This is my personal opinion and not a financial advise!
Hey everyone!
This will be a quick guide for beginners to buy Cryptocurrencies like BitCoin, Ripple, etc... Basically I am a beginner by myself but now I figured it out how to do that and I want to tell you my experiences with it. Maybe it helps you. There are a lot of different ways but I will show you the way I discovered.
The first question you need to ask yourself is: Which currency do I want to buy?
The most common coins are the world famous "BitCoin" (BTC) and the newer rival "Ethereum" (ETH). If you want to buy one of those you can stop reading the tutorial at some point. If you want to buy "Altcoins" you should read the whole tutorial.
"Altcoins are the alternative cryptocurrencies launched after the success of Bitcoin. Generally, they project themselves as better substitutes to Bitcoin. The success of Bitcoin as the first peer-to-peer digital currency paved the way for many to follow. Many altcoins are trying to target any perceived limitations that Bitcoin has and come up with newer versions with competitive advantages. There is a great variety of altcoins."
Quote from Investopedia
How to buy these currencies?
Step 1:
Create an account on https://www.coinbase.com and verify yourself. It is the most common place to buy BitCoins in North America and Europe. Once you are verified you can start buying BitCoin, Ethereum or Litecoin. If you use your Credit Card the coins will be there instantly.
If you don't want to trade your new coins into AltCoins then you're finished now. I advise you to inform yourself furthermore about "Wallets". Wallets are a either digital or analog place to store your coins. It is way more safe to do that. You can send your coins the way I explain it on step 3.
Now lets get the coins ready to trade.
Step 2:
Since Coinbase is pretty limited regarding to coin variation you need to sign up on a coin exchange platform. The most common and used one is https://www.binance.com. Once you are registered please activate the "2FA". That means two factor authentication. It is a way to keep your account a bit more secure.
You have different options now.
- One option is to buy Ethereum on Coinbase and then withdraw it and send it to Binance. With Ethereum you have way lower network fees than with BTC.
- Another option would be to buy BitCoin, sign up on GDAX (Coinbase own exchange platform), access the Coinbase BTC wallet and deposit BTC and send BTC from GDAX to Binance.
Since the fees are really low with Ethereum we go this way in this tutorial.
Lets go back to Binance and hit that "Funds" and afterwards that "Deposit / Withdrawal" button in the navigation bar on top.
Find the row with Ethereum and click on "Deposit". Now copy the wallet address out of that line or simply click the copy button. It is very important to have this address correctly copied. If it is wrong later on you will probably lose your coins forever.
Step 3:
With the wallet address in your clipboard head back to Coinbase and go on "Account".
Find Ethereum on the left side and click on send. Afterwards paste the wallet address of your wallet of Binance in this line.
Type in the amount you want to send and hit that "Continue" button.
Step 4:
The transfer takes usually not longer than 1-2 hours but don't worry if it takes longer.
Once your Ethereum has "arrived" on Binance you get a notification on your mail address. Now there should be another value in that red rectangle you saw earlier on the photo in step 2.
Now we can start trading.
Hit that "Exchange" -> "Basic" button in the navigation bar.
On the photo you can see three different red rectangles. The one on the upper left side shows you the coin and the price you currently have selected. On the right side you should click on "ETH" the line next to "BTC" & "BNB" since you have Ethereum right now in your wallet to trade with.
Below this rectangle you can chose the Altcoin you want to buy. For example VEN or ENG or whatever you desire. If you click on it the third rectangle on the lower side should be switching to the coin you chose.
Now you simply can type in the amount you want to buy and then its done!
Congratulations!
Some tips:
- The minimum amount you need to buy are coins worth 0.001 BTC. It depends on the value of the BTC right now but it should be around 15$.
- There is a fee for each trade. You can reduce the fees if you have "BNB" in your portfolio. BNB is the Binance Coin, you should buy a minimum amount of it to avoid those fees before you buy your desired alt coin.
- Do your research on the coins you want to buy.
- Please inform yourself about Wallets. I store all the few coins I have in an offline wallet.
Useful links:
https://coinmarketcap.com
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxODjeUwZHk3p-7TU-IsDOA
https://www.ledgerwallet.com
PS: This is my first guide ever to this topic. If you have any advice please write in the comments below! I am very interested as well! Thank you so much.