AFTER OPENING YOUR WALLET WHAT TO DO??
Important Factors to Consider:
1. Coin Pairs Available
Many exchanges offer only a handful of coins; the most popular being
Bitcoin and Ethereum. There are only a handful of exchanges that offer a wider variety of coins. A more diverse option of coins available is better as it gives you more choices of coins to purchase.
2. Liquidity
Liquidity refers to the ease of buying/selling in the market. A high liquidity means that there is a huge number of buyers/sellers. High liquidity is good as it leads to better price discovery and it allows you to transact faster.
3. Security
The level and type of security mechanisms employed by an exchange is vital in ensuring that your coins are safe. Examples of good security practices undertaken by exchanges include:
a) Keeping deposits in cold storage; this means that your coins are safely tucked away offline, beyond the reach of hackers
b) Availability of 2-factor authentication (2FA) option; 2FA increases the security of your account
c) Email encryption and verification; for every transaction there will be an email sent to your account to confirm the transaction.
4. Customer Support Quality
Having a responsive customer support would save you lots of time and anxiousness, especially in a fast-paced environment. Issues on your verification process, deposit/withdrawals, funds reflection and trading orders should be solved quickly by the exchanges, or it could cost compromise you time, money and well-being.
5. Trading Fees
Low transaction fees on buying and selling would relatively prevent your margins to be eaten away, especially if you’re a constant trader. It is important to look at the fees of your exchange, to see if it’s relatively comparable to other exchanges.
6. Ease of Use
The user interface of the exchange should be easy to use and clean to avoid confusion. Having the necessary indicators at the tip of your fingers and the ease of navigating through the platform should make it easy for anyone to use the interface.
All in All
Choosing an exchange is the gateway to the crypto world. There are many factors to consider when choosing a suitable exchange, and the aforementioned factors should serve as a guide.
Once you’ve opened an exchange account that allows fiat deposit, you can link your personal bank account with your crypto exchange account and start depositing funds to buy Bitcoins.
Seven important factors to consider before investing in cryptocurrencies
Investing in Cryptocurrencies is just like any other investment. It’s always a risk so always, always follow the number 1 rule of investing: “Only invest or trade with whatever you can afford to lose!” and the second rule: “Stay… profitable!!!”.
Cryptocurrencies are truly revolutionary. As long as you take the time to understand the properties of cryptocurrency, then you will have a more profound comprehension of what it is all about.
After the birth of Bitcoin, more than 1000 altcoins and crypto coins have been created with at least 919 trading actively on unregulated or registered exchanges. According to CoinMarketCap, there are close to 787 cryptocurrencies currently trading around the world with a combined market capitalization by circulating supply of US$102.6 Billion and US$1.9 Trillion by total supply as at end of June 2017.
Here are the first seven factors to watch when start investing in Cryptocurrencies
Market cap
Market Capitalization is one way to rank the relative size of a cryptocurrency. It's calculated by multiplying the Price by the Circulating supply.
Circulating Supply.
Circulating supply is the amount of coin available at the present time and circulating in the market.
Current total supply
#Maximum supply
Maximum supply is the amount of coin that will ever exist for a particular crypto currency.
Liquidity
Liquidity of altcoins can be used to measure its market share, market maturity, and market acceptance. The coins need to be widely traded on exchanges to be considered a potential growing coin.
Developer
Is important to track the development activity of coins via public source code repositories. The reason why is important to look at this is that some coins are no longer maintained by the developer thus those coins would appear very unlikely to progress over time.
By looking at how much interest and effort goes around the development community, there is a chance that the coin will continue to innovate according to how the crypto currency market sees fit.
Some of the repositories where you can check the development of a certain coin are Github, Bitbuckets, etc.
6. Community
Cryptocurrencies tend to experience tremendous growth when there is a strong community backing it. A strong community contributes to new ideas and new features to be incorporated into the coin, increases trading volume, and signifiers growth towards a bigger market.
Public Interest
Search engine total results and web popularity can be used to measure mainstream interestand popularity of a coin.
5 Things You Should Know Before Investing in Cryptocurrency
There is no doubt that cryptocurrencies have created a new market for investment. With digital currencies such as Bitcoin reaching values of over $69,000USD, cryptocurrencies are of extreme interest to mainstream media, consumers, and investors. Those on the forefront of investing see the value of adding these high-risk items to their investment portfolios.
While expert investors have a propensity toward investing in high-risk, high reward opportunities, the risks associated with cryptocurrency investments are unique in nature. While interest in cryptocurrencies is skyrocketing, the associated regulations around digital currency are not keeping pace. The notion that a country may impose restrictions on a cryptocurrency is enough to negatively impact its value over night.
