How to Get Started in Cryptocurrencies? General Crypto Thread
Hello monkeys, as what I am sure all of you are aware of, cryptocurrencies are getting to be pretty popular at the current moment. However, a lot of things are confusing about it to me and I was wondering what you guys think are good ways to educate yourself about cryptocurrencies, the best ones to invest in at the moment, good strategies to utilize when investing in them (buy and hold or actively trade), and most importantly, how to safely protect your investments?
One of the factors that really puts me off about cryptocurrencies (yet its most defining factor) is the fact that it is unregulated and can easily get stolen like what happened with mt. gox back in 2014. And there is no real way to get that money back once it's gone which is a security issue that needs to be addressed. If it is possible to track where your missing coins got whisked off to, I can see it as a huge game changer and gain more interest in cryptocurrencies.
As it says in the title, this is a general cryptocurrency thread so feel free to offer any other thoughts and opinions. Wanted to start some meaningful discussion on the topic, epecisally with the people on WSO who have actually dealt personally with cryptocurrencies.
EDIT: What are your opinions on the ICOs currently? Do you think it is a lot of bullshit? Last night I was reading a little bit about it and familiarizing myself with it and I found out how extremely easy it is to scam people through an ICO as cryptos are unregulated. IMO I feel as if there needs to be more stringent regulation as to how you put up a new coin on a market exchange to determine that it is legitimate.
Let's hear the experts on this .. SB'd for starting this
The thing is that the basics are well-known not only by the professionals. The first and necessary rule for everybody is using of the special tool like https://3commas.io/blog/9-useful-day-trading-tips-from-the-experts for every day usage. That is the reason why many people are looking or the opportunity of such type here.
1) Ways to educate yourself : Read up on Quora posts on cryptos and how blockchain works.
2) Investing : Buy and Hold Bitcoin or Ethereum. People recommend it should be 1-2% of your portfolio. If you want to actively trade on intra-day movements you will need a real platform, experience and a lot of volume. That isn't investing, though. There is way more volatility in other plays so I wouldn't actively trade crypto.
3) Protecting your investment : I'll let other people chime in on this. However, I will say on just about 99% of Quora posts, both sides agree that whatever you're investing be willing to lose 100% of it. If you really want a safe investment, get $15-20k and start buying up blue-chips and hold em for a year is two (yesterday was a bloodbath, perfect buying opportunity).
Good luck.
Just general investment portfolio? But ah I see.
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/who-else-is-making-off-cryptos?p…
this thread had alot of good information.
Praesto Created a website after this thread for people trying to learn more about it and answer FAQ's (still need to post all of mine).
Does anyone have any experience with Dash?
Here is my little snip about how to trade cryptocurrencies from a week ago:
GDAX is great for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. No to minimal fees for trading and you can use coinbase's wallet to store (it's honestly not a big deal to store crypto in online wallets unless you have a considerable amount)
Bittrex is what you want to use for trading hundreds of altcoins. You can do this by transferring your bitcoins from your Coinbase wallet to your Bittrex wallet and then trading Bitcoins for Altcoins of your choice on the Bittrex trading platform.
If I could name one safe altcoin investment, it would be NEO Antshares. It is basically China's version of Ethereum except it also allows developers to use a common language that their used. Ethereum's developers have to learn a whole new language that is just for Ethereum. The reason I say that this is a relatively safe investment is because NEO is China's premier cryptocurrency that seems to be getting backing from the Chinese government. And if you didn't know, Chinese people love using their own products more than anything. For an example, people in China are using smartphones that you've never even heard of because they rather use that than Apple or Samsung products.
Finally, Ethereum's current marketcap is around $30 billion whereas NEO is only around $1.5 billion, so it has huge upside. Be aware though, because NEO has gone up almost 5x in the last week as it has been getting much more press and media in the western world. My final thoughts are that only invest in cryptocurrencies that you believe in long term and hold onto them even though it is volatile.
BE AWARE: A lot of cryptocurrency "investors" are rookie investors who have never dealt with stocks before. They do not even know what the crypto that they are investing even are, but rather just riding the hype train. Therefore, you will see extreme volatility in the crypto market. But remember, volatility can also be your friend if you are a good trader
Use worldcoinindex and coinmarketcap for a general sense of different coins.
ETH is changing from a proof of work system to a proof of stake system, buy $10,000 worth of it and then use it to generate more coins. You'll make bank.
If there's enough interest on this topic, I'll write a thread. Disclosure: I work for a Blue-chip technology company as a Blockchain architect and I've been investing in cryptographic assets for the past year.
Trying to get people up to speed on this topic is a massive bitch. Understanding cryptographic assets requires an understanding of economics and technology with a pulse on geopolitics; your layman usually won't have all three and will be left hung out to dry if they don't keep up.
Anyone who is interested, I usually tell them to read Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper to develop a general understanding / context as to why we are where we are. For a technical understanding of Blockchain, I recommend Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott .
