DIPPING YOUR TOE INTO CRYPTO

Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin and blockchain. Ethereum, ripple, we hear

these words all over. If not from friends, we turn on the telly and
they talk about it all over CNBC….
Is it a fad, is it a scam…..
I can help you here. By the end of this book you will be able to
safely say, you know what all those names are, and you will be
able to own whichever crypto currencies you want to and store it
safely.
I will try and paint a complete picture of the various approaches
one can take into this new market space.

WELCOME

Firstly welcome to your first steps in the wonderful new world of

crypto currencies.

MY STORY
I was around and curious enough when the whitepaper of bitcoin
was being passed around on the internet. In and around 2009 and
only really started attempting to buy bitcoin from around 2011.
There were places one could purchase like entropay and liberty
reserve, but they required verification procedures that were
impossible. And basically it was sort of underground and way
above my understanding at the time.
I definitely did not grasp the concept and reality of what it was.
Sadly, it was really hard from South Africa and I was not
technically adept at the time. Nobody around me knew what I was
talking about either.
I was curious, but the lack of conversation around me and the
googling brought me nowhere closer to a place of grasping it all
then.
I will point out that the desire to find safety in belief and knowing
your money is safe can incapacitate one so much, it certainly got
the better of me with this.

Fortunately I received an email, or an article describing how 2

companies brought bitcoin to South Africa as a means of
purchasing at many merchants.
It was called bitx then and has changed to Luno since. This is the
equivalent to Coinbase in the States.
It was risky and volatile. I hardly knew what I was doing or even
what bitcoin was.
I went as far as doing user experience tests with their new app and
I received some bitcoin from that too.
And for a long time I just left it, because it seemed like nothing
was happening, I really started looking at things after a guy I
followed started chirping about crypto currencies.
Bitcoin is very closely related to our economic relationship to
money whether we know it or not.
It was born/created in 2008 as a response to the market crash and a
way to help the world move away from a debt based system.
I follow a few guys that comment in the markets since I trade forex
and have traded since around 2007ish.
One of those emails I always ignored because the guy was always
on about the end of the financial system as we know. (I always eye
roll and consider the lunacy of the statement).

But I dusted off my bitx app (now luno) and the little bitcoin was
way more than I had ever put in there. Bitcoin had shot over $1000
each.
It must have been a confluence of events, because for the life of me
I cannot think of an exact reason that made me look deeper.
But I know I joined a WhatsApp group started by an internet
marketer on Facebook and these guys were talking another
language…..
This made me look deeper and the plunge was overwhelming.
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So really I started getting into the mining of crypto and started
trading and buying crypto early 2017.
I had to deal with some of my fears of making mistakes and really
having to ask stupid questions.
I had no one around me in my friend circle that even remotely
cared about markets let alone crypto.

But when ICO’s (Initial Coin Offerings) started being a thing, this
is where I really started seeing returns.
You can too if you are willing to keep at this.

SOME HISTORY
I am not a master in economics, but to start us off we need to
understand the basics of how we exchange goods to each other.
In the beginning men and women exchanged what they grew, built
or made based on their needs. Bartering is the process.
Life was good we all got along.
As we progressed and built bigger things and wanted different
things at the same time. They needed what we know today as a
medium of exchange.
Simply this means that a standard value item that we can exchange
with each other that we both agree has value.
This allows us to exchange a “value item” for the things we need.
This soon grew and grew and became a system so large that we
simply could not hold the “store of our value” in our homes. We
started storing them in places we know now as banks.
It however means we have to “trust” said banks that they would
keep their word.
If you have 47mins to spare you can watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AC6RSau7r8

I know this is the super boring stuff, but I am getting to the juicy
parts soon.

