The business and investment in cryptocurrencies is a battle that favors the first to adopt this technology.
The bitcoin began with a value less than $ 1,000 USD in January 2017, in January 2018 it increased its value to $ 15,142 USD. Increasing 15 times its value in 1 year, this is impressive, compared to other investments such as bonds that if you leave 10% of profits in a year is very good.
What are cryptocurrencies?
Cryptocurrencies, also known as a cryptocurrency, are means of economic exchange using cryptography to make transactions secure and control the creation of new units.
The cryptocurrency part of what has been called the Internet of Value (IOV or Internet of Value) or category of specialized applications in economic exchanges through direct negotiations between the buyer and the seller, without the intermediation of any bank or financial institution.
This makes transactions tend to be cheaper and faster.
What was the first Cryptocurrency to appear?
The first cryptocurrency to appear was bitcoin, in 2009. Currently, there are many others, such as Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Dogecoin, Dash, Zcash, and Monero.
One of its outstanding features is security: it is practically impossible to violate the complex algorithms on which the digital economic exchanges are based on cryptocurrencies.
Are Cryptocurrencies a fraud or a pyramid business?
The first thing we think about when someone tells us about the possibility of investing money in cryptocurrencies is that it is a passing fad or some new type of fraud to catch innocents and take their money.
Unless our naivete makes the decision, we will not give a weight for something that does not seem serious.
Even worse if we talk about something that is not physical: we will not have a bill or coins in our pockets to say that we are investing in cryptocurrencies.
If we go back to just a few years ago, the same thing happened with digital purchases. Only the most experienced explorers risked putting their personal credit card information on a web page with the confidence (bordering on faith), that a few days later (which were not few) they would receive the purchased product by mail.
We asked ourselves the same thing: if it was something passenger, safe, reliable and similar aspects.
Over the years, these doubts have been cleared and today approximately 22% of the world's population makes purchases over the Internet and, according to a Latin American Bussiness Review study, 87% of people who buy on the internet they feel safe and 97% are willing to go back to making transactions through this channel.
In countries such as China, Germany, South Korea and India more than 70% of people buy online.
It is expected that by 2018 Latin America will generate movements of virtual economic exchanges for the astronomical cifre of 100,000 million dollars.
4ecommerce Marketing indicates that in 2017 there was an increase of 64% in e-commerce in Mexico and 15% in Spain, while in Colombia the newspaper reports that about 29% of Colombians make frequent purchases over the internet.
These data reflect a broad and constant growth of electronic commerce, have cleared the doubts about the stability of the digital financial market and very good part of the doubts about the security of the operations.
All this indicates that the emergence of electronic or digital currencies is nothing more than a natural and expected consequence of the advance of the Internet.
In a few years it is establishing itself as a reliable alternative, not only to buy and sell products and services but also as a means of investment and economic capitalization.
The final leap that this currency must give to establish itself in the world market will be that it be accepted in the different commercial premises of the world.
This process has already started and the number of commercial establishments that accept cryptocurrencies is growing, so over the next few years, we will see the market explosion.
Where can you buy and sell cryptocurrencies?
As with physical money, you can find many informal sites that allow you to exchange cryptocurrency.
As with traditional currencies, you run unnecessary risks when you make these non-formal transactions.
It is preferable to go to established and recognized stores, where the risk of losing your resources is lower.
The quality of these businesses is established according to security variables, extension or breadth of the business, reliability, and quality in the exchange, liquidity, fees, limits established for the purchase and withdrawal, volumes of movement, insurance systems, and accessibility.
Investigate these aspects, even more so when you are just entering the world of investments in cryptocurrencies.
Surely the dividend rates will be higher in less recognized sites, but the risk is also increased.
While this is a risky business, it is necessary to take some protective measures to minimize the possibility of loss.
One of the best-known houses to buy and sell crypto coins is Coinbase, but it still does not have operations in Latin America, although it does in Spain.
In Mexico, for example, where the record figure of $ 242,000 in financial transactions has been reached in 2017, the services of Bitso, Volabit, Isbit, and Localbitcoins can be used, mainly.
There are already three ATMs for bitcoins in Tijuana, La Fonda, and Mexico City.
In a similar situation are other countries in the area. This shows that the market is just emerging. Is it bad? Not at all. On the contrary, for investors, it is a good time because the profits will be higher.
To buy and sell cryptocurrency in these pages the process is very simple:
You must enter the respective page.
Access the tab for buying and selling bitcoins or the currency you have chosen.
Select the payment method.
Record the amount of the transaction.
Confirm the transaction.
Check your accredited bitcoins in the control panel.
Now you will be stuck to the screen watching the movements of your currencies.
Each platform will offer different types of cryptocurrencies, so it is important that you do a systematic exploration exercise to identify which are the best options.
To secure your currencies and keep the risks derived from the collapse of the platforms to a minimum, you can contract the services of https://blockchain.us/
How Do Your Cryptocurrency Secure?
