Investing into Cryptocurrencies Quickstart

As it is well known, if you really have no use for your money and would like to lose some of it or lose your money completely, then the easiest way to do so is through cryptocurrency trading. The same also applies for the opposite of the statement. We have all heard about the overnight billionaires who invested in some funny coin and can now afford to do whatever they'd like.

In order to gain, you have to lose something. An example in this case, is that if you'd like to read more of this blog, you would be losing time and probably brain cells. A small price to pay for premium content though so let's just continue.

Disclaimer

Like one of my favorite crypto youtubers, Guy from the Coinbureau, says, “Anything I say and/or recommend is in no way financial advice”. Cryptocurrency trading, same as any form of trading has its fair share of risks and rewards. It is up to you to pick whatever fits for you and use that to your advantage.

You may or may not lose all your hard earned money playing around with this risky investment. Also, kindly don't sue me for trash talking, and/or publishing misleading content, I don't have money.

Basic rules

Cryptocurrency like anything in this life, has a few set of rules. You could deep dive into it like I did and learn them the hard way or you could just trust this reviewed resource(cited from - trust me bro).

1. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose

Unless you want to stare at your ceiling at 3am listening to juice world and other heart break song artists wondering why life is this hard, just follow this golden rule. Cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile, especially if you're dealing with less known cryptocurrencies(more about this below). Your entire portfolio could get wiped out in a matter of seconds and there's nothing you can do about that. Maintain your blood pressure by using only small amounts of money.

2. Don't recruit or recommend crypto to friends and family

If you prefer not having a social life, then you're free to ignore this wonderful advice. Losing your money is one thing, but losing other people's hard earned money can get you killed. Let everyone make their own personal decisions and figure out things on their own before your get disowned.

3. Do your own research

We've had a lot of donts so here is the strongest do that you should always keep in mind. By research I do not mean looking at my portfolio and copying it coin by coin or following what the popular youtuber said will 1000000000x in the coming 2 days. Check out the coin's website and the social media following.

Research also on where, how and when to buy not only what to buy. A simple example I can give to you, for those in Kenya, Coinbase, a centralized exchange, allows you to buy cryptocurrency via a credit card, but you cannot withdraw your funds back to fiat, the pain.

4. Keep your investments, passwords and keys to yourself

Don't trust anyone with your crypto or money. There is no assured way to make money risk free. If you want to go far, you'd need to be stingy with everything you have and trust no one. Nothing is free also, if there was/is an airdrop(free tokens or gifts to be received), you'll know about them from official sites not shady websites, make sure to check and confirm the website addresses you visit.

Strategy

A strategy is what determines how much you'll earn and/or lose. Personally, my strategy is, buy, hold through the storm and only sell when in profit(even 0.01% counts as profit FYI). I usually buy stablecoins(USDT, USDC, UST or DAI), if you don't know what these are, then you probably need to do research or just read below, from a reputable exchange.

A stablecoin is a class of cryptocurrencies that attempt to offer price stability and are backed by a reserve asset. Stablecoins have gained traction as they attempt to offer the best of both worlds—the instant processing and security or privacy of payments of cryptocurrencies, and the volatility-free stable valuations of fiat currencies.

_“Definition from Investopedia” - Investopedia

Most crypto nerds remind you to DCA(dollar cost average) which just entails buying recursively at a specific scheduled time every month, week or day automatically regardless of the price. This is a very solid way to ensure you don't have to continuously check the cryptocurrency charts and hodl if you're thinking long term.

I, however, believe there's a better way. Personally, I hold money as stablecoins and only buy a crypto after research and when I feel it has dipped enough for me to buy. It may dip further but that's perfectly fine, as long as I don't try and time the market.

Checking the Fear and Greed Index, helps in making the decision whether to buy or sell. Panic buying and/or panic selling is a bad way to do things as you'll lose a lot of money and potential gains. The fear and greed index isn't foolproof and might actually not help in many cases so intuition might need to step in in this type of strategy.

Whichever option you choose, if you're thinking of holding medium to long term then I would highly advise one to stake whatever cryptocurrency you're holding or at least loan it out to companies such as BlockFi or Celsius(I personally use Celsius) in order to receive a small amount of profit as you plan your crypto exit strategy.

The how

Now to the main event, buying of crypto. Since this is supposed to be a very quick and easy way, I'll just show the defaults. I'll be using Binance, because I'm Kenyan and I haven't used Kucoin for a while so I can't say anything about it yet.

I'll definitely skip the creating an account creation part and finishing their KYC process which is a thorough pain in the . You'll need money to invest in the first place obviously, so this is just a reminder in case you thought everything is free. The money should be in digital format, mpesa, paypal, credit card, skrill, chipper cash etc etc, you get what I mean.

If you're on the binance website, the buy option is pretty straight forward. Piece of advice, always calculate which option will offer a higher crypto to fiat ratio between the P2P option of buying and buying directly via a credit/debit card. Usually during a bear market

A bear market occurs when prices in the market fall by 20% or more.)

- Investopedia yet again

The reason it is cheaper to buy using a credit card is because most P2P trades have not been updated during such a time and you'll end up paying expensively. P2P trades are easier though if you don't have a credit/debit card and/or prefer not having your financial decisions online. If you'd like you can even visit the seller of your cryptocurrency physically and give them the money as long as it's within the time limit set.

The Binance mobile app is a bit of a mess if you ask me though. The UI(User Interface) is good looking don't get me wrong, but the UX(User Experience) is very wanting. Before you understand how to maneuver and buy crypto, as a new user, it will probably take you at least 10 minutes of tapping all of the icons on the screen until you eventually end up on something that makes sense and you make your first purchase.

On the Binance mobile app, navigate to the “Trades” menu, the middle button on the bottom navigation bar(subject to change though, they know what they're doing though). At the top of the trades page, you have two options, the buy using fiat option which after you select, provides you with the option to buy/sell your crypto easily via debit/credit. Alternatively you can select the P2P menu to buy directly from a user. The number of cryptos listed may be underwhelming but there's a way to access/buy other cryptos after a P2P trade.

After buying a stablecoin such as USDT or BUSD via the P2P option, you'll need to move your funds from the funding wallet to your spot wallet in order to play with your crypto on the app. You'll need to move your crypto back to the funding wallet in case you want to sell your crypto via the P2P option afterwards.

Armed with your stablecoin in your spot wallet, you can use the convert option(to easily swap between different cryptocurrencies) or my personal choice using the spot option. On the Spot tab, you can change the different crypto pairs by tapping on the currently listed pair such as AXS/USDT and choosing the amount you'd like to buy. I'll go into the details of the different options provided by Binance for recurrent buying and what not in another blog post but for now that is all that is needed to get started.

Well, that's all the time I had for today, I have been your host, mentor etc etc. Peace out .