As I said in my intro, I'm technically one of those latecomer crypto 'newbloods' that jumped on the crazy bandwagon towards the end of last year (yes, one of the 'fools' the mainstream media gleefully likes to say "got burnt" when the "bubble burst" last month). In actual fact, I'm not complaining, my entries from November have held up OK, even during the worst of the bloodbaths... and whilst the learning curve has been steep, I've been loving every minute of my adventure in Crypto world - I'm definitely not going back to being happy with my pathetic 0.65% interest ISA account!
However, I know that if I'd known what I know now, I'd have definitely put together a much better portfolio than my original one. Unfortunately, back when I started out... I pretty much thought that Coinbase and BTC, ETH and LTC WERE the crypto universe. Gradually, over the following 8 weeks I did my research and went from a 100% green nocoiner to ...well... a slightly less ignorant version with a *reasonable* portfolio of coins - and man alive, every day my mind was being blown as I discovered ANOTHER assumption I'd had was totally off base.
I think that crypto can be a pretty unforgiving world for newbies... and to a large extent you have to learn through your mistakes, although you obviously don't want to make too many of these if you're an ordinary person with ordinary financial struggles. Therefore, I thought it might be useful to share the most useful resources that helped me most in the hope that it will help any other total beginners 'fast track' their way to being slightly LESS out of their depth. So without further ado, here's my list:
#1 BitCoinTalk
A great way to expose oneself to a variety of opinions and approaches, and to basically have your horizons broadened by reading stuff written by far more knowledgeable people. I particularly found the 'Altcoins' and 'Price Speculation' forums useful for discovering new interesting coins worth researching. Obviously there's a lot of nonsense about too, but if you are discriminating in what you read then it's probably one of the most powerful resources out there.
#2 Crypto Twitter
Again, took me a long while to realise there was anything worth listening to out there. For me (probably showing my age now) Twitter was just a place for celebrities to publicly diss each other... However, with time, I found out there were some pretty credible investors and traders who were very active on there. Here's a (heavily abridged) list of accounts I've found insightful:
@VentureCoinist (no-nonsense trading and ICO advice)
@ProfesorCrypto
@AriDavidPaul
@DiaryofaMadeMan
@TuurDemeester
For LOLs mainly:
@CryptoCobain
I'm also just starting to get into YouTube for crypto, and although I haven't done enough research, I'm personally finding Cedric Dahl to be a good, no-bullshit source of information: https://www.youtube.com/user/inspiredeye
#3 Crypto News
Some good sites for keeping abreast of the lastest global developments (and seeing where much of the FUD has been coming from recently!)
https://www.coindesk.com/
https://news.bitcoin.com/
https://cointelegraph.com/
https://www.ccn.com/
http://themerkle.com/
http://bitcoinist.com/
https://hackernoon.com/blockchain/home
https://cryptopanic.com/
#4 ICO Reviews
ICOs are a total minefield, and definitely not for beginners. Even so, looking at reviews sites and doing your own research can help prevent you getting swept up in scams or worthless projects (like I did )
https://icorating.com/ico/?filter=upcoming
https://icobench.com/
https://cryptorated.com/ico-reviews/
#5 General Overview of the Market
I'm sure people will think I'm an idiot for sharing CoinMarketCap when *EVERYONE* is probably aware of it - but I certainly wasn't for many weeks!
https://coinmarketcap.com/
Cryptomaps - https://coin360.io/
#6 General Tips
- If you buy BTC or ETH or LTC on Coinbase you should transfer it to gdax, then send it to any other exchange as there are no fees when sending from gdax.
- When sending between exchanges, don't send BTC - convert to a coin with low fees (LTC, XRP, NEO), send and then change it back
- Binance only: you can cut fees in half by spending a little ETH on the Binance coin which is then used to fund transactions
I hope the above is helpful, but I'm sure I've missed tons of fundamental things. Please do make any suggestions of anything I might have missed - I'm always trying to get better educated.