Getting started with Cryptocurrency & how to purchase it [Coinbase/Binance/Kucoin]

Hello,

I have recently joined the world of SteemIt and am quite excited to begin contributing to the community in any possible way I can, this is my first post so I am very open to constructive criticism regarding my content or formatting, please do leave any feedback within the comment section, negative or positive. I also do not expect anyone to use any referral links displayed on this post and I’ll usually only ‘push’ it when it benefits both parties and not just myself (e.g bonus credit for novices) so I’ll always include non-referral links along with the respective referral form; the decision is completely yours and I respect that and I thank you for reading my content either way. Let’s get started then!

A brief backstory on the recent history of Cryptocurrency

During the months of early November 2017 towards January 2018 we saw some pretty crazy growth within the cryptocurrency-space, this was due to Bitcoins insane run up to a whopping $19,000 – this caused individuals to eventually become more aware of what cryptocurrency is and when they realised the money-making potential, people then acted on what we call ‘FOMO’ in cryptocurrency, this means ‘Fear Of Missing Out’ which essentially means majority of people only invested due to the fear of losing out on making extremely good money. Within that time-frame myself and many other people saw some very good returns, however cryptocurrencies 'bull run' may not be done just yet.

It’s no secret that cryptocurrency right now is moving rather slow in comparison to the time-frame specified above, this is due to people securing profits for a worst-case scenario in cryptocurrency and also due to the numerous news reports that have caused ‘FUD’ (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) within people which have influenced them to panic and then eventually sell, the reasons are honestly endless, I’ve had a few people come to me and state individuals are taking money out of cryptocurrency and dumping it into the stock market, this is not true, not on a large scale at least as the stock market is currently moving just as slow as cryptocurrency; especially with DOW falling a whopping 2,756 points. What we’re in right now is referred to as a ‘bearish market’ which means things are essentially moving slow and there is more selling dominance rather than buying, this could of course be outdated if the market changes directions in the upcoming weeks/months, so I’ll define the term ‘bullish market’ too; this is essentially just the complete opposite of a ‘bearish market’, meaning there is a higher dominance in buying in comparison to selling.

What is Cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency is also referred to as ‘digital currency’ or ‘tokens’/’coins’. A digital currency will always be represented by a ticker, just like stocks. E.G - Bitcoin - XBT/BTC, Ethereum - ETH, Litecoin - LTC. We have seen a massive rise in the number of tokens being developed in the recent months and every cryptocurrency aims to overcome problems a lot of individuals face in their day to day lives. Some aim to offer extended privacy with private ledgers in comparison to public ledgers I.E - blockchain (we’ll get to that soon), some simply serve as utility tokens for services/exchanges which grant dividends just for simply being in possession of the token, some aim to target specific industries to improve financial efficiency within said industry and some offer extremely fast transfers proving to be extremely more efficient and cheaper for transferring money internationally. The possibilities are endless and sometimes it can be overwhelming to decide where to place your investment, we’ll touch up on that later.

What is the ‘Blockchain’?

Have you ever worked in a business or visited a hotel which keeps a record of visitations and other information, usually financial? This is defined as a ‘ledger’ and that’s the best example that I can visually explain the Blockchain as. An open ledger that publicly records transaction information that millions of people around the world are conducting. Now, this may seem somewhat unsettling, am I right? But there’s a major plus to this, examples including individuals or institutions that have been ‘hacked’ and have had cryptocurrency stolen, will make it very easy to pin-point where those stolen funds eventually end up with the use of the Blockchain, it has its pros and cons, however there are tokens out there that work specifically with private ledgers as well including the ability to optionally switch between both of them respectively, these are known as 'privacy coins'.

How do I get started with cryptocurrency?

The reason why I placed two basic definitions above is because research is imperative before you decide to conduct any sort of investment within cryptocurrency and I bet you’re very glad you now understand this information in comparison to when you didn’t, exciting right? To succeed in cryptocurrency you need to be extremely open to learning new things, impatience and ignorance will only lead to disaster.

So whenever someone comes to me with: “Hey Jerrelle, that cryptocurrency you talked about was a good call!”, “Hey Jerrelle, can you help me get started with crypto investing?” and my personal favourite “I saw Bitcoin went up, how can I invest to make quick money?”. You don’t want to be the third guy at all, when it comes to cryptocurrency, you should ideally think long-term, as thinking short-term as someone who’s more inexperienced with the market (even if you have a stock market background) can potentially lead to loss of money. Cryptocurrency is still in its infancy stage currently and you should make the effort to grow with it if you're reading this right now then consider yourself an early adopter, you’ll be rewarded handsomely if you give cryptocurrency and your investment time to actually grow, I’m somewhat sure of that, but there’s no guarantee of course. 