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To date the way payments are made, to give an example. I need to
pay person B a sum of $1000. Person B lives outside of my
country.
In other countries this may be an easy task, but In South Africa I
have to physically visit our tax entity and ask for approval. Visit
the bank and physically request the some of money to be sent, they
add their fee and I have to trust them that they will carry out the
transaction. And it takes a day or two to complete.
Simpler process is paypal, which is a seemingly instant transfer,
but really it is not. You still have to trust paypal to action the
payment on your behalf. And settlement between your bank and
them has to occur and then settlement with paypal and the other
parties bank, unless they all okay with the paypal ecosystem.
There is a lot of trust and permissions in what is a simple process.
When you buy online using your credit card, you look for a stamp
and an SSL certificate to see if the site is “okay and safe”. It really
boils down to trust and recourse.
This may not mean a whole lot to a working first world country
system. But cross border payments are cumbersome. And really
expensive.
Bitcoin has really made this easy and simple to do. Okay not that
simple yet, but when you done with this book it will be.
The other day I had to send £1000 to a guy in the UK, took 10mins
on a Saturday evening and it cost me 11 US cents.

To make things truly simple, crypto currency, bitcoin being the

first one, allows a person to exchange value with another person
with no “bank” or third part in between.
A network and system that reconciles and validates everything
without anyone other than you and the other person.

So to cut a long story short, this network allows person to send

funds without a third party to another person literally anywhere on
the globe. At the fraction of the cost that it normally takes.
The global network this creates and validates the transactions is
called the blockchain.
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That was a mouthful…. Deep breath….

Why am I telling you this…

We just needed this back story to understand that this is not a get
rich quick market and by no means is it a scam. Although you do
get scammers and thieves, we unfortunately do have them on earth.

But let’s dive in

What is a blockchain?
“The blockchain is an incorruptible digital ledger of economic transactions that can be
programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value.”
Don & Alex Tapscott, authors Blockchain Revolution (2016)

In simpler terms imagine you kept an account of all your spent and
received transaction every day and created a process that stored all
transactions in a small file as possible. And then similar to Napster
with music, was able to communicate with all others across the
world and shared the “ledger” of transactions and this is while not
having to trust a third party like a bank or government to validate
it. It’s autonomous, accessible by anyone and self-validating and
once a transaction is recorded into this blockchain it is immutable.
Cryptography ensures that this ledger cannot be changed. It has not
been hacked to date and would cost quite a fair amount to attempt
to as well.

What is a Bitcoin?

Firstly bitcoin and the blockchain was created or put together and
uniquely so by a person or group called Satoshi Nakamoto.

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Its not specifically the coding and software that was created, but
the knitting together and creating digital scarcity and economic
incentive into the system

https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-paper The white paper is worth

reading and its only 9 pages.

This person or group of people are now unknown.

In its most basic description, bitcoins are the reward for the Mining
of the transactions and adding it into the blockchain.
It’s all based on mathematics and cryptography.
This video is probably going to do a better job than I could ever
do.
click here

It is worth pausing here to point out.

I am not trying to create hype, but you need to realize that the
system that is blockchain that makes bitcoin possible is equivalent
to a massive shift in hard money creation.
Is the equivalent of the invention of the wheel. To explain why is
beyond the scope of this book.
Never before, and I do mean never before has the peer to peer
transaction been possibly digitally and even more broadly other
than direct bartering has a human been able to send value directly
to another human.
It restores the sovereign nature of humans to be able to detach from
any external system needing to validate everything.

Books are written on those topics, but just note this is the first step
to a major global way of life.

Surely Bitcoin is more money launderers and criminals, why

should I venture into it at all?

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One of the strengths of the bitcoin network is that you simply do
not need permission from a bank or any sort of approval regardless
of the amount of money you sending.
I would say that money launderers and criminals are probably not
going to use the network.
In its infancy bitcoin could have offered some privacy, since very
few used the network.
But it’s a public decentralized network, why would someone trying
to hide their transaction use a public network where the entire
world can see what your wallet address has and does?
This could very well work against you if your wallet address gets
attached to your personal name. Every single transaction you make
using the blockchain can be seen and can always be seen.
This is why the bitcoin network is basically pseudo anonymous. In
that a history of transactions all the way to the start can be traced.
Its not easy, but its possible.
Now you have to also realise that governments and banks really do
not want such transparency. A lot of their transactions they really
would not want on a public blockchain.
This is my opinion, but of course one can only reason.