Once you've got those books under your belt, you'll be better off than 90% of individuals in the investment game. If you're a finance major, you'll have better luck playing technical analysis (EMAs, RSI, Price Action). If you've got a technical bent, you'd be better off studying technical white papers and placing bets based on technical novelty + disruptive business use-cases.
There's a saying in the community: "A day in crypto is a week in the stock market". This shit moves quickly. There's probably two coins that I feel comfortable longing into eternity at this point in time, the rest is all speculation with about 95% of it being complete horse shit.
I'll edit this with my original investment thesis when I get home. Let me see if I can get permission to post a few guides as well.
WallStreetOasis.com AndyLouis I'll write a crypto currency series / weekly report for some funding ;)))
EDIT - ADDED ORIGINAL INVESTMENT THESIS BELOW
Title: CTR Crypto Investment Thesis
Author: dedline
Date: 6.4.2017
Definitions - Blockchain = Transaction Technology - Smart Contracts = Programmable Transaction Logic
Purpose for Blockchain: - Enabling trust between mutually untrustful peers - Layman's generalization = Elimination of intermediaries / "middle-man" entities via consensus algorithms (e.g. PoW, PoS)
Investing Thesis: - "Invest in novel applications of blockchain technology, public or private, if the use-case has the potential to simplify complex business processes involving costly intermediaries."
Assumptions: - We exist in a heavily, blatantly manipulated marketplace that remains unregulated by government entities - There are only three real blockchains that are actually being used for their intended purpose (BTC, XMR, ETH), the rest is just speculation.
Factors to consider when investing (ranked): 0. Novel, feasible applications of blockchain technology 1. Adoption rates 1. Global, Macro-Economic trends 3. Existing competition 4. Hype 5. Development team X pedigree staked 6. Supply (shares) existing / Early Investors 7. Inflation
+1!
Give back to the WSO community a little and write a couple out of generosity :)
What are those 2 coins you feel comfortable with? If you don't mind sharing. I'm guessing bitcoin and ethereum?
Man, do it! We need info on crypto on WSO!
As far as news sources go, Reddit and Twitter are great sources for altcoins as there typically isn't a lot of press on those. But as noted above, those coins are typically the most volatile. You also run into lots of people trolling on Reddit and Twitter, so you still need good judgement when listening to others.
As for the main coins (i.e., BTC, ETH, LTC, etc.), just use Google. You can find lots of news channels which discuss important dates (e.g., the Bitcoin fork that just occured), general performances/trends, the technology behind each coin and even technical analysis.
When all is said it done, you can make a lot of money fast, but you can lose a lot of money just as fast. So tread carefully. Make sure you understand what you're investing in. And lastly, only invest what you can afford to/are willing to lose.
1.) To educate yourself I would only really use two main information feeds. The first is reddit and all the popular crytpo subreddits. Users there do a incredible job aggregating tons of information, articles, new clippings, user made analysis, etc. I'll recommend a few here: r/ethtrader, r/btc (avoid r/bitcoin like the plague it is heavily censored), r/cryptocurrency, r/ethereum, r/xmrtrader, r/altcoin, r/bitcoinmarkets, and a few other coin specific subs. The second best place to immerse yourself in this community is the bitcointalk.org forums. Lots of great discussion to get you up to speed quickly.
2.) "Best" crypto currencies will vary greatly from person to person. Do your own due diligence and come up with your own ideas is the best advice I can give. Personally, I own ETH, BTC, BCH, GNT, ICN, TaaS, and REP. I trade in and out of a few others, but the ones listed there I plan to hold for at least a few years and hopefully much longer. I'm assuming you are a US citizen. if so you can buy BTC, ETH, and LTC on Coinbase.com. Once you have those coins you can trade into any number of different cryptos.
3.) ICO's are the wild west right now. 99% of these "companies" don't even have a MVP or anything more than a fancy white paper and a website. I would avoid these and focus on cryptos that are closer to having real support or a usable product in an established industry. People with stupid money are getting scammed by some ICO right now. If you spend a reasonable amount of time researching these "companies" it's pretty easy to see who is legit or not. There are some reddit groups that vet ICO's and post their results for the public to see. They have already shut down a few scam ICO's.
4.) You mention being able to track your coins. That is actually something you can do, but it won't help you recover your coins if they are stolen. In reality you should never keep your coins on an exchange like Mt. Gox. Once you buy cryptos you should keep them on an air gapped wallet. I don't think I have heard of a single security breach using that method. If you are smart about how you store and sedn your coins security should not be an issue.
I've been investing and researching cryptos for about 5 years now and I would be happy to answer any questions about the space. I'm far from an expert, but I have more experience than most.
What do you or anyone else recommend as a wallet? I am brand new to this and from my surface level research I have found that I need to get a digital wallet as well as different platforms.