Important tips before we get started:

• Only invest what you can afford to absolutely lose – This honestly should go without saying, cryptocurrency isn’t always a ‘gamble’, however there is ALWAYS risk; realise that and only deposit what you’re absolutely willing to lose. Sure you won’t make insane Lamborghini money if you play it safe, but it’s better than losing more than 50% of your initial investment which was supposed to be used for rent, am I right?
• Do vigorous research before you invest anything – It goes without saying, DYOR (Do Your Own Research) before investing any amount of money regardless of the sum into a digital currency. Majority of tokens in crypto have seen some acceptable or incredible gains, this isn’t because people simply span the bottle and threw money into that said token, it’s because they researched the token and found the token has usability, solves some sort of issue and/or has room to grow in the upcoming years; by doing this, they were able to determine to the best of their ability whether the project is personally a bad or good investment.
• Always be confident before you invest – Invest money into something you’re unconvinced about and you’re going to have a bad time. (badtimememe.jpg) Trust me, just do it. Only invest in something you’ve researched and feel fully comfortable about, if you can’t even fully believe in the project, why gamble with your money just to attempt to make quick profit? If you also find it hard to stay confident due to losing a few hundred dollars (or thousands in the case of a bear market) then I’m sorry, cryptocurrency just isn’t for you, you must have a strong mentality when it comes to cryptocurrency or you’ll find yourself walking around your room in circles (literally). Always be confident before you invest.
• If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is – Realise that a lot of people come into the crypto-space currently to milk it for as much money as they can, there’s a large majority of individuals that just chase dollar signs instead of the future technology they’re blindly ignoring. Specifically there are some individuals out there with one massive malicious intent and that’s to steal your money.  The biggest and most horrible example of a scam/Ponzi scheme was Bitconnect which promised unsustainable annual percentages on loans, to put it into perspective, you could be a millionaire (along with hundreds and thousands of other people) in just a few years with their offered rates, easy money right? Yeah well anyone who invested $10,000 in Bitconnect at its average price, now has $50 of that investment to claim back. ($10,000 / 400 // 25.00 * 2.00). Clearly they didn’t stop to think for a second that if THEY could be a millionaire in just a few years, what about the other tens of thousands of people invested in Bitconnect? If it sounds unrealistically profitable or too  good to be true, then it probably is.
• Double check everything, no actually, triple check – You’ll find in cryptocurrency you’ll usually be handling and copy & pasting lots of data. Now, I’m not trying to get you paranoid or anything, but whenever you do something such as send money to another wallet, you should make the attempts to double or triple check if the address is correct, this is because if you send the money to an incorrect address or someone else’s wallet, you are at their mercy; this is due to the fact that cryptocurrency is still quite unregulated and there’s no 'banks' to contact to reverse transactions here either, meaning if you make a mistake, it’s going to be an expensive one and you’d have to be very lucky to have that mistake rectified in your favour. You can use CTRL + F to search for information on a website, when copying an address from an exchange or another individual, it can’t hurt to CTRL + C (copy) the address and then CTRL + V (paste) followed by CTRL + F and CTRL + V, what this will do is HIGHLIGHT the address on the website if it’s correct, if it doesn’t highlight and it throws an error, you’ve missed a section of the address out and should try again until it successfully highlights. Take the initiative and think of unique ways to ensure your own security also, as you know your own circumstances better than anyone else.

Alright, now we’ve got some tips out of the way and have covered being aware of the serious security risks that lurk within the cryptospace, let’s move onto how to actually purchase popular digital currency!

How do I actually purchase cryptocurrency?

The process of becoming an official owner of digital currency is actually quite exciting. So first and foremost, you’re going to need somewhere to convert your fiat (EURO/GBP/USD etc) into cryptocurrency; to keep this very simple and straightforward, we are going to use the world’s most popular platform for purchasing, selling and storing digital currency, Coinbase. Coinbase is extremely popular however the downside is it only offers Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and recently Bitcoin Cash. This isn’t ideal for all users as alt-coins generally have more updated technology and yield better profits, however, coins such as Litecoin and Ethereum prove to be very solid long-term investments and are still relatively cheap, if you’re after one or more of those four only, you’re free to share your thoughts and rate your honest opinion (upvote/downvote) of this post after I have finished the section on coinbase as you won’t necessarily need to read beyond this segment, however I highly encourage you to continue reading as knowledge is power when it comes to cryptocurrency.

To sign up for Coinbase you’re going to need to ensure a few things:

• • You have a debit/credit card with necessary funds / a bank account to do an international transfer (if outside of Europe)
• • You have legitimate identity documents ready at hand that are in-date (valid) and registered to yourself (passport / provisional or full drivers license / legal photo identification)
• • You have patience, as verification can take anywhere between 10 minutes to a few days.
• • Access to a desktop computer or a laptop as the whole process cannot be done with just a mobile device.
• Access to a mobile phone capable of receiving text messages/SMSs

To register you can click either link below:

Referral sign up

(Using this referral link and spending $100 or more means you’ll get $10 free Bitcoin applied to your account, gaining you promotional credit for being referred.)

Non-Referral sign up

Click the ‘Sign up’ button on the top right and once the next page loads, proceed to enter relative information into each field, it will check for weak passwords so make sure to use a password that’s secure and memorable so you don’t easily forget it.

After you have successfully entered all the information, a page will then load asking for you to verify your email. Simply head to your email service provider (gmail.com, hotmail.co.uk etc) and click the verification link inside the email from coinbase. Once that’s done you’ll be greeted with the following:

You will now need to go through phone verification, this is not bypassable and you must have a mobile device (or another device) that is capable of receiving text messages, specifically for the use of authentication codes which generally results in increased security, seems fair right? Simply select your country (use the country codes to also help you) and then it’ll automatically place your country code for you; you don’t have to worry about placing it yourself.