Also anyone that uses the bitcoin network is simply a participant in

the network. No company or entity owns it or has power over it. So
there are probably criminals using it, but they use dollars and any
other form of cash too.
Cars are used for crimes too, we can’t ban everything that could be
used in crimes without it infringing on our quality of life.
There is a class of crypto currencies that is termed privacy coins
which effectively make it impossible to point to where and who a
transaction comes from and goes to. Needless to say this is where
the governments are starting to have issues with these coins.

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What is mining of crypto currency?

I will mention here that it is not entirely needed for one to

understand exactly how transactions occur, and I am certainly not
an authority on how bitcoin works, in too much depth I mean.

At best I will be scratching the surface here. Also, most of us do

not know how mastercard or visa transactions are actually
executed, but we use the network and trust it almost blindly.

The mining process basically creates an economic incentive and is

in itself a closed system of economics.
Meaning it can exist on its own and simply verify and using
cryptography make sure that nothing can be replicated.

When I send a transaction into the bitcoin network, it enters what

is called the mempool and is broadcasted into the entire network.
Essentially the network of machines that holds a copy of all the
transactions made from the beginning. These are called nodes.
This is the core of what makes the network decentralized. You
could destroy on machine or a few and the network continues as
they continue to double check with each other if they all in synch.
Very much similar to the way the internet works.

I am over simplifying it, but let’s look at the transaction as a huge

mathematical equation that needs to be worked out
computationally find the solution. The miners (computational
power basically) pick up the transaction and start “guessing it and
once the solution is correct the miner gets to add the transaction
into a block on the chain. Once they close a block, which in the
bitcoin network is currently 1mb the network rewards the miners
with bitcoin. This reward is based on the computation power
expended and “proof of work”.
This the miners then sell the bitcoin and pay their cost and
hopefully make a profit too.
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Please remember this is a process of verification that has nothing
to do with the use case side for us. In short I will repeat, this
process you do not need to understand to use the bitcoin network to
send and receive funds.

It’s based on game theory.

A. What is 'Game Theory'
Game theory is a framework for hypothetical social situations among competing
players. In some respects, game theory is the science of strategy, or at least the
optimal decision-making of independent and competing actors in a strategic
setting. The key pioneers of game theory were mathematicians John von
Neumann and John Nash, as well as economist Oskar Morgenstern

Read
more: GameTheory https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gametheory.asp#ixzz
5KPHAEL2N

And every time a block is closed and added the difficulty in the
mining increases. This process is called proof of work. This work
that the mining computer did to cryptographically process the
problem posed to the network, the mining computer presents the
worked out problem to the chain and expresses that work and
energy was spent and therefore deserves its reward.

So the mining computers cannot game the system by gaining an

edge over the entire network. Each mining considers the other
miner as hostile to create a competitive space.
I hope that makes it clearer.

There will only ever be a total of 21 million bitcoins and that is

predicted to be mined by 2140, so not in our lifetime, unless you
live on green tea and kombucha.
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Terminology :

There are some terms that are pretty much exclusive to the
cryptoverse. This list is by no means exhaustive, as new ones gets
added as use case occurs among the market participants.