Cryptocurrency investments have the opportunity to offer significant ROI, however, consumers need to ensure they are doing their due diligence before investing. While many companies involved in cryptocurrency can offer a significant profit, it is crucial that consumers looking to invest can spot the legitimate opportunities among the sea of options.
With that in mind, here are the top 5 things you should know before investing in cryptocurrencies.
1. Do your research.
Everywhere you turn in crypto, there is another hot take or sure thing. At Block X, we have assembled a team of industry experts dedicated to researching the best investment opportunities. If you’re investing into crypto on your own, be sure to put together a personal due diligence checklist by asking yourself:
● Do they have a real team? Review their presence on LinkedIn to verify their team as experienced and legitimate players in the cryptocurrency space.
● Can you open the company’s code base? Where possible, review the company’s code base to verify its whole collection of source code.
● Is this addressing a real problem? Has the company identified an area of opportunity or is it a copycat of an existing offering?
● Is there proof of concept or beta? Ensuring the company can offer proof of concept or beta will mean your investment has a greater chance of seeing returns as the company matures.
2. Be responsible
Cryptocurrencies can belong in any investment portfolio but should be treated as high risk. Put 10–20% of your portfolio into crypto investments but always ensure your portfolio remains diversified to mitigate extreme risks.
3. Be realistic
Crypto purchases are notoriously oversold as rags to riches and 1000% gains. While that has been the case before, and may occur again, your investment strategy cannot hinge on this. Be realistic about your investment; consider the .com boom in which some of the highest market cap/valued companies of our time emerged but many, if not most, fell by the wayside. When investing, keep in mind:
● It is crucial to diversify (yes, even with crypto).
● Stick to blue chip stocks — such as Bitcoin, Ether, LTC — to be confident about the quality, reliability, and resilience of your investment.
● ICOs are the new penny stocks. If you do want to venture into a high-risk investment, ICOs may be of interest.
● Take some gains off the table when you can. It’s all paper money until you cash it out — that is, until crypto replaces dollars.
4. Be vigilant, borderline paranoid
Most of the concerns surrounding hacks and security, while well-founded, are also avoidable, even for the non-tech savvy. Vigilance can come in the form of selecting the right blockchain company to manage your investment. Selecting an organization like Block X that has a reputable team and is dedicated to conducting extreme due diligence will ensure your investment is safe.
If investing on your own, remember:
● Private keys should obviously remain private and not shared
● Use reputable exchanges and wallets. Much like you wouldn’t deposit your life savings into a pop-up bank with a cardboard sign outside, you should do your homework on the entities responsible for holding your funds.
● Move funds off exchanges and into wallets you control, for example, cold storage. I can’t emphasize enough how much less dependent this makes you on other entities.
5. Track your gains and losses
As crypto is global and doesn’t yet classify as a ‘real investment,’ many say capital gains don’t apply. Regardless, you should track your gains and losses for your own personal knowledge to see how your portfolio is doing. As countries start to regulate crypto-related capital gains taxes, you’re going to want to be in a position to pay your fair share and not deal with the IRS or CRA.
10 Things People Should Know Before Investing In Crypto
1) Invest 10–20% of your income after tax in crypto (since most of you, don’t know what “invest what you can afford to lose” means). Some people have brought up that 10–20% is usually what is left from their paychecks after they have paid their bills. If that’s the case, then I don’t think you can afford to invest at all. Mark Cuban said:
“If you are feeling adventurous, invest 10% into Bitcoin or Ethereum.”
2) Keep your day job despite reaching your financial goal in crypto, so you are not emotionally dependent on your crypto profits as a source of income. This way you won’t make emotional decisions about selling your crypto because you’re hurting for cash. Slowly take out small profits to pay your debts. DO NOT QUIT YOUR DAY JOB!
3) Read, and read, every day, do not underestimate the power of reading. Learn something new about blockchain and cryptocurrencies every day. Staying up to date is crucial in this space. How fast do you think this space moves? Think about generating $100 billion market cap in less than 5 months. Yes, this happened this year (11/10/2017).