Once your phone has been verified successfully by entering the seven digit code, you’ll be taken to the main coinbase dashboard. On this dashboard you can see the Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin prices as well as time graphs on their previous prices. At the top you can also see ‘buy/sell’ - this is where you’ll be buying your digital currency and selling it when you’d like to convert it back to fiat, you can also see ‘accounts’ which is where your coinbase specific cryptocurrency wallets will be held (we’ll get to that soon) there’s also ‘tools’ which generally give the ability to make your purchase experience more automated and controllable as well as ‘settings’ for general account tweaks e.g changing information, applying for higher limits and so forth.

To continue with purchasing cryptocurrency, we will now need to have your account 100% completed and verified, as right now it’s only 50% completed, to do this click ‘Dashboard’ on the top left if you clicked away and then down by the bottom left of your dashboard, click ‘Verify your ID’. You’ll be given a page which allows you to import one of the following: passport, drivers license or a legal form of photo ID. Please note provisional drivers license are allowed to be used as proof of identity. 

Once you have chosen your preferred identity verification method, you’ll be asked to select one of the following: webcam (if available), mobile camera or file upload. If you use ‘mobile camera’ you’ll then be sent a text message to your verified number, simply click the link in the text message, tap the rectangular box and then select ‘camera’ when your mobile device prompts you which application to use; proceed to take the picture and then select ‘complete verification’. With the webcam, you’ll basically just be taking a picture of your ID with your webcam, make sure your webcam is good quality if you choose this method though, as poor quality imageswill result in rejection and wasted time. You can also use ‘file upload’ which is what I’ll be using, simply upload a scanned image of your identification to Coinbase by selecting the file.

Your identity will then be sent to the Coinbase team and verified in acceptable time, it could be anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, so be as patient as possible, but hopefully you’ll get a quick verification so you can follow this article without having to wait. If you haven’t received a confirmation email in 30 minutes, you can bookmark this article on the top right of your address bar by clicking the star icon and return when you have been verified. :)

Continuing from verification

Once your identity has been verified, you’ll receive an email that states the following confirmation (above) and a link to encourage you to purchase cryptocurrency. Head back to your Coinbase dashboard and on the bottom left, your final step to complete your account will be to simply add a payment method, this can be either a debit card, credit card (check with your bank as some banks prohibit buying cryptocurrency with credit cards now) or a bank account which can be used for an international transfer. It’s recommended you use a bank account to invest large sums of money and credit/debit cards to invest smaller, more frequent sums of money.

Once you have successfully added a payment method, that's it! Congratulations! You have finished the verification process for Coinbase and are now able to purchase digital currency! Give yourself a pat on the back.

What digital currency should I purchase to start off with?

Well first, you need to ask yourself the question, what are you planning to do after you purchase your digital currency? Purchase other tokens? Or are you specifically only interested in one of the following: Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash? If you’re only interested in one of the four then do extensive research regarding the token(s) and put as much money as you’re comfortable with investing and you can simply leave that token within your Coinbase wallet and that is classed as ‘holding’ a token. Check back in a few days, a few months or even a few years and you just may profit massively. However, if you’re interested in other tokens out there known as ‘alternative coins/alts’ then here’s my recommendation on what to buy below.

Bitcoin – 

Pros: 

• Widely accepted
• Most dominant trading pair
• Arguably the best digital currency to start out with
• Lots of research material and support topics 

Cons: 

• High fees
• Can be quite slow to send (30 – 50 minutes+)
• Known to have high price volatility (e.g you could lose/make money whilst sending the bitcoin to an exchange)

Litecoin – 

Pros: 

• Relatively cheap
• Widely accepted
• Lots of research material and community support topics
• Very low fees
• Acceptably fast to send (10 – 20 minutes or so, sometimes less). 

Cons: 

• Network can sometimes be congested causing very slow arrival times
• Not a very popular trading pair

Ethereum – 

Pros: 

• Wideley accepted 
• Dominant trading pair
• Lots of research material and community support topics
• Fair fees
• Can be slow/fast to send (mixed -  some users report hours, personally I had to wait 6 hours once). 

Cons: 

• Network congestion can cause very slow send times
• Can be slow/fast to send

For the purpose of this tutorial, I am going to use Litecoin due to its low fees and fast transactions, although I would recommend trying to use Bitcoin to start off with, I’ll be guiding you all on how to convert Litecoin into Bitcoin on other exchanges and also give a basic understanding on how to purchase cryptocurrency with another trading pair other than Bitcoin. Different exchanges accept different trading pairs, so you should plan accordingly as to whether you should send Bitcoin, Litecoin or Ethereum to that specific exchange.

Purchasing digital currency on Coinbase

When you have a payment option added for Coinbase simply head to ‘Buy/Sell’ and select which digital currency you’d like the purchase, then select your payment method of using either a debit card/credit card then enter the amount (in your own currency) that you’d like to purchase or you can enter the amount of digital currency you’d like and the system will automatically convert it vice versa. Then press the ‘Buy [TOKEN] instantly‘ button and it’ll take you to a secondary confirmation page, you can then click the button there to finalise the purchase. 

If coinbase does not automatically redirect you and hangs on the page below (known issue on Coinbase) simply create a new tab and navigate back to Coinbase and select ‘Accounts’ and your funds should now be in your wallet, you can close the other tab. 

