As a new user, one frustrating part of the Steem setup experience was the out-of-date guides for transferring Steem from crypto exchanges to your Steemit wallet. They were all outdated and some even contained some dangerous misinformation. So I sat down to write this guide as one of my first non-photography contributions to the Steem community.

Introduction to Steem

As a new user of Steem, the first thing you need to know is why Steem has three different currencies and what they each do. Actually, I'm not sure anyone can answer that first question, but I can answer the second:

1. STEEM - This is the base currency of Steem. It floats freely on exchanges like Binance just like any other cryptocurrency.
2. Steem Dollars (SBD) - This is 50% of the reward you receive for getting upvotes on the content you create. This is tied to USD and is meant to serve as a floor for the earnings of publishers. Strangely, SBD are trading around $3 on the open market at the time of this writing. This makes no sense to me other than the irrationality of the altcoin craze, but perhaps I'm missing something. (@Dan Larimer, founder of Steem, discusses it in this video and the comments on this post by Hive account@spiritualmax help explain.) See my first tip at the end of this post for how to take optimal advantage of this discrepancy.
3. Steem Power (SP) - This is basically STEEM that is in your staking wallet at Steemit.com. This increases the value of your votes when you upvote content. It also earns some passive income while being staked. Please see next section below for more details.

Why Buy Steem Power (SP)?

Why would you want to buy Steem and transfer it to your Steemit wallet? I'll let this excellent Introduction to Steem post by Hive account@bycoleman explain:

The more SP you have the more your vote counts. The more influence you have, the more others tend to flock to your blog and read and comment on your articles. SP gives you clout that is handsomely rewarded both directly and also through vesting (more on this later.) Most Steemians have or will likely learn, that the more SP they have, the more SP and Steem they can potentially earn. Simply put, SP purchases by both new and existing Steemian's are likely to continue and very possibly accelerate as the platform begins to show its true wealth (a database of knowledge and link-able connections between people and concepts). These knowledge assets and connections are what gives Reddit or Facebook such value. There is no difference for Steemit. With the major exceptions being, on Steemit, the creators of this knowledge are paid and there is no advertisement intruding on the content. Where would you rather post?

So that's the first reason you want SP. The second thing is that SP has something called vesting which increases your SP gradually over time, like interest or dividends. Hive account@yabapmatt has a good explanation of this very complex system.

The great thing is that you can always convert your SP back into STEEM and sell it on an exchange if you decide to. (The one caveat is that it takes 13 weeks to do so, with 1/13th done every week.) So think of it in many ways as a "security deposit" that invests in the community and shows you're serious about doing well on Steem. Talk is cheap, as they say. (On the flip side, if you don't have the cash/crypto to buy SP upfront, no worries! Start producing great content and interacting with the community and you'll build up SP in no time.)

How to Transfer Steem from Exchanges to Steemit

So the above explains why you'd want to buy some Steem on an exchange like Binance, Bittrex, or Poloniex and transfer it to your Steemit wallet. But how you do that is a little trickier, especially if you read the dozens of misinformation guides on Steem out there! It's actually super simple. Your username is your destination address. 90% of the other guides will tell you you need your public Memo key. You don't. Some dangerously tell you you need your private Memo key. (Do NOT use that! That would reveal your private key to whole world.)

You can find your username in a half-dozen places. Here are a few:

Binance

Binance is the biggest crypto exchange by volume and the premier destination for trading altcoins. (The more volume, the more liquidity, the less slippage, which means you save money trading, on average. Make sure to buy some BNB and select the option to use that for fees to save 50%.) If you've not signed up for Binance yet, please use my referral link, if you find my content worthwhile. Binance has closed registrations in the past when they're overloaded, so it's good to get an account now (even if it lies dormant) rather than be locked out when you need in!

1. Go to Funds>Withdrawals.
2. Select STEEM from the dropdown list
3. In the "STEEM Withdrawal Address" enter your Steemit username. Mine is "hansmast" for instance.
4. Paste your Memo key from above into the "STEEM Withdrawal MEMO" field.

Bittrex

Bittrex is an older altcoin exchange than Binanace and IME they have the best customer service of any exchange. They do have both lesser volume than Binance and a wider variety of coins.

1. Go to "Wallets"
2. Find STEEM and click the red withdrawal icon
3. Enter your username into the "Address" field
4. Paste your Memo key into the "Tag" field

Poloniex

Polo is one of the oldest altcoin exchanges out there, but their customer support is terrible and they have never-ending tech issues, so they keep losing volume to other exchanges. They were just bought out by a big Wall Street company, so hopefully their CS and stability recovers and they regain some marketshare.

Sadly their STEEM withdrawals are currently disabled and have been since January, so I can't provide screenshots, but it should be straightforward: your username is your destination address.

More Tips for Getting Started with Steem

As I've worked hard to get up and running in an optimal fashion on Steemit, I've been leaning heavily on my more experienced Steemian buddy Hive account@justinmullet who's been feeding me lots of hot tips. I've also been doing a ton of Googling, looking to answer questions and optimize everything fully. Here are a few things I learned that will help you get started:

1. When you write a new post, keep the default setting of "50/50 SBD/SP" payouts rather than "100% SP" payouts, unless the SBD price on CoinMarketCap falls below $1. Instead you should collect that SBD, transfer to an exchange like Bittrex or Binance, sell your SBD and buy STEEM, transfer back to Steemit Wallet, and convert to SP! Whew, that's a hassle, but it will significantly up your income from Steem. A more indepth exploration of this topic can be found here by Hive account@jerrybanfield.
2. Use Busy.org for a better, more-intuitive, and more dynamic user interface. (They also have a great mobile interface via mobile web.) No need to create an account, you just login with your Steemit credentials via SteemConnect.com. So just go to Busy.org and click Log In to try it out. (One downside I've found is they don't accept images over 15 Mb, which as a photographer is a little limiting and frustrating.)
3. This series of posts by Hive account@costanza along with this post I found to be helpful for understanding more of the mechanics of the Steem economy IRT upvoting. It also lists some resources to get yourself out there.

I would like to keep this post up-to-date and accurate and optimal, (I'm a huge optimization geek.) but sadly it seems Steem does not allow this. It appears I shall have to do future versions past the 7 day edit window. Eventually I would like to transform this post into a series that I hope becomes the up-to-date go-to guide for getting started on Steem. Please link below to other great guides and comment with your favorite tips so I can be continually improving and refining this article. Also feel free to point out any mistakes and misconceptions I have.