HODL (A misspelling of Hold that caught on and basically means

Hold on for dear life)
Sat or a satoshi (Like with the Dollar and most currencies the cent
is the smallest increment of the currency. The Satoshi is the
smallest increment of bitcoin> Bitcoin has 18 zeroes behind the
main integer. Thin carefully on that. If simply one Satoshi is equal
to 1 US cent then 1 bitcoin will be worth $100 million.
This is to honour the creator as mentioned earlier.
FOMO (Fear of missing out, not exclusive but does fit in these
markets when a coin goes for a run)
MOON ( When a coin goes for a run up and generally does not
look back, this causes more FOMO than any other market on earth
at present)
REKT (This is when you hold a fair bit of coins and the price
drops off a cliff, it can be very disconcerting in crypto markets)
WHALES (These are large holders of any crypto, they can
generally move the markets as they hold significant amounts of
bitcoin and other crypto currencies)
MAXIMALISTS (These are fundamental believer in the belief
that bitcoin is all the world ever needs and will solve the entire
financial issues. It’s not a far stretch, it just may not account for the
nature of humanity, we like options)
SHITCOIN (Since the craze of ICO’s hit, the term shitcoin simply
refers to the coins created that have neither rhyme nor reason to
exist, but they are tradeable instruments in the crypto exchanges.)
BAGS (This term refers to holding a fair amount of different
shitcoins even though they not in profit or remotely close to being
in profit.
BART PATTERN
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I will just leave this here…..

WALLET (an interface to transact with and control your coins on

the blockchain)

On the subject of Wallets…

Exactly what is a wallet?

You will hear this word wallet thrown around a lot in the
cryptoverse.
I do not want to assume that we are all on the same page, but I
think it is safe to assume that you who are reading this have at
some point done some sort of banking online.
Now you must at some point either send funds from your account
to either a friend or paid a service via your computer or mobile.
If all was good the transactions worked and everyone was happy,
right?
But technically speaking the funds was not in the computer or the
mobile. You were simply interacting with the controls of it. Or
should I say using an interface that could make it relatable to you.
Cryptocurrency wallets are essentially the same.
An interface for you to interact with the blockchain. The wallet
does not “hold” anything.
All our assets live on the blockchain and we interact with it via a
wallet using a private key. This private key should never be shared
with anyone other than you.

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A large push of the crypto world was to solve the unbanked part of
the world.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-unbanked-population-in-
6-charts-2017-8?IR=T
Around 2 billion people have no banking facilities or financial
products to interact with and are largely paid in cash.
It is hard to grasp this if all your life you have lived in a country
where you do not have to worry about if your funds are safe and if
you have had a bank account all your life.

Mobile phones also are almost a necessity in our daily lives. We do

not often think that there are large parts of the world where people
have zero access to mobile phones or banks.
Internet access is not as wide spared in certain African countries
either. It is changing, but if the basics of internet is lacking, one
can only imagine that mobile networks are non-existent and banks
are not accessible either.

With the advent of the bitcoin network which is its own validating
means of providing it’s “backing” when you own bitcoin you are
your own bank. Since you do not need the backing of an entity
neither the “trusted” sign for making your transactions legitimate.
Cash is probably the easiest and only way this portion of the world,
but cross border payments would not be possible with cash.

It is here where bitcoin can help people on the base level of life.

Do I really need a wallet?

You don’t necessarily have to have a wallet that you control. You
could leave your crypto on an exchange like Coinbase that is fully
regulated and insured.
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It is however not prudent, especially based on the tenets of crypto.
You would have access to that crypto, but you won’t have the
control of the private key.
In essence then you do not control that crypto. It is the equivalent
of leaving your money in a bank that could in fact fail. Highly
unlikely but could happen.
Biggest issue I have that should there ever be a fork in the
blockchain, on an exchange it would be up to the exchange if they
support the fork.

What is a fork?

All the major crypto currency blockchains source code is open

source. Meaning any person can take the code and create another
blockchain related to the original and add their amendments. Most
are trying to better the original coin.