Congratulations! You now own digital currency. If you’d like to end the tutorial here please do vote truthfully and drop your feedback in the comment section, I’d highly appreciate that; I’ll also be replying to all comments and questions, I’ll not stop helping. 😊 

If you’re interested in purchasing other digital currency, otherwise known as ‘alt-coins’, please do continue reading below, thanks!

Where do I purchase alternative coins/alt-coins?

Well I want to keep things as simple as possible, so I will be suggesting to two best exchanges which are very straight forward for accepting new individuals and offer great security and peace of mind if you would prefer to leave investments (tokens) on an exchange (however I recommend you do not do this, we’ll get to this later though).

You may have heard of both of these exchanges due to their popularity, the names of these exchanges are the following:

Kucoin

Referral sign up (ID: 1fN6g)

Non-referral sign up

Binance

Referral sign up (ID: 12221819)

Non-referral sign up

What is Binance?

Binance is a cryptocurrency-only exchange, meaning it does not support the ability to purchase digital currency with fiat (real money - like Coinbase if you will), there are trading pairs such as Ethereum and Bitcoin that are used to purchase alt-coins. Binance’s growth has been incredible over the last few months, individuals were skeptical at first but now Binance is constantly hitting top 3 in the highest daily volumes (sourced by Coinmarketcap), it blew away expectations around November 2017, the start of the massive bull run for cryptocurrency in general. Binance is also available in multiple languages so if English isn’t your first language, feel free to change it for your own comfort! The interface is also simple and professional with the option of using a basic and advanced interface, supporting both advanced and newer users to cryptocurrency, it has also deployed its own cryptocurrency known as ‘Binance Coin’ (BNB). This coin actually does have a very good use, as using Binance coin to pay exchange fees gives you a 50% discount. E.G you have $2 in fees from a very large order, using BNB to pay for your fees (automatically done by just holding it) would mean you only pay $1 in fees, sounds pretty good right? Unfortunately there are a few cons to Binance, such as the lack of fiat depositing meaning you’d have to buy digital currency from Coinbase first THEN send it to Binance and also the fact that it’s a cryptocurrency only exchange, meaning you can only use: Binance Coin, Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT to purchase alternative coins. However this is not a massive problem at all, also Binance has just enabled the ability to list NEP-5 tokens, which means there will be a lot more tokens to be listed in the future!

What is Kucoin?

Just like Binance, Kucoin is a cryptocurrency-only exchange (see 'What is Binance?' for definition) and just like Binance, Kucoin also blew all of our expectations out of the water. It was an unknown and frowned upon exchange at first, which quickly grew popularity due to the exclusive NEP-5 tokens which were listed on the exchange rather than anywhere else, at the time where Kucoin started to grow extremely popular, you could have bet any NEO initial coin offering would’ve been listed on Kucoin. I’ve been using Kucoin since their shares were $0.70, all the way up to $19, I sold some, kept some and I’m still holding it at $5 as the exchange is honestly just so fluid. (Not a shill by any means, do your own research extensively on Kucoin before buying any shares). When you hold Kucoin shares, you are paid dividends – this means 50% of all trading fees are set aside on a daily basis and distributed between every individual that holds Kucoin Shares, so when you compare it to Binance coin, you only get 50% off trading fees, whereas on Kucoin you get distributed daily dividends for holding their own token. Both are very good and I recommend you take advantage of these exchange specific tokens to earn back some money you pay on transaction and withdrawal fees. Kucoin supports the following trading pairs: Bitcoin, Ethereum, NEO, USDT, Kucoin Shares and recently, Bitcoin Cash. Different trading pairs will offer different tokens as not every token is available under certain trading pairs.

Alright, I’ve taken all that information in, how do I register for these exchanges and purchase tokens?

Once you’ve clicked either link for Binance registration above and you’ll be taken to this page or something similar, if it’s the main page just click ‘register’ on the top right. Simply fill out your email address, a secure password and if you’d like, my referral ID (see the link/ID above) and then read the Binance ‘Terms Of Use’ and check the box if you agree to said terms and then click ‘Register’. You’ll then get a captcha to complete; Binance has puzzle captchas you’ll need to do every time you log in, they won’t take long though.

Check your email inbox for a verification email from Binance and once you have selected the link inside the email you’ll be greeted with the following confirmation once you have been successfully verified. Feel free to click ‘login’ and enter your credentials afterwards.

You will then have to make note of the following; do NOT just tick boxes and skip this as it’s vital information, take it all into consideration and memorise it for future use of the exchange and your own well being when it comes to dealing with cryptocurrency. Click ‘I understand / Continue’ after you have read and understood the security notice.

So, now you have a Binance account, great. But can we buy anything yet? 

Sadly not as we do not have any funds! To do this we’re going to have to send the funds we have just purchased on Coinbase to Binance, now there are risks involved whilst doing this so please follow these instructions as carefully as you possibly can as I do not want anyone using my tutorials to lose money when I could have specifically prevented it.

On the top right you’ll see many different options, hover your mouse over ‘Funds’ and then when a list drops down, click on ‘Deposits’ which will take you to a new page. 

You can drop down the menu upon this page and you’ll find there are tons of coins available for deposit alphabetically ordered, however we’ll be depositing Litecoin (or Bitcoin if you feel you’re able to follow the same steps just with Bitcoin/Ethereum) so you can either type in ‘LTC’ or ‘Litecoin’ or just simply search for it on the drop-menu and click on it, once you have selected Litecoin, you’ll see some new information appear, specifically a ‘LTC Deposit Address’.

