The beginners bible to cryptocurrencies

cryptoassailant (25)in #cryptocurrency • 7 years ago (edited)

I've been in crypto for about a year now. Over that time I have enjoyed some incredible highs but learned many hard lessons as well. I have built this guide so that new traders can learn from my mistakes and skip those lessons. This will fast track you on your ability to research coins from ICOs to legacy coins. My first few months was just spent discovering a lot of these website to utilize for deciding which coin to buy and why. If you want to find the information it is 100% in the links below. Want to be a trader and not just an investor? Watch the youtube links and follow the babypips guide provided. If you want to listen to some hard learned advice then heed my warnings below. They are guidelines that I base my every day trading on now. Some of it might sound obvious but when you get caught in the moment and haven't learned to separate your emotions from trading... it's a bit harder said then done. However if you listen to my tips and do your own research then you can every bit as if not more successful then any trader out there! Happy trading friends and welcome to the world of crypto.

First things I was given to read through.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/66a1s5/dont_know_what_ardor_platform_is/

https://www.coinbase.com/join/592ee0cb64a0156d8a461e96

https://www.reddit.com/r/altcoin/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoMarkets/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/

https://minergate.com/downloads/gui

These are all the websites I use currently to track coins, learn about new ICOs, and study trading techniques. Sub reddits and Slack groups are also great place to follow current news on a specific coin you like.

Market News and Tools

http://www.coindesk.com - Overview of what's going on in the crypto world

http://cryptopanic.com - An aggregator of various crypto sites and news, filterable. I use the pro version to customize the feeds but the free version is good enough for most.

Excel- Great for keeping track of entry/exit points. How much did you really make off that trade? Also great for people new to trading. Just do paper trades on excel until your comfortable jumping in with your own money.

http://cryptomaps.org - Visualization of price across different segments, primarily hashing functions and ICO release dates

http://onchainfx.com - A better version of coin market cap, has all sort of columns and you can add flags. Only downside is it only has 61 cryptos, but its always adding news ones.

http://icotracker.net - I like this site for looking at what ICO are coming up

http://icobench.com - Another ICO tracker which does nice summaries, shows teams, milestones, financials and gives a rating for each ICO

http://solume.io - compares the number of Twitter mention increase decrease to price

http://eveningstar.io - this is basically like Morning Star except for cryptos

https://bitcoin.tax - for calculating taxes owed on your crypto gains

www.coinmarketcal.com - great for keeping track of upcoming news about coins

https://cointelegraph.com/ - Various news about companies, coins and predictions.

https://btcmanager.com

http://www.livebitcoinnews.com/

https://github.com/kilimchoi/cryptocurrency (Great for keeping up with company tech advances)

https://www.coinschedule.com/ (Good for tracking current and upcoming ICOs)

www.babypips.com (where I started learning how to day trade for free)

https://www.udemy.com/ (Cheap paid trading lessons)

https://protonmail.com/ (secure email for trading cryptos- NEVER USE GMAIL and have a dedicated email for each exchange)

Portfolio Tracking Apps

Delta

Tabtrader

Coinstat

Charting Sites

www.Coinigy.com (charting and trading)

www.tradingview.com (Just Charting but better program imo.)

Basic but Important Advice

Here are 11 important trading rules I firmly believe people should understand:

1 Be safe and stay secure

Never give a group the info to exchanges or wallets. A lot of scam sites will “trade for you” etc don’t fall for this. Make a bookmark chapter on your computer for crypto. Go on each individual site and add it to that chapter. If you just google binance or crypto there will be phishing sites hiden into those links. It will look like the legit site but a few things will be changed. You’ll enter your info and now whoever runs that site has all of your information. Always make sure you see the green lock before the site to know it is secure. Also make a new email and password for every exchange and site! Never use gmail either! This way if they get one exchange they won’t get everything. Next get a nano S ledger and keep everything you can on there. Anything you can’t keep it on a different wallet. More spread out your stuff is the safer it will be. This is crypto…. There is no FDIC. You get hacked and your $$$$ is GONE.