Hard Forks in Bitcoin, Ethereum,

and Other Cryptocurrencies
In simple terms: A hard fork is when a single cryptocurrency splits in two. It
occurs when a cryptocurrency’s existing code is changed, resulting in both an
old and new version. Meanwhile, a soft fork is essentially the same thing, but
the idea is that only one blockchain (and thus one coin) will remain valid as
users adopt the update. So both fork types create a split, but a hard fork is
meant to create two blockchain/coins, and a soft fork is meant to result in
one. Segwit was a soft fork, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, and Segwit2x are all
hard forks.[1][2]

The reason why I bring that up is that when a hard fork occurs, whatever
coins you hold in the main chain, you will receive the equal amount of the
new fork. Providing you have the private keys.
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Where do I keep a wallet?

There are various ways one can do this. Simplest is on your own
laptop or pc.
A little caveat here.
If you use the original wallet of let’s say bitcoin, you would have
to download the entire blockchain and it can get quite
cumbersome.
There are plenty options out there here are a list that I use
personally.
….

For a good multi coin wallet there is exodus. I don’t use this one
anymore as I started using a hardware wallet, but more on that
later.
https://www.exodus.io/

For ethereum best is https://myetherwallet.com/ and

https://mycrypto.com/
Most altcoins that start from ICO’s are erc20 tokens and live in
ethereum wallets can be added here too.
It does get very techy in these wallets.
Exodus is by far the easiest if you want to hold coins and the team
behind exodus are on top of changes and hard forks etc.
Litecoin I have had good experiences with electrum.
https://electrum-ltc.org/

For transactional wallet type apps, https://www.abra.com/ is pretty

good. I know about https://crypto.robinhood.com/ but its not

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available in my country yet so I cannot vouch for it, but I have
heard good things.

My main way I store and use crypto currencies now is using a

hardware wallet.
Personally I use the nano ledger
https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/f8d5

It is a hardware wallet. Meaning its an actual real hold in your

hand device.

Another hardware wallet is the trezor.

https://trezor.io/

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Hardware wallets have a slight learning curve, but are way more
secure than we tend to believe we are. If you are able to get you
one please do. I have 2 nano ledger’s myself and they work
perfectly for me.
They also prevent me from doing stupid trades sometimes when I
do not have the device with me to send funds. So there is that extra
layer of protection from myself.

Last thing, as I explained earlier, your coins are on the blockchain

and don’t live in the wallets. Should you lose a hardware wallet, as
long as you have the 24 key phrase you would have written down
when you set the ledger up, you can buy a new one and simply
setup the new ledger using the pass phrase and you are back where
you were. The previous one without your password cannot be
accessed.

There is one more way, which I think is very secure from online
theft, but not the best way in my opinion. Its called the paper
wallet. Meaning you print out the wallet address and private key.

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Its pretty much air gapped from the internet.
Air gapped simply means a computer that has either never been
connected to the internet or is no longer in any way connected to
the internet. And is a “clean” no malware or viruses and secure
computer.

The trouble is its now physically possible to be taken from you. So

unless you have a secure means of protecting it, I think a ledger or
trezor is safer.

Can anyone besides me gain access to my wallet?

That is up to you, but other than you and you alone no one can
access your wallets without your private key. So other than you no
other human can or needs to know what you have.

Now for inheritance and passing on to your family, you can

determine how and what to do here. That we can deal with once we
are on the other side.

Can I have more than one wallet?

You can literally have as many as you want to, but remember the
admin of private keys and having a systemized approach it can get
overwhelming. Rather keep it simple. And as a side note. Even if
you have a huge amount of bitcoin, it does not take more “space”

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in a wallet. It is just prudent to split your holdings into at least two
places and have a backup.
Part of being your own bank means you are responsible to look
after your wealth and money.
Be responsible and security conscious.

Can I move my crypto from one of my wallets to another?

You certainly can, the blockchain does not attach the wallets to a
person so a transaction is simply that a transaction.
You can send it from one wallet to another wallet on your
machine. But remember that though your wallets may live on the
same machine, the transaction will be entering the network and it
would have to be “mined” and you will pay a transaction fee. May
be small, but there will be a fee.