Always read the tips when you deposit coins on any exchange, as there'll be different tips for different coins. Also, only send Litecoin to this address, it should be common sense I know, but I want everyone to be on the same page that you should only send tokens to their PROPER supporting addresses. E.G do not send Bitcoin to a Litecoin address, or do not send Bitcoin Cash to a Bitcoin address or do not send Ethereum Classic to an Ethereum address, see the flow here? Always double check as you could be battling for months to get funds back for sending tokens to a wrong address and even then there is NO guarantee you’ll get your money back. Tread carefully when it comes to cryptocurrency, always tread carefully.

Click ‘Copy address’ which is just below the address. Now head over back to Coinbase and select ‘accounts’ at the top. You’ll be presented with all your wallets, if you haven’t bought any digital currency from coinbase yet, please scroll up for more information on how to do this. 

How to send digital currency from Coinbase to Binance

For the tutorials sake, I bought Litecoin, not a massive amount, just $50 for demonstration purposes; I will not be using my main accounts for security concerns. If you have funds in your Litecoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin wallet (which ever you’ve chosen – however I’m using Litecoin) then it should look like this.

Can you see under your LTC Wallet where it has the buttons ‘Send’ and ‘Receive’?  Click ‘Send’. 

Now, I’m going to break this down very carefully so no mistakes are made.

Recipient – Copy and paste the Binance Litecoin deposit address here and then do CTRL+F and CTRL+V the copied address into the CTRL+f search bar, if it throws an error, double check the address, if it highlights then you’ve got the correct address and you’re safe to proceed.

Amount – You can click either box and then click ‘send max’ to send all your Litecoin. Or you can manually type how much you want to send - E.G, ‘0.5’.

Note – Unless you’ve been directed specifically by an Exchange (it won’t be necessary for this tutorial) or another service to ensure a reference/note is included, then you never need to use this. Don’t put “send nudes” here, just don’t be that guy.

Once you are satisfied all information entered is correct and have ensured all fields have been filled out (excluding 'note'), ‘continue’ will no longer be grayed out, feel free to click it once you’re ready and have ensured everything is correct.

You’ll then be given another page which will give you confirmation details as well as the fee it will cost to send your transaction, if you have 2FA enabled like I do, you’ll need to enter your authentication code to proceed, once you’re happy all information is correct then you can click ‘Confirm’, this will register the request onto the system and the transaction will then be automatically generated by the exchange. (Coinbase)

You’ll then get confirmation that your transaction has been sent. Get yourself a cup of tea, you’ve earned it and also this may take up to 10 minutes or more, vastly more if there’s network congestion. If you’d like to check your transaction or get a bit worried, you can head to your Litecoin wallet and click on your transaction which should have an amber circle and ‘Pending’ next to it, then click ‘View Transaction’ and it’ll redirect you to the Blockchain for Litecoin. 

You’ll know when your Litecoin has successfully been deposited into your Binance wallet by hovering over the ‘person’ on the top right of Binance and clicking your ‘Estimated value’ which will take you to an overview of every wallet upon your account. 

Litecoin should be displayed first or whichever you have chosen to purchase and send as it will be the only wallet you’ll have value in, with Binance, the highest value wallet will always appear first. Once your digital currency has been deposited, we can now begin trading!

How do I purchase digital currency on Binance?

Well to start off with, Binance does not have a Litecoin trading pair, therefore we will need to sell this Litecoin for either Ethereum or Bitcoin, to keep things simple we’ll sell it for Bitcoin. You can head to the exchange by hovering over ‘Exchange’ on the top left and selecting ‘Basic’, I recommend getting familiar with the basic interface before moving onto the advanced interface if you’re an absolute novice to cryptocurrency.  

Once you’re on the basic interface, it may seem overwhelming at first, but I promise you it honestly isn’t and you’ll get used to it in no time. On the top right, make sure ‘BTC’ is selected, this means you’re viewing the Bitcoin trading pair markets, then enter ‘LTC’ into the search box. Remember that most exchanges work with tickers, therefore you should make use of them rather than full currency names. E.G – Ethereum = ETH, Bitcoin = BTC/XBT, Litecoin = LTC and so forth. 

Select the LTC/BTC trading pair and it’ll take you to the basic trading interface for the LTC/BTC market, you can view the buy orders, sell orders, along with other things such as RSI (however this is more advanced). We’ll only focus on limit orders (buy/sell orders) and market orders for now.

What are these weird 0.00028391 numbers?

These are referred to as ‘Sats’ otherwise known as ‘Satoshis’ for the Bitcoin trading pairs, which basically represent value in the fraction of one whole Bitcoin. For Ethereum and other coin trading pairs, what you’ll read below applies to Ethereum also when you use the ETH trading pairs. You’ll find all cryptocurrency-only exchanges that do not offer fiat purchases will trade in value of Bitcoin, Ethereum and sometimes Litecoin or their own exchange specific token. The simplest way I can explain this is that these numbers you see, represent value in Bitcoin. E.G – Let’s say Bitcoin was $10,000 and Ethereum was $5,000, to purchase one Ethereum with Bitcoin, would mean it’d cost 0.500000 in Bitcoin, if you understand this then I’d say you’re good to go, however I do recommend doing further in-depth research for this, but oxford-grade research isn't needed on this topic and only a basic understanding is required to remain a recreational trader, but to maximise efficiency and ‘best bang for your buck’ I’d highly recommend researching it more later. 