Feb ’17 $20 BnMay ’17 $40 BnMay ’17 $80 BnOct 10, 2017 $160 BnNov 10, 2017 $200 Billion
4) Surround yourself with crypto people, do not recruit your friends into investing in crypto. Do not tell your family about your involvement in crypto unless you are truly comfortable doing so. Why? Because crypto is too volatile and there are many uncertainties. How about the constant calls and texts asking you which coins to buy from your friends and family and asking you to walk them through step-by-step because they don’t want to read? When they lose money, you will be blamed for it, because you suckered them into this space. If you really want to share to people what you’ve discovered, then just be neutral about it. Refuse to give them recommendations about which coins to buy. Encourage them to read and research about the coins they’re buying, then add your input if you are comfortable doing so. If you really want to pitch them Doges, then tell them the pros and cons of hodling Doges.
5) Always do your own research. Manipulation, hype, pump and dump, fraud, scam, hacking, and stealing, are common here in this space, and can sometimes lead people to financial loss. Here’s an example: On November 7, 2017, it was announced that any funds deposited after July 20th, 2017 are currently stuck or frozen in the Parity wallet. Meaning no one is able to withdraw from it. Not even the ICOs who used the Parity wallet multi-sig. There is an estimate of $280M USD stuck in the wallet, equivalent to 980,000 ETH that time, almost 1M supply of ETH. This is just an estimate, there is possibly more that we don’t know about. Polkadot’s $90M ICO fund was also stuck, which was also a project of Parity wallet’s creator.
6) Avoid pyramid schemes, cloud mining, MLM, “earn interests” schemes, and ponzi schemes such as Bitconnect. Please keep Googling.
7) IT’S NOT CASH, UNTIL YOU SELL YOUR CRYPTO FOR FIAT. Maybe one day we won’t have to convert it to fiat. Maybe one day we can pay all our bills in Crypto.
Photo by Blockfolio
8) Think long-term profits, not short-term gains. If you are here to trade that’s fine. Trade no more than 30% of your crypto net worth, and 70% in long term. I’ve made more money hodling long term than trading daily/weekly. Why? because the early stage of blockchain and crypto is obviously not priced in yet, we just jumped from $100 billion to $200 billion market cap in less than 5 months, if you held then you’d probably have made more. Unless you really know what you’re doing, then trade away in this volatile market.
Just know this, there are professional traders looking to do some damage in this market at the expense of newbies.
9) Diversify your portfolio if you are unsure of what you’re doing, then narrow down your portfolio if you know what you’re doing. Don’t get rekt!
10) Be responsible with your newfound wealth, don’t be reckless, you may experience a state of euphoria when your portfolio reached triple gains. And it’s tempting to go on a shopping spree. It’s not cash until that money is in your bank, if your portfolio reaches $10,000 in crypto, don’t go out spending your cash just because your crypto in your cold storage are worth $10k. Anything can happen, it can crash the minute you start your shopping spree, lose your private keys, or get hacked.
And one last thing…
“Be scared when everyone’s feeling greedy, be greedy when everyone is scared”. -Warren Buffet
What are the basic things that we need to consider before investing in any cryptocurrency?
THE 10 CRYPTO COMMANDMENTS
Your number one consideration should be that, like all investing, you shouldn’t invest anything that you aren’t prepared to lose.
Don’t go all in on an investment.
This market is extremely young and volatile. No matter how many people claim to know the future, I promise you—anything can happen.
You can 100x in your first couple of months, or you can lose 90% of your principle investment.
Cryptocurrency is a high risk/high reward investment. You have to be prepared to accept the risk.
While I’m one of the 100% of the population that can’t predict the future, I do have a strict set of rules as well as an investment strategy that I follow religiously.
I outlined some of rules, what I refer to as the “10 Crypto Commandments”,below.
“I’ve been in this game for 8 years, it made me an animal. There’s rules to this shit, I made me a manual” - Biggie Smalls, “The 10 Crack Commandments”
1 DON’T PANIC
Whenever someone I know begins investing in cryptocurrency and asks me for help getting started, I know that I’m going to end up having to calm that person down whenever there is a dip in the market.
Don’t Panic.
The reason you got into this is the same reason you’re freaking out, crypto is extremely volatile. The same forces that allow us to see 1000x returns on our investments also can create a situation where you suddenly see 90% of your money disappear.
A roller coaster goes both up and down at extreme speeds.
Whenever you see an article claiming that this dip is the end for Bitcoin due to some country increasing regulations or something similar — remember that China has “banned” cryptocurrency three times or more. Believe it or not, Bitcoin and other coins are still standing.
2 YOU’RE NOT TOO LATE
I hate when people talk about wanting to get into cryptocurrency but feeling like they’re, “too late”. Bitcoin does this thing call “correcting” every few months where it tends to drop in price drastically to prepare for the next leg up — buy in during any of these dips and you’ll be fine.