Please note, that you can only send the same coin in its own
blockchain. So, bitcoin to a bitcoin address. Bitcoin cash to bitcoin
cash address only. Ethereum to ethereum wallet addresses.
If you send it to another chain you will lose that funds forever. It
will not be retrievable.
If have bitcoin but you want ethereum there are ways to do that
and I will show you how.

How do I move crypto from one wallet to another?

I will do a video on this.

On transactions:
How do I spend bitcoin?
I will be the first to admit that this side of bitcoin is not the easiest
at present. Right now it’s more a matter of greater adoption that
will produce the willingness to use bitcoin as the currency it was
intended to be.
But there are certainly the simpler approaches to using bitcoin to
pay for stuff.

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There are a few wallet based apps for mobile phones on the
horizon. A few I know of are Abra, Bread wallet, Xapo and
various others that I do not know of yet.

The other way is to link a wallet to a card and then you really do
not have to think about wallets. There are a few like Shift in the
States and Revolut in Europe. But a few still in the process are
Tenx and Monaco.
The standout feature of Monaco and Tenx is that over the year of
using the card you get paid back in crypto based on fees based on
the entire network of payments.
You however have to keep some tokens of each respective
companies.
But the premise is that the company behind the card holds the
crypto and you just swipe a card like any other card and settles the
transaction in the backend.
Personally I have paid many things using bitcoin, but mostly I use
my own hardware wallet to send as I have more control over the
sending of the bitcoin.
The best way I have used is that all wallet address can be made
into a QR code. And via your phone you can send things easy
peasy.

Who accepts bitcoin?

There are many vendors online that do accept bitcoin.
I would not venture in trying to cover all, but its growing as we go
along and at a very fast pace I might add.

How do I know if they accept Bitcoin?

That is the accepted logo of bitcoin, therefore should you see that
sign in a store or online the merchant most likely accepts bitcoin.
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Bitpay is the most used company online to receive crypto currency
payments. Which basically at the time of purchase will work out
the bitcoin value of the dollar based amount and you would have a
time period within which to settle the bitcoin payment.

I will certainly do videos of all processes.

Who decides how much a single Bitcoin is worth?

In short the market does. But it’s not as easy as that. There are
costs to producing a bitcoin. And roughly is based on electricity. It
ranges between $4500 to $5500 per bitcoin depending on where
and the power costs of the associated area.
If the price of bitcoin drops below let’s say $4000, the miners
would cease mining and the network would slow down and well…
it’s never happened yet. Also the mining difficulty would then
drop and the cost of bitcoin production would drop eventually.

Why does the value change so often?

This could a bit technical, but in simple terms because of lack of

infrastructure and much less players in the total market.
In terms of how a market works, it needs buyers and sellers and a
degree of difference between the different camps.

It is not always a zero-sum game between those buyers and sellers

though. In the case of bitcoin, as much as there are speculators in
the market, there are people that buy bitcoin and store it, or use it.
This happens at various times and sometimes irrespective to what
the market does.
Very similar to forex markets, when in the case of a US traveler
going to Europe will buy EUROS at market value at the time
he/she needs the EUROS.

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I know this is a long explanation, but one needs to understand the
granular working of a market to understand why bitcoin is erratic.

Now basically markets move from and to areas of liquidity. This is

where either buyers or sellers “gather”. Its where each side
collectively agrees on supporting the currency or resisting the price
level. We see this as support and resistance levels respectively.

Now in the forex and stocks market and other larger markets we
see a lot of big players in the space so there may be large areas of
major liquidity, but in between we still have buyers and sellers to
“hold” price steady.
Bitcoin has much fewer players in the entire market.
To illustrate this take a look and click here.
On a basic level the areas of large interest and liquidity areas are
spaced further apart. So, if the market loses interest in a certain
area it can fall or spike very quickly and seek out the next liquidity
area.

See images below and look at the volume profile on the right. At
major areas you see larger volume bars.