How do I efficiently purchase cryptocurrency? (limit/market orders)

We’ll start with learning how to buy at the best rates available by learning what a limit order is; the buy orders (green – people wanting to purchase Litecoin with Bitcoin or xcurrency with ycurrency) will always be lower than the sell orders, as people will want to buy it cheaper rather than more expensive. However if someone is willing to actually pay more, then a sell order will just be filled with the next cheapest sell order available. The sell orders (red – people who want to sell Litecoin for Bitcoin or xcurrency with ycurrency) will always be more expensive than buy orders, as people will always want the best value for selling their cryptocurrency. You can click any of these buy/sell orders which will then automatically fill out the price on the tabs for both: buying and selling Litecoin (or xcurrency). (Please note there is high volatility in cryptocurrency, therefore numbers and values will change throughout the tutorial screenshots and information) So for me, the lowest sell value I can see is 0.018490 with the highest buy value of 0.018450, I could choose to sell for 40 sats more and wait a few minutes or so for the order to fill, or I could simply sell it instantly for 40 sats less than the cheapest going price, however this means I wouldn’t have to wait for the order to fill. See the pros and cons there? If you value your time more than your money, then the decision is of course, yours; everyone trades differently.

Once you have entered/selected a price you’re happy with, you can then enter the amount of Litecoin you wish to sell. Select ‘100%’ if you’d like to sell all of it, Binance also offers the ability to properly manage portfolios with automatic 25% calculations, feel free to use them to manage your portfolio better in the future, not every exchange has this feature. It will then display how much Bitcoin you’ll get in return for your trade (you can take extra precautions to copy the number and paste it into Google and then type ‘0.0055485 BTC to USD’ to get the exact value and to be 100% sure) you can then click ‘Sell LTC’ and you’ll get a ‘succeeded’ notification afterwards, there will be no second confirmation for this so make sure you’ve double checked before selling.

Congratulations, you’ve just placed (and possibly completed) your first sell order, sit tight and just wait for someone to purchase it now. If you want to be faster in the future, you can always select the highest buy order (remember, the green order book) and it’ll be filled instantly. However another method is selecting the ‘Market’ tab next to ‘Limit’ which you’re currently in and once you’re there you can simply select ‘100%’ and it’ll process the transaction for the highest buy order which will be somewhat lower than the sell orders, but it’s instant, so that’s a major plus rather than having to wait potentially hours for price movement just to get something cheaper or make more profit of selling something. So to wrap this paragraph up, this is what we call a 'market order'.

NOTE: BE VERY CAREFUL WITH MARKET ORDERS ON EXCHANGES AND DOUBLE CHECK THE VALUE IN BTC AND ENSURE YOU’RE GETTING THE CORRECT VALUE FOR WHAT YOU’RE SELLING, AS ON EXCHANGES WITH LESS VOLUME, INDIVIDUALS SOMETIMES SET RIDICULOUSLY HIGH SELL ORDERS WHICH SOME PEOPLE UNFORTUNATELY FALL FOR DUE TO LACK OF ATTENTION WHEN PLACING A MARKET ORDER. Some people have lost hundreds and even thousands because of this; like I said before, always tread carefully when it comes to cryptocurrency. 

Once you have waited a few minutes or would just like to check, you can head to ‘Orders’ at the to right and select ‘Order History’. You’ll then be presented with order history upon your account. If the stats is ‘Filled’ under ‘Status’ then your order has been successfully filled and the digital currency or funds will now be available upon your account.

Alright great, so we’ve got our Bitcoin now, but the question still remains.

How do I purchase digital currency / alternative coins on Binance?

This is where the fun part comes but this is where you’re going to have to take some independence and initiative to research several tokens/projects to ensure if they’re good investments or not. Upon Binance I can honestly say I can recognise 80% of the listed tokens and can explain the aim of the tokens and what the usability is, you don’t have to strive to research every single coin on an exchange, however more knowledge is always more power and of course if you’re interested in a certain industry or career, some of these tokens could open up a whole new educational door to you. I’d say it’s best to simply research 5 or so tokens/projects every day or so to build up general knowledge in cryptocurrency one step at a time. It's okay to have a basic understanding of any project, but if you want to INVEST money into a project you should ALWAYS have a THOROUGH understanding; never follow the individuals that simply throw their money around and don’t research, they may be making profit for now, but a huge red candlestick (+1 if you get the joke. 😉) will catch up with them sooner or later.

I’m also not here to shill coins (shilling means promoting coins just because you’re invested in them basically) I’m here to help you all get started within cryptocurrency with an enjoyable and exciting experience both now and in the future (hopefully I’ll even make some of you $100,000s eh?) so what I’m going to use for the purpose of this tutorial is NEO, which is an established token which is certainly a long-term hold, I won’t go into specifically why you should invest in NEO as I’d rather you make your own investment decisions on your own, but for demonstration and to avoid being accused of shilling ‘cheaper’ tokens, I’ll use NEO as an example.

