DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Cryptocurrency, BitCoin/AltCoin

Hey,

Anyone into exchange of cryptocurrency, ie BitCoin/Altcoin. I'm just getting started, and looking for tips on the Do's vs. Don'ts, what trends to look for, etc.

Any help is much appreciated.

Beyond the obvious of don’t put more in than you can afford to lose, not a lot of other advice. Download the Coinbase app. Buy with a credit or debit card preferably. Bank transfers take FOREVER to go through. Meaning you won’t have instant access to your coin funds for fast trading.
Watch the market closely. Buy low.
Ethereum is selling around $750. I bought last week when the price plummeted to $550. It’s back to $750. Litecoin can be had now under $300. My purchases there average around $326. So I’m down a little. I plan on holding both for the longer haul anyway.
Biggest thing...don’t play if you can’t afford to lose.

Good luck.

Portland hit the main points. I was in for about $5k, but sold because I'm selling my house and needed to have some electrical and plumbing work completed. In 3 months, my $5k was $6500, so I'm happy. Of course, If I'd waited a month, I'd have been up to $28k, but that's life. When I purchased, bitcoin was around $4500, etherium was under $300 and ripple xrp was about 19 cents.

I'm not an expert, but I think XRP is the way to go. Not only because of the price, but because this is the one that has a focus on fintech and big business.

I used bitstamp because coinbase was a pain the rump. Every attempt to transfer money failed (2 banks and a credit card).

Be very careful with cryptocurrency. Ever since investors got involved there have been a lot of questionable things (Lots of rumors and allegations of insider trading and washing) happening to the market. Preferably, you should really study the market, and all the coins, every day if you don't want to be tricked. Reddit and twitter are great places to find information on the markets, although private forums are probably the best. Also, keep your wallet on a flashdrive away from the internet. Also, keep in mind the tax laws for crypto currency, the new law doesn't allow you to exchange cryptocurrencies for other coins tax free anymore, so it's also important to keep more records. Coins are taxed as income if they're not held for a year. After a year they're categorized as capital gains.

Bitcoin is still the best bet if you just want to hold onto an investment and not think about it until the next quarter. They have the lowest limit of cc's at 21 million coins. So, it will be a sound investment in the long run.

Litecoins give me anxiety as the creator just sold all of his coins, but it looks like that isn't affecting investor confidence in the coin. I'm still weary of it.

Dogecoin, I like this because it's super cheap and easy to use.

Monero. Remember that the real demand in cryptos will always be through the trading of black market goods. Monero is the coin of choice for such unsavory characters. It's safer to invest in a coin used by its users as a currency than a coin bought to be an investment.

Tron. Another of the cheaper coins that's still down. John McAfee the creator of McAfee has been tweeting out "coins of the day" which has created a pump and dump market for a lot of these smaller coins, and this dump isn't quite over yet, so it can had for cheaper than usual.

Iota is interesting because it is not created via mining and all the iota coins are available. Their deal with Microsoft lends me to think that they will end up being either too big to ignore or too big to fail.

Ripple has been talked about on here, so I'll just briefly add that banks have a vested interest that they can use ripple to send money between banks in foreign countries. Kinda weird to have the banks be so in control of the value for a coin, but it probably leads to a steady investment over the long term.

Disclaimer: I do have investments in all of these coins

Now that was very educational ; Thank you gentleman ..

Thanks for all the info.

This is definitely addicting. I have my eye on a few. I've gotten some XRP so far. Looking to add Tron, Stellar Lumens, and maybe a few Litecoin.

Especially, how does an investor avoid getting swindled/ Is there any protection? Sounds like it is the Wild, Wild West all over again.

Prices on the four major coins have fallen sharply today. If you’re in the game, now is a good time to buy.

So what is Block Chain? I hear that is what everyone should be focused on as it's some kind of unhackable technology?

