2018 Crypto Guide / How To Buy Coins

Happy new year to all of you! I’m guessing a lot of people got money as presents and are now looking to invest in Cryptocurrencies. Therefore i updated my guide for you guys. Hope it can help one or two of you.

If you only want to know how to buy coins other then Bitcoin, Ethereum & Litecoin just read Chapter 3 & 4 and in case you still have to buy Ethereum you should also read Chapter 2.

1. Decide on your goal

First you should decide what your goal is with your investment. Do you want to make money short term, mid term or long term. If you don’t have enough time to spend on your projects daily, you should consider investing only mid or long term.

If you have a lot of time and want to make bigger gains you should choose short term investments.

2. Choose your projects / coins

Find projects that you actually believe will rise in the short/mid/long term. Some important factors to consider are the market cap, which team is working on the project, how skilled they are, the roadmap, current state of the development (is there a working product or will there be one soon?), and how much the market the project tries to capture is worth. What are the problems they are trying to solve and who are the competitors. Doing proper research will make you feel more confident when your are holding your coins, because there will be ups and downs. Check also if the coin has fixed total supply and what percentage of the total supply is in circulation to predict future inflation. You can find a lot of useful information about the coins on coinmarketcap.com. If you click on your desired coin under tab/markets you can see a list of alt-exchanges where you can buy it. You can find a lot of useful information on Reddit as well. Almost every coin has their own subreddit and there is a list of Subreddits where you can find information in general:

www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency

www.reddit.com/r/altcoin

www.reddit.com/r/Best_of_Crypto

www.reddit.com/r/CryptoMarkets

3. Procedure for buying

Most of the alt coins are trading on exchanges for BTC or ETH. That means you first have to buy either BTC or ETH. Coinbase is the most popular choice for that. You can register via this link to get $10 in bitcoin for free after spending $100: https://www.coinbase.com/join/595d0ee54540cd0a68b55578

1. Sign up and complete verification with Coinbase

2. Link your bank account to Coinbase and deposit money from your bank into Coinbase or pay with credit card (instant but higher fees)

For trading always buy Ethereum because transferring it is much cheaper than Bitcoin. After you bought ETH you can transfer it to your exchanges of choice and start trading. (Steps for the transfer down below)

How to buy ETH/Binance/Litecoin without fees (Coinbase/GDAX)

1. Sign up and complete verification with GDAX https://www.gdax.com (GDAX is part of coinbase)

2. Transfer money from Coinbase to your GDAX account (this is instant)

3. Trade using the “trading window” on the left side of your screen; make a limit order, and you will pay no fees whatsoever (if you make a market order, you will pay a 0.3% fee (still way less fees then on coinbase)

Some of the popular altcoin exchanges are Binance, Bittrex, Bitfinex, etc. I prefer Binance since they have the lowest fees (0.1% compared to 0.2%+ on other exchanges). The user interface is very easy and intuitive to use. You can even lower the fees by paying the fees in Binance’s own coin Binancecoin (BNB).

Just buy 1–2 BNB with your Ethereum and activate “using BNB for fees” in the Account tab https://www.binance.com/userCenter/myAccount.html. Then the fees will go down to 0.05%.

You can use my link to register: https://www.binance.com/?ref=10051085

Make sure to activate 2 factor authentication for logging into Binance. Security is essential, especially when trading larger sums.

Some interesting coins will start on small exchanges and will later be added on bigger ones. It often makes sense to buy them on the smaller exchanges, because the price rises as soon as they get added to the big ones.

Here are a few examples, just click the referral links to register:

Kucoin: https://www.kucoin.com/#/?r=E5gGVH

Coinnest: https://www.coinnest.co.kr

Mercatox: https://mercatox.com

3.1 How to transfer your Ethereum to Binance for trading:

1. Go to www.binance.com

2. Click Deposits and Withdrawals

3. Choose the Ethereum Wallet

4. Click deposit -> it shows you an deposit address

5. Copy that address

6. Go to www.coinbase.com

7. Go on Account and click on your ETH Wallet

8. Click SEND

9. Paste the Adress you just copied and send it over

10. It takes 30 confirmations, then the ETH will show on Binance. Depending on the traffic on Binance it can take a little while until you have the coins in your wallet.

4. Buying Coins with the transferred Ethereum

Click on Exchange -> Basic

Interface:

5. Tips

Read a little bit about FOMO — Fear of Missing out. Don’t buy at all-time high if the price was rising a lot in a short time. Usually search for the dip (when the coin goes down) and buy there, if you think it will go up again. Right now most altcoins are very much influenced by Bitcoin. When Bitcoin goes up, most altcoins will fall because people sell altcoins to put money into Bitcoin. When Bitcoin falls drastically most other cryptos fall too. When Bitcoin is steady and stays about the same level for a while alt coins usually go up. Often you can take out your initial investment after a short while and just trade with your gains. If you want to try day trading, watch the market for a couple days, often you can see patterns of rise and fall. You can then try to buy the coin during a dip and sell when it goes up. After it goes down to a dip you can buy again to increase your stack. I would do this, especially in the beginning, only with a small part of your holdings, because if you sell and it goes higher, you may have to / want to buy back In higher and loose part of your stack.

6. Wallets:

If you invest a decent amount of money, you should definitely think about storing your coins on a hardware wallet.

I personally own a Ledger Nano S and like it a lot. New coins get added quite fast, because the platform is very developer friendly.

You can buy it here with my referral link: https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/8593

If you don’t want to spend money on a hardware wallet but still want to be safer then having all your coins on an exchange get a desktop wallet.

Example: https://www.exodus.io

(Version 1.00)