As you can see just next to all the market selections ‘BTC markets’, ‘ETH markets’ and so forth, there is a search bar. You can use this to search for coins by their tickers, so NEO’s ticker is simply ‘NEO’ so I’ll just type that in and it should appear. You can then click it below and it’ll take you to the best available trading pair. Just like how we sold our Litecoin for Bitcoin earlier, the process is the same with buy and sell/limit orders and also market orders. You enter the amount of tokens you’d like or you can simply use the percentage options to diversify your money a lot easier and quicker, once you’re ready to make your purchase you can simply press ‘Buy [Coin]’ and your transaction will then either be instant (market order) or registered on the order book as a buy order, you’ll then just have to wait for it to be filled. You can repeat this process with basically any other token on Binance.

Congratulations! This is the end of the tutorial on Binance specifically, you can read below if you’d also like to register on Kucoin which offers an extensive list of tokens (some which are very popular and not listed on Binance). If you’re not interested in Kucoin then please skip to the research recommendations and final closing tips, thank you very much for reading! Post a comment if you feel I've helped you and vote according. :)

How do I register for Kucoin and purchase alt-coins, including NEP-5 tokens?

Kucoin is a great exchange for beginners, relatively new as well and is growing everyday with its frequent listing of new tokens along with security precautions that are always being improved. With Binance now listing NEP-5 tokens, there’s more competition for Kucoin, however I believe the exchange will strive to evolve in the future. To register for Kucoin you can use my Kucoin referral link above (way above actually) or below or a non-referral link, I’d respect your decision. Using the referral link however, grants you a percentage of fees also.

Referral sign up (ID: 1fN6g)

Non-referral sign up

When you have selected either link to register, you’ll be greeted with a Terms of Use, read through it and then click the ‘accept’ check box at the bottom and then click ‘Next’. Fill out all fields with your correct email, a secure password and if you’d like, my referral code (not needed if you selected the link). You can then select ‘Next’ to proceed with the registration process. You’ll then be asked to verify your email, so head to your email host (gmail.com, Hotmail.co.uk etc) and verify your email address for Kucoin.

When you click the link, it’ll verify your account and then you’ll see a pop-up stating, ‘email has been validated’. It’ll also automatically log you in, so don’t be alarmed if you find yourself now logged into an account. So to get started with depositing some cryptocurrency like we did for Binance I’ll assume at this point you already know how to purchase digital currency on Coinbase and send it to a wallet or an exchange, but for those who may have skipped I'll demonstrate it again. Kucoin is slightly different to Binance in terms of trading pairs, but the good news is, basically anything but Litecoin on Coinbase is a valid trading pair. Bitcoin, Ethereum even Bitcoin Cash as Kucoin now has a trading pair for that, but for demonstration purposes, I’ll be using Litecoin once again.

Head to Coinbase then ‘accounts’ and hit ‘send’ just under your LTC wallet. Head back to Kucoin and on the top right, hover your mouse over the dollar sign inside the circle and select ‘deposit’ down at the bottom. 

Kucoin will then ask you to verify 2factor-authentication upon your account for added security, this may seem tedious, however it’ll basically ensure your funds are extremely safe from being stolen by hackers. It’ll also give you an account secret key (essentially a recovery key) make SURE you write this down or download the key.txt file as without this it’ll prove to be near impossible to gain access to your account again if you were to lose your phone or lose access to 2FA for Kucoin. It’s imperative you save this or memorise it without fail.

To be succesful with the compulsory 2FA activation, follow these steps:

1. Take out your phone
2. Head to the Google Play/iTunes app store
3. Download ‘Google Authenticator’ then run it
4. Tap the red circle with the plus button
5. Tap ‘scan barcode’ and scan the QR image that has been displayed

Phone camera not working? 

You’ll have to manually enter the key into Google Authenticator which can be found below your username as ‘secret key’ and then enter the 6 digit code upon Google Authenticator into the box on the right and hit ‘Submit’.

Congratulations! You now have 2FA enabled upon your account and you can rest assured it’ll be very hard to have your funds stolen now. Hover over the dollar sign in the circle on the top right again and hit ‘deposit’. You’ll be greeted with the deposit page for Kucoin Shares automatically, to change the coin simply hover over ‘Kucoin Shares KCS’ just next to where it shows your available balance and either search for the digital currency you wish to deposit, in our case it’d be Litecoin if you’ve been following exactly what I’m demonstrating. Locate LTC and click on it and the display should then change.

As you can see, Kucoin has a warning stating digital currency sent to wrong addresses cannot be retrieved by support, many other exchanges exercise this too as it can be very costly and time-demanding, so that’s why I stressed you should always triple check before executing any actions related to cryptocurrency. To continue, hit ‘confirm’ and copy the Litecoin wallet address that has been displayed. Head back over to Coinbase and hit ‘Accounts’ and then hit ‘Send’ just under your LTC wallet. You’ll be presented with a form to fill out, I’ll paste the breakdown that I wrote above.

Recipient – Copy and paste the Binance Litecoin deposit address here and then do CTRL+F and CTRL+V the copied address into the CTRL+f search bar, if it throws an error, double check the address, if it highlights then you’ve got the correct address and you’re safe to proceed.

Amount – You can click either box and then click ‘send max’ to send all your Litecoin. Or you can manually type how much you want to send - E.G, ‘0.5’.