Block chain is a term for a digital ledger. A digital tracking of the money that’s being exchanged.
Man prices are really down right now. Litecoin can be had for around $160. Ethereum around $800. Bitcoin under $10,000.
Using Coinbase you can purchase partial amounts. Say you throw $100 at Bitcoin right now. When the price goes back up, and it will, you’ll be up by however much percentage it rises. That is if you choose to sell. Earlier this month Bitcoin was trading around $19,000.
Yes this is speculative trading. But the stock market in many ways is too. Bitcoin is not going away. It’s worldwide and it’s spreading. I saw an add this morning on my Facebook feed where a local dentist is now accepting it as payment. Other companies across the globe are following suite.
If you’ve got some ‘fun money’ it’s a place to play it.

Market is picking back up. If one had placed that $100 bitcoin purchase at its low today you could turn it for $122 right now.
It is the Wild West but there’s money to be made. When it climbs back to $19,000 that same $100 is suddenly $200. Extrapolate that out with a bigger investment... now hold it for a couple years as there’s talk of bitcoin going over $50,000, some day much much more..real money can be made.
Bard, you asked how to not get swindled. My response is through Coinbase. It’s a solid place to start. It’s reputable. Your ‘wallet’ is safe as long as you have a solid password and such. Much like any bank account app. The rest is a monitary gamble. It’s not for those struggling to pay the bills. Don’t get in deeper than you can afford to lose. But if you’re smart and watch the market, buying low, there’s money to be made. Playing the long game is the best chance of bigger returns. Much like any market.
There’s other trading platforms that can get you into smaller, newer altcoins. I use Binance. Through it you can buy lesser coins. Many of these are real gambles. Some aren’t going to make it. You can lose everything. But Bitcoin once traded for $0.009 per at one time. Just think 10 or so years ago a $100 purchase could have made you VERY wealthy today.
Through Binance I’ve purchased a few altcoin. Some only costing $0.10 to $1.75 per. A $60 gamble here and there with the hopes of one of those coins taking off is worth a gamble to me. I’m not taking wild stabs. I do some research to find out who’s backing them, what they’re attempting to do with their coin etc. Maybe I lose my $60 or so. Or maybe Tron (TRX) becomes as big as they hope, now working with Alibaba, and they explode. My 300 coin purchased at $0.10 per can be big money if they one day hit $1000 per, or $5000 per, or $10,000 per. Oh dear God that’d be awesome. A man can dream.
People once said the internet was a fad. Who’s going to have a computer in their home anyway? A few bucks thrown in Apple stock back then and you’re life would be different today.
I’ve chosen to take a little risk. I don’t want to look back in 10 years and wish I had. In 10 years I won’t miss the little that I’ve put in if I’m wrong and it’s all gone.
Can’t win if you don’t play.

Thanks for all of the great info in this thread. I've invested in the stock market for years for both personal and retirement. I've thought about getting into this as well with some "play" money as you suggest Portland. Signed up for an account on Coinbase today, gotta get some funds into it now. I'm going to take a look at some of ones on Binance as well - sounds kinka like penny stocks (I've never invested in those).

Do any of you have good resources for research? Or just a standard google search will suffice?

Kinda disappointed Coinbase has a cap of 2k to add funds from bank accounts. It's weekly but would have liked to get more in there to start since it seems like a good time to buy. Wire transfer can do more, but it takes longer, may have to go that route today.

I'm honestly surprised you could sign up for coinbase. I know a lot of exchanges have barred new registrations.

Got in last night around 10pm or so. They are getting overwhelmed based on the research I've done, they just can't support it with so many new users so it doesn't surprise me that they are stopping new signups. Glad I got in, wish it was for more than 2k.

Yeah, I know last month like 5 decent exchanges closed their doors to new registers. Some sites allow more than 2k deposits, but require a lot of personal information (SSN, Photo ID, etc). It used to be en vogue to either use stolen credit cards to buy coins or buy coins and report them as theft to the bank. So the people were cashing out twice and the exchanges were hemorrhaging money. This lead the exchanges start limiting deposits on cards.

What other ones do you use? I've seen a lot of mention of Binance and Blockchain in my searching.