When you go to a bank you will not see it, except in the films of intrepid delinquents who attack the vaults, but what they do is physically store the money in the local agencies and then transfer it to the big storage centers of the so-called paper money.
In the case of cryptocurrency, these agencies do not physically store anything.
Everything is about information bits that are not stored in the same place and that do not physically exist, except as a binary representation.
What then is the evidence with which you can show that you have bitcoins?
What you have as evidence of the economic exchanges are the records of transactions stored as digital block chains.
Everything will be written in Blockchain, something similar to the great book of crypts, in which are recorded absolutely all operations that are made with this type of currency.
For this evidence to be available and secure, there are software programs called cryptocurrency exchanges or wallet.
They are responsible for storing private and public keys, linked to several block chains that encrypt their content and make it practically inviolable. Its function is to allow economic exchanges and show personal balance.
Therefore they are essential to enter to play in this market. Of course, it will have an economic cost but will allow you to secure your investment.
Actually, the first step to ensure the investment is to keep the personal key safe.
If you lose that number you will have lost your currency because there will be no way to recover it. The same happens when you send money, by mistake or trap of others, who you should not: the transactions are not reversible and you can not recover the funds once the transaction is confirmed.
Other complementary measures to protect your funds are:
Stores only small daily amounts for online transactions through the computer or the telephone. While we have said that transactions with bitcoins are highly secure, offline media are the safest because they are not exposed to hackers.
Then, offline storage media and the recording of data in paper or USB will allow you to be computer-proof and you can recover your wallet if it is lost or stolen. Store the keys neither on computers nor on phones.
You need to update the software of the devices you use and the virtual wallet, to always incorporate the best programs to maintain the security of the system.
Seek to be safe: security keys should be as long and complex as possible.
In addition, it programs the operations so that a key is always required for any action, with additional security layers such as double authentications and PIN code.
Another additional option is that offered by platforms such as Armory and Copay, which handle multisignature transactions, that is, the permission of another additional user is required for them to be made.
How Much Invest In Cryptocurrencies vs. Traditional Investments?
This is important to be clear if you are just beginning to invest in cryptocurrency.
When you make investments, of any kind, there is a correlation between the percentage of profits and the level of risk. The higher the risk, the higher the percentages of profits you will have, although the probability that you lose all or a good part is also higher.
This is what happens in traditional markets: established markets have almost certain profits and that is why they will pay you less interest.
If you bet on nascent businesses the risk of losing your money will be much greater but likewise, if you hit your bet, you can earn much more money. Banks do the same: they pay you a low interest for safe investments and a higher interest for higher risk investments.
That said, the crypto market continues in an initial period of emergence, in which the strategies, the alternatives, the same currencies and in general the whole business has not yet been clearly established: it is hardly being formed.
This has made the behavior of bitcoin widely variable and difficult to predict.
Some people have become millionaires by buying when the price is low and selling when it is very high. But other people have lost a lot in these constant ups and downs of the value of cryptocurrencies.
For example, those who bought bitcoins at the beginning of 2013 paid only $ 15 for each one. At the end of the same year, each of those bitcoins had risen to $ 1000: a hair-raising gain that you will not get in any other legal business.
Those who sold in 2014 enjoyed their benefits, but those who stayed in the business saw how their bitcoins came to be worth only $ 225 dollars beginning in 2015, due to the bankruptcy of the exchange agency Mt. Gox.
It is estimated that there were losses of $ 470 million dollars for investors.
Thus, the cryptocurrencies are a very good investment alternative if one carefully studies the historical behavior and everything related to the socioeconomic factors that positively and negatively affect its value.
However, it would not be prudent to invest all your capital in cryptocurrencies. That we do not have to put all the eggs in the same basket our mothers have told us since childhood, and they are right.
In a stroke of luck you could become a millionaire, but in the same way, you could lose everything in a short time.
What would be the most prudent then?
Evaluate your economic security, the level of risk you want and can assume and the different areas in which you can make investments.
For example, the level of risk is generally higher the younger one is, because there are fewer economic obligations, because the subjective perception of loss will be less in that the loss is not the product of a lifetime of work, for example, and because there is less accumulated experience, less fixation to what has already been obtained and, consequently, a greater attitude of risk.
That in general terms, but also the personal variables that make some people are more willing than others to take risks.
Speaking of cryptocurrencies, we would have to say that we are necessarily talking about an investment with risk because there is a high fluctuation of its value.
Thus, the money that you invest must be an item that does not cause you any greater problem to lose. Being indebted to buy cryptocurrencies can end in a double fall and is not recommended.
Do not underestimate the emotional weight of seeing how values rise and fall every day without being able to control what you gain and lose in each movement of a line.
With the facts in mind, you can think about sharing the investment percentages, in a relatively conservative portfolio. For people under 30, with lower financial obligations, it would be good to invest a percentage of no more than 30% of their money in cryptocurrencies.
For people between 30 and 40 years, 20% and for people over 40, a low investment of around 10% would be good for not adding to life high risks, pressure and anxiety.