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Add to this the fact that the majority of traders in the space are not
actually professional traders, it leads to panic buying and selling
very quickly.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Because volatility as a trader is
your friend. As long as you study the levels of liquidity and pay
attention to sentiment. You can make a lot of either bitcoin or more
dollars by simply trading this up and down.
Bear in mind that it requires lots of chart time and to be “in the
zone”.
A good site to go to is https://coin360.io/

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Are there any third parties to my transaction between myself
and the seller of whatever item I am buying with Bitcoin?

Based on what bitcoin fundamentally is, I do not know why you

would want a third party in between, but places like localbitcoins
and a startup called utrust seem to fill that gap. They will hold a
said payment in escrow and facilitate a transfer if you not sure of
the other party.
Bear in mind that once a transaction is confirmed on the
blockchain it’s irreversible. So if you are doing peer to peer
transactions make sure the wallet address you have in correct.

How long does it take to get a transaction confirmed?

From 1 wallet to another it will take at least 10mins and maybe a

bit longer if there is a lot of network activity.

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From a wallet into an exchange or out of an exchange to a wallet
you control can take much longer as they will have their internal
processes of checks and balances as well.

Why does it take that long?

It’s what it takes to cryptographically work it out and add it to the

blockchain and also that 1 block takes 10 mins to fill with data.

How will you know it’s confirmed?

Each blockchain has sites devoted to tracking these transactions

and wallets called block explorers.
https://blockexplorer.com/
https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/
https://etherscan.io/ (for ethereum)

You can see this process more clearer in the first video

Other Cryptos besides Bitcoin?

For sure there are many. I will not explore all, but there are over
1000 crypto currencies each doing either specific things or trying
to resolve other issues.
A good site to keep track of it all is https://coinmarketcap.com/

How do you get your first taste of bitcoin?

Depends on which country you are in. Most common and easiest
one if you are in the States is
https://www.coinbase.com/join/590c97ae124da06e66973f75
If you use that link and buy at least $100 of bitcoin you will
receive $10 of free bitcoin. (We all love free crypto)
Will create a video….
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We need this to convert from normal dollar to bitcoin or which
ever crypto currency you want to convert to.
https://www.coinbase.com/global?locale=en
Those are the countries coinbase covers. And in Australia they
have coinspot and coinjar.

We have to pause here for a few minutes and ask yourself a few
questions.

1. Are you simply buying crypto currency to hold and hope it grows in value
and at some point convert back to USD or your local currency?
2. Are you wanting to trade in the crypto space to grow your USD portfolio?.
3. Are you wanting to trade the crypto space to grow your crypto portfolio?
4. Are you wanting to hold and grow a mixture?

If no.1 is your choice. You basically should be good to go. Maybe

the best piece of advice to start in crypto now is dollar cost
averaging. Which means at a period (maybe weekly or monthly)
you simply buy some bitcoin or ethereum irrespective of price
point. This way I still apply as I go. It means over a year you will
accumulate it without emotion attached to the process. It also has
proven to be the best overall approach across all skill levels.

From no.2 onwards please join me further.

EXCHANGES

I need to state that the crypto market place is an ever changing

space. Things move really fast.

About a year ago from now (currently July 2018) ICO’s were the
craze. Initial Coin Offerings, that in someway relate to IPO’s
(Initial Public Offerings). Usually the average person on the street

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simply will never have access or opportunity to invest on any level
into an IPO.
This opened a can of worms as in the crypto space anyone who
was willing could invest in an ICO. This honestly was the best and
worst time, as there were many ways to 100x your investment and
also gave way to many scams.

As a safety measure, I would recommend you avoid ICO’s right

now. Its too murky to delve there.

Now…..onto exchanges for the crypto market there are a few that I
use and will suggest you start with until you are more comfortable
with what exchanges are and how to use them.

Why do we need exchanges?

Mostly speculation, but there are situations where I need to change

or convert from bitcoin or ethereum into some other coin.
If I want to purchase an alt coin I would need to approach the
exchange and do a trade. I will do a video showing that process.
There are a few services that allow for simple conversion without
you having to enter an exchange.