2 Recognize that lots of people actually are also losing money.

There is a major misconception with crypto that everyone is making money. Are most making money? Yes. Is everyone? NO. Understanding this is very important so you can evaluate how much your going to invest. DO NOT put your rent money into crypto thinking you’ll double it by next month. Only put in what you can afford to lose. Crypto is very profitable if done right but it is very volatile and will cause you to lose just as fast. Be smart and stay educated. No one wants to be a bag holder.

3 Holding will give you more returns over a year than day trading. (If your new)

When first learning to trade and the market, holding can make you way more money. Many of experienced traders still only invest and don’t actually day trade. I don’t care who it is people lose money day trading. I know I do. Noone is perfect and no chart is perfect. With that said you should definitely learn a few indicaticators to help understand what good entry points are. RSI ( relative strength index) is a very basic but important indicator. It will let you know how oversold/overbought it is. Anything under 30 is oversold meaning a correction up should be coming(good time to buy). Anything over 70 means it is oversold and a correction down is probably coming(good time to sell). MACD is useful for finding the long term price divergence vs short term movement. Trading based on news is also important. Long term you should look at the team/roadmap to see what they plan to do. Short term see what they have coming out soon that could make the price jump. TA is great and a chart could look good but also make sure to do your fundamental analysis to see if there’s a reason to make X coin pop.

4 Take your time and research what you are putting your money into.

I cannot stress this enough, you are buying an asset with your hard earned money, and it should have some utility. Don’t just buy something because X tells you it’s a great long term investment. ALWAYS DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH (DYOR) The white paper is an important place to start. White papers can always be found on the main page of a coin. An easy way to avoid scam coins is to see if the blockchain has real use for that technology or need for it. For example, the blockchain is immutable so the use case of tracking designer luxury goods across a supply chain and guaranteeing authenticity of a item makes sense. On the other hand trying to push the blockchain transactions into dentistry makes little sense. Designer good companies have a problem with conterfeit goods entering the supply chain and need some solution, dentists don't have a problem with charging people on their VISA for fixing cavities. Ask yourself how the coins are created and how they keep their value? Are the used for real transactions and burned? Are they just a token so your buying into the company and the value comes the progress the company makes? Trying to determine if a company has value or is worth investing in ask yourself a few questions before.

What is the problem or transactional inefficiency the coin is trying to solve?

What is the Dev Team like? What is their track record? How are they funded, organized?

Who is their competition and how big is the market they're targeting? What is the roadmap they created?

How will they attract their target market, how is their marketing?

How does the coin derive its value? Is there some sort of dividend structure, profit sharing plan, or is it a store of value within a digital economy? What is the float schedule like going forward (ie. how many coins will be released or burned)?

5 Realizing what gives a coin worth

Coin that has 10 billion in circulation is going to worth far less than a coin that has 5 million in circulation. Just because a coin is a few cents does not mean it is a good buy. It may be “cheap” but that doesn’t mean it is undervalued. A few weeks ago John Mcafee made a comparison between XMR($348.77), ZEC($622.29) and XVG($.13). This made the newbies think that verge was insanely undervalued and a great buy! Was it undervalued a bit yes but will it ever be worth what the other two are? HELL NO. Why is this you may ask? Well a coins value is given by its circulating supply vs total market cap. XMR is worth $348.77 with 15,591,473 circulating coins and a $5,430,120,282 market cap. ZEC is worth $622.86 with 3,036,656 circulating coins and a $1,891,461,851 market cap. Then you have XVG worth $.13 with 14,528,298,322 circulating coins and a $2,014,551,958 market cap. Don’t be fooled by a cheap price. Just because it’s cheap doesn’t mean it is a great buy. Verge has a 120 million higher market cap but is worth $622.73 less than ZEC