YOU’RE NOT TOO LATE.
Buying the dip in Bitcoin has been a winning investment strategy since 2009.
Two thousand and nine!
The funniest part about the fact that I constantly hear, “I’m too late to get in now”, is that people have been saying that exact same statement since Bitcoin hit a $1.
I shit you not.
If you dig deep enough into the BitcoinTalk forums you will find stories of people saying, “Oh it’s too late”, as early as 2012.
Furthermore, everyone I know who is now in cryptocurrency, at some point had that same thought.
“I’m too late”,
Until they watched it gain another 100% and realized that this magic internet money doesn’t always make sense.
3 DON’T CHASE GREEN CANDLES (FOMO TRADING)
I’ve written about this several times before and I’ll write about it again.
FOMO trading is one of the more common (if not the most common) causes of traders and investors losing their shmeckles.
We’ve all done it, I’m certainly not immune to FOMO. Every once in a while, I still find myself inching closer and closer to that market buy when I see a coin exploding before hitting one of my carefully thought out limit orders.
It’s a disease.
Buy when there’s blood on the streets. You should approach crypto investment like you’re bargain hunting. Study a coin’s history, zoom out and look at its entire lifespan. Determine a good entry point and set your buys. I always try to buy into whatever coin I’m trying to load up on when the market is down. I’m a huge believer in both Neo and Ethereum (although they’re competitors) but I’ll never buy either of those unless they’ve had a series of successive down days and are showing signs of reversal.
Bonus: I highly suggest starting with an extremely small investment. Before you start seriously investing you have a lot of studying to do. Before you begin studying take a tiny amount of money and invest it into cryptocurrency- this will incentivize you to watch the charts more often and get an idea of how volatile this market really is.
4 DON’T LISTEN TO TWITTER TRADERS (DYOR)
There are some people on Twitter who bring serious value to investors by providing solid analysis and investment strategy.
There are even more people on Twitter who are just looking to pump shitcoins after they’ve bought in and dump after you pump their bag.
A lot of these accounts will tweet out calls for coins that have already broken out into an uptrend — and then a few days later post results saying something to the tune of, “My followers booked 583% Gain on BSCoin”.
They’ll rinse and repeat this process until they have an army of people whom now will pump whatever coin they Tweet — some use this power with responsibility, others fall to the dark side.
Pay attention, listen to others when you know they’re credible sources, but come to your own conclusion and do your own research (DYOR).
5 DON’T JOIN PUMP AND DUMP GROUPS
Much like the several guys on Twitter who pump their bags by telling their followers to buy coins which they’ve already bought into. There are “pump and dump” telegram and discord groups that will promise huge gains.
The problem with these is that there is always a loser, and 9 times out of 10 its you.
In order to move up the ranks and get trading signals ahead of the pack, you need to invite more people to the group. The more people you invite, the sooner you get the trading signal.
If you join a group that already has a large amount of members already, it’s going to be difficult to invite enough people to increase your “rank” enough to receive trading signals before the herd.
If you join a group that doesn’t have a large amount of members already, and you invite as many people as you can to join in on this literal pyramid scheme — you’re a part of the problem.
6 DON’T BUY WHAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include this commandment or not. To be completely honest, there are some coins now that I invest in solely based on their chart. I could know absolutely nothing about a company — if I see enough positive buy signals and price history to back it up — I’m going in.
I find that when I’m looking at coins for extremely short term trades (0–3 weeks), focusing on Technical Analysis over Fundamental Analysis brings me greater returns. That’s just me — I don’t suggest buying into coins you haven’t done research into unless you’re also a TA geek like myself.
For long term investments you absolutely need to DYOR. The biggest % gains I’ve ever had in crypto were my long term bags. Bags that I would’ve emptied to FOMO into other trades at the beginning of my dive into crypto — but I’ve learned from my mistakes.
When I’m looking at a coin that I’m considering as a long term hold, I think of the worst case scenario.
If crypto were to figuratively burn to the ground tomorrow, would this coin be one of the few that would survive the crash?
I’m a bull when it comes to cryptocurrency as a whole, but I also believe that there is a shocking amount of money in this market with a very small amount of meaningful use cases that have been successfully executed.
Blockchain technology has the potential to create serious impactful change in this world, but right now some of the largest examples of blockchain projects coming to fruition are Block Galaxy Network 🌌, Universe Warriors Token 🔥 and Grand INU 🐻.
With that being said, I foresee a reckoning in the future where the vast majority (99%) of cryptocurrencies fade out of existence, with the ones remaining being those that address serious widespread issues (or streamline existing processes) while capturing more market cap than their competitors.