Of course, these values are subjective and each person can interpret them differently.
Now, within that category of money to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, a good option is to continue diversifying.
Instead of investing all the money in a single cryptocurrency you can study the options and buy a percentage in bitcoin, the leading currency, with a little less risk, and another percentage in currencies like Ethereum, which is currently believed to become the leading currency because of the rapid growth of its value and because of the large number of people who are working to strengthen it.
How to Decide On What Currency to Invest?
The decision of what currency to invest cannot be done by a finger or with emotional nuances.
Although there is a high component of chance and external conditions on which we can only raise hypotheses, there are other elements that we can use to adopt a strategy.
We know, as a starting point, that the cryptocurrency market is growing, although there are large variations from one day to the next, in general terms, in the long term, it shows a strong upward trend.
However, do not go too far to find similar examples with disastrous results. The boom of the companies .com made that there was a great investment in this type of business, but the fearful behavior of the people before the novelty, among other variables, caused that they did not take off as expected and that the business collapsed.
Although it seems that we are in another moment in terms of the culture of digital consumption, it can not be ruled out that the same thing happens with this new market.
Therefore, before deciding how much and where to invest, ask yourself the following questions:
Which cryptocurrency is the best for mining?
As in previous times when gold produced fever among people anxious to obtain money, in the era of bitcoins there is room for new miners.
To mine currencies, you require sophisticated equipment and computer programs.
For those who want to venture into data mining, perhaps the best options are Litecoins, Dogecoins, and Feathercoins cryptocurrencies, for giving the best margin in the cost-benefit ratio.
With Litecoins you can earn between 50 cents and 10 dollars, while with Dogecoins and Feathercoins you would earn a little less using the same mining, consumer-type, non-specialized hardware.
Some adventurers will be thinking if engaging in cryptocurrency mining can be a profitable job to change jobs.
How much do you spend investing in mine cryptocurrencies?
The data indicates that you can earn one or two dollars a day if you do mining as a hobby. To do mining you must invest around 1000 dollars in non-professional equipment and wait between 18 and 24 months to recover the investment.
Thus, a low investment is not profitable enough to expect income to replace your work.
If you want to earn money in data mining you will have to invest more.
Buying hardware for an approximate value of $ 3,000 to $ 5,000 dollars you can earn approximately $ 50 per day, which is good conditions would recover your investment in two to four months, then obtaining an average profit of $ 1,500 dollars per month.
With these figures, data mining can be a good option for those who want to invest little and obtain a marginal income from a hobby. But if you want to have profitability of an investment it is a better option to buy directly cryptocurrencies.
How to miner critpomonedas
I am going to mention the procedure for those who want to invest less than $ 1000 dollars doing mining in the three cryptocurrencies that we have mentioned: those that give the best profitability.
Objectives of Cryptocurrency Mining
Three things are looked for:
Verify transactions made, in a 24-hour tracking. Thus, mining plays the role of accounting for cryptocurrencies.
Receive as compensation small fractions of the cryptocurrencies for the accounting work performed.
Have low electricity and hardware costs to sustain the personal profitability of the business.
Steps to Mining Cryptocurrencies
To do mining for Litecoins, Dogecoins and feather coins, follow these steps:
To begin with, you need a coin wallet. It is a personal and free database, password protected, which shows all the transactions made in the network.
You need a free mining software, with cgminer and stratum.
You also require a membership in a mining pool online. These networks are communities of miners who unite their computers to increase the profitability and stability of the business.
Another necessary membership is that of an online currency exchange site, in charge of selling and buying cryptocurrencies for their equivalent in FIAT currencies.
Regarding the internet service, you must have a totally stable and reliable connection, 24 hours a day, with a minimum speed of 2 megabits per second.
Since the hardware generates heat, you must install it in a basement or in a cool space with air conditioning.
To begin with, you can use a personal computer (laptops do not perform what is necessary for these tasks). This team will be dedicated exclusively because you can not use it for other purposes while doing mining.
Other indispensable equipment is an ATI graphics processing unit or a specialized mining device called ASIC Chip, costing approximately $ 90 to $ 3,000 per unit. This team is the axis of the whole process, so do not skimp on expenses.
You must have a fan to cool the hardware. This equipment overheat and yield less.
Interest in learning from the business. There are many strategies and tactics to achieve the best results from mining. It is a process of exploration and research that, if you want to obtain good results, will require several hours a week just for consultation and study.
After knowing the pros and cons of mining, it's time to conclude.
If you had done mining when the bitcoin boom began, you could have been rich, although that depends on many variables and it would not be safe.
Currently, the conditions are not the same.
There are a lot of people doing mining, so the possibilities are reduced.
Home operations are uncompetitive against large-scale operations of high-resource companies and the balance between investment and profits is not favorable.
Worse yet, it is increasingly difficult to discover bitcoins.
Put in clear terms, it is a profitable business if you invest tens of thousands of dollars in equipment and facilities. Otherwise, it is better to invest in the direct purchase of cryptocurrencies.