6 Don't chase a pump

Don’t go chasing green candles. NOTHING can go up forever. When I first started trading I fell victim to this and people do every day. This is an unregulated market. Which means nothing can stop P&Ds from happening. There are large groups on telegram/discord built around doing just this. Don’t get caught with your pants down buying the green and have them slap you on the ass when they dump. Trust me, 9/10 times you WILL lose money chasing the green. Blood in the streets is the best thing you can see when playing the market. Also, try to stay away from smaller trading volume coins. Small shit coins with less than 100btc daily trading volume are much for susceptible to being a P&D

7 You are not going to hit every major jump

Right now the crypto market is like a giant dumb money party filled with coked up headless chickens running around throwing money at every shitcoin with a low nominal price hoping it goes to $10,000 like Bitcoin. Missing a jump is better than buying late due to fomo and losing your money. XVG went from sub .01 to .20+. Yes money could of been made if you bought at .15 but if you got greedy and didn’t sell at +.20 you’d be a bag holder when its sitting at sub .10. Sometimes the best trade is not taking a trade.

8 Understand when your falling into FOMO

Let’s be honest… We have all done it. A coins rapidly going up… everyone’s making money… you missed your entry point but I swear there’s still money to be made! Then yourself a favor, step back, take a deep breath and realize you are in FOMO land. This will ultimately cause emotional trades to happen and emotional trades generally lose to you losing that hard earned money.

9 Think of your total portfolio and not just your individual positions

Diversifying is 100% a good thing. Never put all your eggs in one basket. However, don’t choose 20-30 coins just hoping one or two of them blows up. In my opinion you should only hold as many coins as you can study each day. You want to be able to stay up with the news and price of each coin you hold. 6-12 positions is a good standard to look for. This also depends how much you have to invest as well and your goals. Try to decide which areas of crypto have the most potential vs the ones that won’t end up going anywhere.

10 Only invest what you can afford to have locked in for the long term.

The entire market is extremely inflated right now. It could continue this way for a few years. We’re at 700 Billion dollar market cap right now. The US stock market didn’t pop until 7 Trillion. However this is a new market and anything is possible. A great trading stratagey I believe in and use the most to increase my long term hold portfolio is this. Once you double your profit, pull out the principal so you are only playing with profits. Then your initial investment into a new coin. Rise and Repeat.

11 Use secure passwords

Don’t use a password like cutiepie5 or something that relates to your personally info. Broncoslove33 is not a good password. Here is how you make a secure email you can remember. Find a saying you’ve know your whole life.

A Bird In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush

Now take the first letter of each word, change a few capitals and put a couple numbers in it.

ABIT4HIWT5ITB88

Now you have a secure password you should be able to remember. (this is just an example)

How to buy

To start buying crypto you want to make an account on GDAX, Coinbase or Gemini. Here you will buy your BTC, ETH, or LTC. If you want to dive deeper then you have to make an account on Binance, Cryptopia, KuCoin or Bittrex. These are basically the E-trades of cryptos and depending what coin you want will depend which exchange you need to be on. Below I have added referral links for most that will save you some money on fees. Also sending LTC or ETH is always cheaper and faster then BTC.

Good Youtube Channels For Trading Lessons

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-f5nPBEDyUBZz_jOPBwAfQ

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdC3h2m88FC02Yw-A_VESRQ

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvQ12D5GqyW1qtM0a3Qpwcw

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD9j5qyDqQvb9qnLss3vxww

Referral Links

Coinbase- https://www.coinbase.com/join/592ee0cb64a0156d8a461e96

Binance- https://www.binance.com/?ref=16676730

Cryptopia- https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/Register?referrer=cryptofied134

KuCoin- https://www.kucoin.com/#/

Bittrex- www.Bittrex.com (doesn’t have a referral link)

Join my telegram channel for daily calls and advice on trading as well!