Note – Unless you’ve been directed specifically by an Exchange (it won’t be necessary for this tutorial) or another service to ensure a reference/note is included, then you never need to use this. 

Once you have filled out all of the fields (‘note’ is optional) you can then hit ‘Continue’. If you have 2FA enabled like myself for Coinbase, you’ll be given a confirmation page which requires your Google Authenticator code, once successfully entered ‘Confirm’ will be available, hit that once you’re sure all of the information is correct. Once again, you can now relax and get yourself a cup of tea or a drink as this should only take 5+ minutes, maybe more depending on network congestion.

Once your funds have arrived, you can check by hovering over the dollar sign in the circle on the top right and scrolling all the way down, you should be able to see Litecoin in your account now; you’ll also get an email notification when you have had a successful deposit upon your account. Also, if you hover over ‘LTC’ on your assets list at the bottom, you’ll be able to see the USD value as well which is a unique feature on Kucoin. 

To start trading, click ‘Markets’ which is next to ‘Home’ on the websites menu bar, on the top right where it says ‘Search coin’ enter LTC and select the LTC/BTC trading pair/market pair. This will take you to an interface that’s a little more advanced than Binance’s however do not be intimated as you’ll pick up on this fairly fast and it’ll become clockwork soon, I promise you that. For more information on how to purchase cryptocurrency efficiently, see ‘How do I efficiently purchase cryptocurrency? (limit/market orders)’ above, also see ‘What are these weird 0.00028391 numbers?’. I’ve outlined the basics within these sections to make sense of Kucoin if you have never used Binance before.

At this point I’m going to assume you understand how the exchange works due to the sections I’ve recommended above. So currently, we’re on the LTC/BTC market, if you have 2FA enabled (which is compulsory now it seems) you’ll need to enter your Google Authenticator code for Kucoin to proceed with doing any type of transaction on Kucoin. Enter your 6 digit code and then hit ‘Submit’ and you’ll be granted access to buy and sell. 

Select a price you’re comfortable with on the sell order book (red) – you can see the value of the cheapest rate (bottom) by hovering over it. Simply click onto whichever price you feel comfortable selling at and then it’ll automatically fill it out for you on the bottom right. You can also enter the amount of Litecoin you wish to sell E.G 0.5 which is half the value of a full Litecoin. You can also click ‘max’ and it’ll automatically fill out how much you have available to sell; after you have entered an amount and price, you’ll be given the amount of Bitcoin you’ll receive also. 

Once you are happy with the price you have selected and have ensured all details are correct, you can then hit ‘Sell’. If successful, you’ll be greeted with a message saying, ‘Sell order successful’. If it failed, double check the information you have entered and also your available balance. 

A lovely feature on the Kucoin exchange is the ability to see your open orders and trade history without having to change pages, here you’re able to quickly cancel them which enables fluid trading, if you still see your order in ‘Open Orders’ this simply means it hasn’t been completed yet, however if a fraction of the order has been filled, you’ll see this in the ‘Filled [XXXX]’ section.

Once your order has been filled you can double check it in the ‘Trade history’ tab, you’ll also know if its sold if the open order has disappeared or if you of course, check your account assets. So now we have Bitcoin! We can move onto using the Bitcoin markets/trading pair to purchase alternative coins now. 

By the top left where it says ‘LTC/BTC’ click on that or hover over it and feel free to begin researching coins, I won’t recommend any specifically in case accusations of shilling arise, I’m purely here to help you, not to give false hope or anything, however tokens such as Ethereum and Litecoin are solid holds and legitimate projects, if you’re thinking long term of a year or more, go for either one of those, maybe even Bitcoin, but there’s no telling what could happen.

For the purpose of this tutorial I’m going to purchase some ‘TKY’ also known as ‘TheKey’ I won’t go into detail regarding what it is, you’re free to research it but just for demonstration purposes to wrap up how to purchase alternative coins.

So you’d simply select a coin or input its ticker into the search bar and click on the icon and it’ll load the market onto your interface. In this case we’re finally buying, so we focus on the buy order book (green) rather than the sell order book (red) for a suitable price to purchase at. I can see TKY is currently sitting comfortably around the 390-400 sat range, also the fact that there are rather large buy orders which act as ‘support’ for a token if the price did happen to drop quite low. So I’ve gone for a limit-order at 391. If the coin did drop, this order would then be filled automatically by anyone selling for the price.

You could also purchase instantaneously for the best asking price, however for the sake of getting the most for our money, it’s best to wait it out sometimes as you never know, a token could dip a significant amount meaning a better buying opportunity for yourself. "Patience is a virtue" ~ Lois Reeves

Remember, if you were about to buy but didn’t and the token went up significantly the next day, you didn’t ‘lose’ anything, theoretically maybe, but it’s better to theoretically lose money then permanently, right? Stay safe guys, cryptocurrency can be a dangerous and confusing world, but behind that, there’s something beautiful and that’s our future.

What are the best ways to do research on Cryptocurrency?

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Final tips

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So there you have it, thank you very much for reading the whole of my article or even a portion on how to get started with purchasing cryptocurrency; it means a lot to me and I’m very appreciative. If I could’ve helped even one person, just one or saved one person from falling for a scam/trickery in cryptocurrency, it would’ve all been worth it, stay safe guys.

I’ll be replying to any comments requesting help, if you’d like to get in contact with me, feel free to do so over my social media or even here!

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