Now you know a little about Bitcoins, and or AltCoins (alternatives to BitCoins) but you don't know how to get started. I certainly understand this because to me it was very overwhelming when I started, and it still is. There are a million different companies and many of them fake. So I am going to try and make it easier for you to understand and also to ask you to research the companies that I am sharing here. I am in no way affiliated with anyone nor receive anything from said companies I just simply want to help people out. I have helped 15 or so friends of mine in the last week or so and figured, what the heck, let me create a post. If you have questions, please ask. Ill do my best to not miss any steps, but I am not omni-potent. I will also try to keep it short but informative.
Disclaimer: Like stocks, BitCoin and AltCoins like LiteCoin, DogeCoin, MaidSafe, Pasc, etc... are all volatile. Keep that in mind. Don't invest anything you can't afford to lose. With that being said, if you're analytical and you watch the market, you will be able to use an exchange to trade coins and make more money! Who doesn't want to do that right?! I will touch base on exchanges later on.
What is BitCoin http://www.coindesk.com/information/what-is-bitcoin/
Where can I spend BitCoin http://www.coindesk.com/information/what-can-you-buy-with-bitcoins/
First, where do you buy BTC (aka BitCoin)?
https://www.coinbase.com/join/Trying2HelpMom <~My referral link.
Coinbase is where I purchase my BTC. They are sometimes a bit higher than other companies, however I trust them. If I am spending 900.00 on a BitCoin or even buying a small percentage of a BitCoin, I want to make sure it's from some where trusted. also make sure to set up 2fa or 2 part authentication, which uses your phone as a second authentication to log in to CoinBase
When setting up your credit card they are going to set up 3 transactions to authenticate. The first one is for a dollar (DO NOT USE THIS ONE). That is just a validation. The following two will be like 1.14, and 1.50 or something like that. These are the ones you will use when setting up your credit card. If you don't put them in right, you will have to wait 24 hours before you can put them in again. This is done for your security and theirs.
Once you set up your credit card, debit, or checking account, you need to then deposit funds.
If you're not already logged into CoinBase, please login.
Go to Buy/Sell
Make sure that BitCoin is highlighted.
Make sure that the credit card or account you want to use is highlighted.
Then you put in the amount that you want to invest. If you're wanting to just get 1 single bitcoin and nothing more (look to the right of USD) you will see BTC there. In there you will want to type 1.00. It will fill in the USD side for you on the left, and you're done.
Not everyone can afford to drop 900.00 on a bitcoin. However maybe you want to buy a percentage of a coin. You can do this as well! You just type the amount you want to invest in the USD portion. 5/10/ or whatever you want to spend. Once you have what you want, click the "Buy Bitcoin Instantly" button and boom! There it is! Now keep in mind as the BTC goes up in price so do your shares AND your cost to finish off getting the rest of the BTC. This is why it's important to start off with as much as you can. I generally say 100 to 500. The more the merrier in this case because of how the coin screams in price.
If this is all you wanted to accomplish then consider your self done.
If you want to trade BTC like people do stocks, then this is where things can be fun. Some of you may have seen my post online or on my Facebook page the other day where I went from around 45.00 to 450.00. This was because of a coin called PASCAL (PASC) going through the roof! Sort of like how BitCoin made so many millionaires just a few years ago. I simply was able to get in on this dream coin and rode it until it crashed. For me it started trading at 18k then rose to 160k. You can do the math... I didn't sell everything but I did enough to cover what I spent to buy in (45.00) and enough to keep trading 100.00. I then reinvested my remaining into other cheap coins. Now, will they ever do anything? I doubt it, but you never know, right?
So before I begin, here is my exchange disclaimer. Exchanges are just as volatile as the coins themselves. If you're going to be trading BitCoin's and AltCoins, look into getting a hardware wallet. Something from Ledger like the Nano S. This allows you to take your popular coins like BitCoin, LiteCoin, DogeCoin and put them into what people call a hardware wallet. This is a very secure place to secure your coins, but if you lose it or your authentication key, you're done. So keep that in mind.
Now for your exchange. I use https://poloniex.com/ to buy/sell coins. They take .15% for most transactions but sometimes it's higher. Just depends on your purchase. In my case it's a hell of a lot power than 8.00 a trade! Especially when I am making 20/30 a day sometimes.
Polo as I call it makes you authenticate just like coin base - so once you have your Poloniex account created you will then click on exchange on the top left of the screen to deposit BitCoin (Transfer over from CoinBase). Scroll down a little bit where you see the Buy / Stop-Limit / Sell. In the BUY area, you will see "DEPOSIT BTC". This is where you will click to deposit money. It will provide you an address to deposit to. MAKE SURE YOU COPY AND PASTE The whole address. If you mess up there is a good chance you will lose your coins. I also ask that you send a small amount from coin base (ie. a couple of dollars) to get used to how it works.
When you click on Deposit BTC it will take you right to the Deposit Bitcoin Address. It should be in yellow and what you will want to copy so that you may paste it in Coinbase.
Once you have copied that address, click on Coinbase and open it up. Go to Send/Request and click it.
You will see that their is a place for an address. This is where you're going to copy over the address from Poloniex. Paste it into the send portion.
Now you have to determine how much you want to send over. As you can see there are a lot of decimel points. If you want to send only a certain amount you're going to want to google USD to BTC converter. Basically you type in how much you want to send over in USD and it converts the amount to BTC. Copy that amount from there and just paste it into the amount box. OR you can click to the right of the amount and hit the black arrow, which will give you a choice of USD. I prefer the BTC my self, but use your discretion.
Once you click send, it can take up to 30 minutes for the money to appear to it's destination. Sometimes it goes fast, other times it goes slow.
Once you have your money you can use it on Poloniex to purchase coins and or sell coins!
If I forgot something, please ask. If I forgot something, please advise!
Have a good day!
Ps. If you like the post, please up the post. If you feel like donating, that is appreciated too! 1MnWS7wZsnfk8r8gfrEscPJwrpJic86Ner is my address.
Thank you!
Think of all of this as gambling. Don't get deep into it.. don't sell your house, your car, etc... while you can make a lot of money, you can lose it just as fast...
If you like my posts, please give an up vote.
If you would like to donate, that would be even better. I do these posts because I have a sick loved one and want to generate cash flow in anyway to help them. Plus I get to help other members in the community coming in.
Thank you and have a good weekend.
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