocurrency spread and coins are now used for entirely different purposes than just currencies.
Coinmarketcap.com - The Site to Research Altcoins
Coinmarketcap.com is the best site to research altcoins. It lists them all with key details on price, volume and has links for more info.
A Summary of Altcoins in 4 Words or Less
TechCrunch has a fun and simple overview of 100 different coins.
Check out this page for the full list.
A Brief History of Altcoins - Namecoin the First Altcoin
In 2011, a brilliant mix of computer scientists, cryptographers, libertarians and anarchists would often share and debate ideas on bitcointalk.org.
One related to the ".com" domain which was originally managed by the US Department of Defense, who sold it to Network Solutions, who was acquired by the current manager Verisign. A non-profit (ICANN) managed to loosen Verisign's monopoly control but a few data breaches and the company's connection with defense spooked a lot of the Bitcoin community (like WikiLeaks).
So someone came up wit the clever idea of cloning bitcoin and converting the coins to domain names. With NameCoin, you could bid on various .bit domain names and miners would add them to the block (in return for the registration fees). Completely decentralized. Even Satoshi Nakamoto, the legendary founder of Bitcoin got involved in the discussion.
A few other coins launched shortly after and Litecoin ended up being the most significant of these early starters. Check out the launch of Litecoin on bitcointalk.org here.
How to Buy Altcoins - Choosing an Altcoin Exchange
Start With Bitcoin
To buy Altcoins it's easiest if you already have bitcoin. Essentially you will be swapping Bitcoin for an Altcoin.
If you don't have Bitcoin already, you should check out my earlier blog for help on buying Bitcoin.
Which Altcoin Exchange Is Best For You
There are many exchanges to trade with so it pays to do your own research. Kraken is one of the more popular ones (I don't use it because it doesn't trade Neo). Bittrex is also popular although it's rather complex and geared more for traders.
For newbies, I find one of the simplest ways to buy a bunch of Altcoins is through coinspot.com.au. It trades most of the main ones including Neo (which was important to me). It is rather expensive although that doesn't bother me as I have a buy and hold strategy.
To be upfront, I get a referral commission if you register with that/this link. I decided to draft this blog and recommend coinspot before I found out about the affiliate program. Coinspot is honestly the simplest one I found if you can't be bothered setting up multiple wallets or learning a complex platform - I use it and I've recommended it to friends. I stumbled across it when I was trying to buy Neo.
The reason I like Coinspot:
- You can buy and hold most of the main altcoins (including Ripple, Neo, OMG, PWR, Ether, IOTA, MAID, STEEM);
- You don't need to upload ID if you only trade crypto;
- It seems legit, secure and is fairly easy to use;
- Customer service is helpful and responsive.
Cryptopia.co.nz is cheaper, allows you to trade more currencies (I wanted to buy Xtrabytes and Cryptopia was one of the few that traded it) and has more advanced features. I haven't recommended it here because it's complex and not really entry level. If you're game give it a go.
Personally, I use coinspot for the main Altcoins and for the rare Altcoins I use cryptopia.co.nz. I never leave any balance in cryptopia.co.nz - I don't trust it as much.
Buying Altcoins - A Step by Step Guide Using Gemini and Coinspot
1. Sign up to CoinSpot
Go here and click on register.
2. Plug In Your Details
In CoinSpot simply sign up with your email.
You won't need your ID if you are just swapping Bitcoin for Altcoins, so skip the ID verification process.
3. Transfer Bitcoin to Coinspot
In Gemini, you will need to send some bitcoin to your CoinSpot wallet. But first you'll need the address.
This is intimidating if it's your first time but you get used to it fast - it's actually really simple.
- In CoinSpot, click on "Wallets" in the menu bar and "open" your Bitcoin wallet to find your receiving address. The screen below would show you yours (I blanked out my address in the screenshot for privacy).
- In Gemini (or your own Bitcoin wallet) "withdraw" or "send" the Bitcoin to coinspot with the long address given above.
- It should show as "pending" in Coinspot after 10 seconds. It clears when it gets mined - which is usually between 15-60 minutes and may be longer if the network is busy.
4. Sell Bitcoin to Buy Your Altcoins!
This is the fun part. After your transfer confirms, simply click on the "sell" button in your CoinSpot bitcoin wallet and choose the Altcoin you want to buy!
Thank You!
Thanks for reading my post! Check out my other posts here - I focus on Cryptocurrency and Finance.
For a general overview of Bitcoin check out Bitcoin - so how does it actually work.
Upvotes are appreciated for motivation. Comments/questions/corrections are welcomed. 🙃