Changelly click here

Shapeshift.io

Both of those sites require that you have wallets that you control
on either side of the exchange.
If I convert bitcoin to litecoin, I would need a wallet that I can send
bitcoin from and I would need a litecoin wallet to receive the
litecoin into.

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MY SUGGESTED EXCHANGES TO START

Binance.com is by far the most used by all crypto traders.

Bittrex.com is more for the US guys that want an exchange
regulated on US soil.
Bitfinex.com is most used with its leverage facility to short and
long markets. Its not open to US traders however. I know a few
guys that do us VPN’s to access it, but you will only be trading in
crypto and know Dollar or fiat currency.
Most of these accounts can be opened without sharing personal
details, this may change in the future depending on regulations
applied.
Bitmex (https://www.bitmex.com/register/tHlK9A) Bitmex is a bit
of a unique futures trading platform that bases everything in
bitcoin. Also allows for leveraged trades.

I would say that the crypto trading markets are a mixture of stock,
forex and futures type of trading. Its really new territory. But it
helps because one almost needs to treat each exchange as its own
island and not connected to the other ones.

Which opens up an area of arbitrage, but we will get to that later.

There are many more exchanges, but this list has been around the
longest and best liquidity is found there for us westerners.

Is it too late to start?

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-money-
exists-in-the-entire-world-in-one-chart-2015-12-18
You not going to 100x your money. Well not intentionally at least.
But the crypto space offers a much more level playing field than
normal markets and this is offered mostly free of leverage which
can be a two edged sword to most traders learning to trade in open
markets.
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I will mention that if you think more level playing field means no
manipulation, then we would be mistaken. Whales (large holders
of crypto) really are able to move the markets quite easily. So like
any other market, follow the smarter players. Do not try to be
clever and think you can risk it all in one trade.

If you come from the forex markets, crypto is very different but
very technically obedient. A lot of the traders are inexperienced
and they learning as they go along. This almost accounts for the
really volatile nature of the different coins.
The current discussion on the table now is the Bitcoin ETF. This
will bring a lot more money into the space and because ETF’s need
to have the underlying asset in ownership, for broker/exchanges to
offer the ETF it would have to buy actual bitcoin. This could lead
to huge price swings up since you cannot inflate the supply of
bitcoin to match the demand.

It has not been decided and nothing is guaranteed in this world, but
that is possible and the decision is most likely happening in mid
August 2018.
In short its not too late to start. If you are willing to learn and put
some effort in you will reap the rewards.
Trading is not easy in any market because you will discover the
biggest enemy of profits is….YOU.
Markets are not personal places and you cannot “talk your way in
or out” you can’t negotiate with a market running or falling. You
have to conclude that you are the one entering the space and only
your state of mind can help or hurt you.

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What if it gets shutdown by government and regulators?

Unfortunately, that’s an opinion, but the crypto space is really new

and fresh and most countries have not really definitively decide
how to classify and treat the various crypto currencies as yet.
This is both a positive and a negative.

Basically Bitcoin and ethereum cannot be regulated in terms of

how it functions, its decentralized and permissionless. No
government or body has the authority or jurisdiction to even try to
regulate and control it.
Where they can apply rules is the on boarding process. So the ramp
in which you send dollars and convert to crypto will be the place
where regulation will be strictly applied.

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I know right now, most authorities have major issue with the
privacy coins such as monero, zcash, zcoin, verge, pivx and
spectre. There are more but those are the prominent ones.
The issue is, no one can tell who what or why is happening other
than the participants. You tell me whether it’s a good thing or bad.
I don’t think like a criminal therefore I don’t have a stick in that
fight. But I do care that we are free.

The reality is that more people are not criminals and its something
we cannot escape in this world. We don’t scrap cars and phones
because criminals use it. Best we can do is find what works for
yourself and simply do no harm to others.

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