Operating under this assumption means that most if not all of the coins I trade on a short term basis would not pass my screening for long term holds.
For example, I don’t see Verge (XVG) passing the test of time — but I do see it going 2–3x in the near future and I’ll hold it until it does or I’m proven wrong.
On the other hand, ETH and NEO are competitors. They solve the same problems, are both serious coins with large market caps, and I hold both as long term investments. I’m not hedging against my bets by investing in competitors. It’s feasible to me that these two entities could co-exist in the future in a fashion similar to how Apple and Samsung coexist.
I believe they both have too much funding, too much support, and too large of a community to fizzle out completely.
7 MONEY ON EXCHANGES DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU
I know that everyone and their mother preaches about this on Reddit/Twitter, so I won’t spend too much time on this.
It defeats the purpose of a decentralized currency — one which you are in complete control of with no need for third parties to store or transfer your money — to trust a third party to store and transfer your money.
There have been several times in the past where trusting third parties (exchanges, mining pools, even gambling sites) has resulted in the loss of devastating amounts of cryptocurrency.
Read up on Mt.Gox, the first Bitcoin exchange ever to open its virtual doors. You’ll begin to understand that danger in unnecessarily trusting third parties in a trust-less system.
8 DON’T MARGIN TRADE
If you don’t know what Margin trading is, just skip ahead. Don’t even look it up. It’s dangerous and a very efficient way to lose your money fast.
Margin trading is trading with leverage. Which means that I can put $100 into a margin account, and get 3x my trading balance in buying power.
That also means that if I trade 3x my balance ($300), and I my position goes -$100, I will lose everything I’m holding as collateral.
I made more money in a short time frame than I’ve ever made in my life through margin trading.
I also lost more money faster than I’ve ever lost it before through margin trading.
I repeat, don’t margin trade.
9 IF YOU DO MARGIN TRADE, NEVER MARGIN TRADE WITH BITCOIN AS YOUR COLLATERAL
I knew you wouldn’t listen to me.
Since you still want to margin trade, at least heed this one word of advice.
Never use Bitcoin as collateral for your margin trading.
Never put Bitcoin into your margin account and open long or short positions with the buying power given to you by that Bitcoin.
I can’t think of any other ways to word it.
Don’t do it.
If you’re going to margin trade, leverage fiat.
This is something that was told to me when I first started margin trading. I didn’t do it for a while, but after a godlike winning streak I felt untouchable.
For about 2 years , I didn’t place a losing margin trade. My account balance was exploding. I had been religiously removing my profits every week from my margin account to buy BTC and set aside as a long term hold. It was a part of my investment strategy; use margin trading to increase my holdings in coins I really believed in.
One day, I saw an opportunity that I thought would make me rich.
The market had just finished the bull run that took Bitcoin to $69,000. I had closed most of my margin positions and realized a solid profit from the run — at this point I was just sitting patiently with my entire margin balance available to me.
I was waiting for the dip.
I thought my salvation came when BTC dropped down to $18k and bounced back up to $20k. I was blinded by my winning streak.
I went all in on a few long positions. I hadn’t seen some of my favorite coins this low in months, it felt like the greatest flash sale of all time.
The next day, the market dropped.
I was completely maxed out on the leverage available to me, and the only funds I had available was the BTC profits I had been setting aside every week.
I loaded them up into my margin account and gave myself a lot more breathing room to avoid liquidation.
If I had stopped there, I would have been fine.
After transferring BTC into my margin account, I noticed that I had a lot more of a tradable balance from leveraging the BTC than I realized I’d have. Still feeling semi-godlike, I decided to double down on my positions.
“Nothing has changed, I still believe the market will correct within a couple days— I’m not going to have “weak hands” and realize the loss”, I thought to myself.
The next day, the market dropped.
I freaked out for a couple more days until I woke up to being liquidated. The day before Christmas.
Everything I had made in my 2 month spree was gone, but I had learned an extremely expensive lesson that I will never forget.
10 DON’T TRADE/INVEST WITHOUT A STRATEGY
You should not be investing without a strategy and goals.
Your strategy will include the tactics you will use to reach your goals.
For example: if my goal is to own X NEO, X ETH, X BTC, and X ETC by Q4 2018.
My strategy will include all the methods I plan on using to add to those long term holds I have in my goal.
Failure to plan is planning to fail. Determine your goals, and write them down by hand.
#GPT-4 #Launchpad #CreditSuisse #Fed #BTC
BY LEON TECH.