CBus
All I can say for research is using google. There’ll be all kinds of conflicting reports on different coins. You just have to wade through it all and go with your gut. I own Ripple (XRP), Tron (TRX), Stellar Lumens (XLM). I’m looking at maybe picking up some REQ. Plus I have my hand in three of the big four, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. (I got Ethereum after NK hacked the system and the prices plummeted for a couple hours. Ethereum hit $550. It’s since rebounded to over $1000. Watch the markets frequently and buy in low. I got lucky that day and just happened to be checking at like 5:30am. An hour later it climbed out of the dip. I’d have missed it otherwise.)
Binance makes you buy altcoin using Bitcoin or Ethereum. You can’t use US dollars. Use Ethereum as the transaction fees are lower than with Bitcoin.

I use a lot as I like to keep my coins offline and buy so many altcoins. Some exchanges have slightly different pricing on coins so it's important to keep a few on hand in my case. I trade using Coinbase, Kracken, bitfinex, Gate.io and Binance.

I see people talk about ‘keeping their coin offline’. What do you mean by that? It’s something I’ve wondered about but haven’t looked into yet as I’m just getting into the altcoin game. Please explain.

Keeping your coins offline means that your coin wallet is not connected to the internet. This way if your account on an exchange is hacked, nothing can really happen as your account is empty of any coins. Worst case scenario, the Exchange itself is hacked and they lose almost all of their coins and money. This is what happened to Mt. Gox a few years ago. https://www.wired.com/2014/03/bitcoin-exchange/ That is a Wired article that explains how Mt. Gox was hacked for 850k bitcoins that they were holding. It says in the article that the heist was worth $450 million, but today the heist is well over 10 billion dollars.
I was always told to have an offline wallet when I started just due to the nature of the deep web. This link talks about how to set up an offline wallet.

Also, altcoins are pretty dangerous, but fun. Altcoins are dangerous as there are a lot of pump and dumps, when a group of people buy the coin and then tells everyone to also buy it so that the price of the coin skyrockets. At that point the original group sells a fair amount of their coins and cashes out. They rinse and repeat this process a lot of times on a lot of coins, which makes the coins super volatile and you can't really assess the value of the altcoin. However, if you're looking for a long term gains, most seem like a safe bet just because how cheap they are thus you can buy a lot more for a lower price. Honestly, if you want to invest in altcoins, then you really have to pay attention to the market of the coin. At any point it could be the target of a pump and dump which could destroy your investment depending on when you buy.

January has been tough... 16/17th was a huge low. Not great today either. Using this as an opportunity to buy the dips.

Charts show January is historically a red month... Lets hope things turn around soon.

I've done very well completely by accident. One of the only times in my life that has ever happened. Bought $2000 in Bitcoin a little more than a year ago to join some work mates who were part of a korean "investment thing" I'm not going to get into here but then it didn't happen. I wouldn't say I forgot about it exactly but I just didn't do anything about it. In November I start hearing about the price jump and in December I look in on my little 2K and it's up to a bit over 40K at one point. As always though I hold on too long and it's now hovering around 24K now. I took my original 2k out when it was near $30k. At this point I'm just going to let it ride. I don't need the money right now and there's still a lot of whales holding a lot of coin. And I keep hearing about a big crypto shake out coming that actually might actually benefit bitcoin in the long run. Just keep your nose up for crack downs in china, korea, India, mongolia and the other big mining locales.

February is starting out with a huge down turn. Bitcoin is under $8000.

Man.. I think Monday was the lowest in a long time.. I took it as another opportunity to grab more.

Just hoping to HODL and in a few years I can sell for huge gains.

That drop occurred over some major credit card companies no longer allowing purchases. I put a little money in play. I’m down still on BTC, up a good chunk still on ETC, and am down on my LTC. Unfortunately I made my first, largest LTC purchase when the market was way up. It has a ways to go before I’m even there.
I’m in small on a few altcoins that are down too. Bigger gambles, smaller amounts, possibility for a big gain.
It’s a gamble. But it’s only ‘fun money’.
I don’t do casinos or sports betting. This is as close as it gets.
I’m in on the HODL train.

I do the same thing with the bitcoin investments. Its my fun money. I don't go to casinos or sports gamble, so a hundred here or there I put on these and have fun. I just bout some LTC and ETH on Wednesday

How yall doing?

BTC dropped like heck. Alt coins taking HUGE hits as well.

Yeah, bitcoin was something like $19,000 in late 2017. It's around $4,500 right now.