If I am looking at taking positions in Bitcoin , ethereum, and IoTA specifically what do I need to do since it is different platforms.
Perfect question for my website. The three currencies you are interested in all require different wallets. Each of them wallets that can be used off of exchanges. I recommend MEW for Ethereum and IOTA-Wallet for IOTA.
This thread is loaded with phenomenal information. I would like to point out as mentioned above I am working towards creating a community for anyone interested in crypto currencies. It would be great if we could get a few more people to sign-up and post!
www.thecoinboard.com
I wish all the information posted here was posted there!
+1 everyone should join the www.thecoinboard.com and help get the discussion going.
I personally think Crypto's are the future. Currently holding Bitcoin & Ethereum. Will be initiating a position in IOTA soon.
Made several new posts today and more to come. I am also considering making stickers for the website and just placing them everywhere.
Just picked up some IOTA. I'm skeptical but the risk reward is better than any other speculative trade I could make out there right now, and if the technology is legit it could be disruptive to bitcoin and ether; solves their biggest problems (fees and speed).
you're up a decent % since Aug
Still holding on, picked up some BAT as well. Really like the idea there and the team is pretty credible
Easiest way to make fat stacks is to look at the laundry list of new ICOs, do your own DD (read all the white papers) and buy in at the beginning. Fundamental analysis is fucked due to market hype (looking at you, Dutch tulip market), but can look at the price of electricity used to mine each coin ($ / hash for all the various video cards / ASICs out there mining) and rebalance whenever there's a divergence on the main coins as miners will soon follow suit.
Any ICOs on the horizon you are particularly excited about?
Tezos, but that's already over (up ~600% in prerelease trading, want to hedge to break even but the futures site is a known scammer). Filecoin is probably going to be a huge disaster, don't think I'm going to play it. I try to stick more to Shkreli's advice when looking at cryptos: probably only 1 or 2 great opportunities for clear cut long/short opportunities in a short time frame.
I'm quite interested in what cultural places try to do with the cultural coin. ICO phase 2 ends in 30 days and it's 30 % discount right now. They try to introduce cryptocurrency to the art and cultural sector which is my personal interest. But lets see how it goes, still a long road ahead for them.
The investing, use, and adoption of cryptocurrency (and the underlying technologies) is still in it's infancy phase. Congratulations to everyone contributing to, and reading this thread, as we are in the 1% of the population who are researching investments this early in the lifecycle of crypto.
I personally am all-in on IOTA. It really comes down to putting in the time to perform adequate due diligence on the various companies and underlying technologies. I plan to hold IOTA for years and would not be surprised to make 30X (based on current market caps) in the next 5 years.
Cryptocurrency newb (Originally Posted: 05/05/2014)
Not sure how much detail is considered appropriate so I'll keep it brief-ish.
I have a JD/MBA I earned a few decades ago and have worked in manufacturing, insurance, brokerage and banking. But most of those gigs where as a programmer or IT consultant (long story)
I was able to retire a couple decades ahead of time. I spend a fair amount of time reading (or watching) the financial press, especially Henry Blodget's new site BI (or Bloomberg). I've been a fairly active investor and do a decent amount of trading, mostly selling naked puts and covered calls.
I've recently gotten involved in cryptos (cryptocurrencies) as a result of some volunteer work I do (not so long story) and have been following one in particular fairly closely - Ripple Labs XRPs. I did a search but didn't see anything using the term cryptocurrency except bitcoin, and that post was back in December, so I'm guessing that's not really what you'd want to call a 'hot topic' around here.
Not sure which subforums I should concentrate on so any help in that area would be much appreciated.
I think it would appropriate in a forum like Investing Ideas. Welcome.
I'm really unsure what to think of Bitcoin, and I'm very tempted to take all of my money out of it and invest it into ETH, and to a lesser extent, OMG, XRM, and maybe IOTA. It seems to have a lot of issues with insane transaction fees and scalability that people don't talk about much, and that ensures it'll only ever be a place to store value, and not for day-to-day transactions.. which is fine, but I think the highest value coin will be the one that can replace a checking account. It's a good investment right now, as it has the first-mover advantage, and the brand behind it, and it's a gateway to investing in other currencies, but I'm not sure it'll last.
I would recommend anyone to read this article for more of what I'm talking about: https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/why-does-bitcoin-have-ridiculously-…
ICOs seem to be 95% fraudulent. My favorite ICO was LamboCoin. If I recall correctly, the page literally stated "We are not creating anything. We just want to drive a Lambo". I should've thought of that. It seems the easiest way is to buy the 6 largest by market cap and hold. If you have time, arbitrage seems also to work. Opinions?
lol
Well, if you think the project itself was funny, read their thread on the biggest crypto-board:
bitcointalk .o rg/index.php?topic=1779719.0
They obviously took themselves verrrrrrrry seriously. ;)
Bumping this as there are some great points on here and much discussion can be made.
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