After having lots of conversations with my friends and coworkers about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, I’ve decided to put together this overview. If you know almost nothing about Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, this is how you get started. It’s not that hard and you really don’t need to know what a blockchain is or how it works.
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1. How do I buy Bitcoin?
The easiest and most user friendly way to buy Bitcoin right now is by using Coinbase. You add a credit card and/or bank account and you can almost instantly start buying Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.
Coinbase Link: https://www.coinbase.com/join/59756122a4c3a0029739862b
2. What is Ethereum and Litecoin?
These are the other two “cryptocurrencies” or “altcoins” you can buy on Coinbase. Bitcoin is the most widely known cryptocurrency, but Ethereum and Litecoin are close runners up. There are literally thousands of other cryptocurrencies. As you learn more, you’ll want to get into trading these other coins and eventually look at ICO’s (Initial Coin Offering).
3. How do I trade altcoins / other cryptocurrencies?
To trade the other altcoins, you need to use an exchange. I currently use Bittrex. You transfer from your Coinbase account to your Bitcoin wallet and purchase other coins with that Bitcoin balance. Every coin is denominated in Bitcoin which gets a bit confusing. If you want to dabble in the other coins, this is the way to do it. I recommend to diversify your purchases.
4. How do I mine Bitcoin?
Currently, mining Bitcoin pretty much requires an Antminer S9 which costs $3,000 to $5,000 and is currently out of stock. An alternate way of mining is called cloud mining. I use a service called hashflare.io for mining Bitcoin. Starting with about $150, you can buy 1 Terahash (TH) of mining power. I’ll write a much longer post about this, but 1 TH will return about $2 to $2.50 of Bitcoin every day. At that rate, you’ll recoup your initial investment within 2-3 months and the rest is profit. At the end of a year, they say I should expect to make about $750. On a $150 investment, I’d call that a pretty good return.
Hashflare Link: https://hashflare.io/r/A080F0E7-businesshut
Anyone interested in going in on a physical miner, leave me a note.
Please add questions to the comments below. I’ll try to answer them all and will expand the more confusing topics into their own post.
If you found this useful feel free to toss me a few coins to the links below:
Bitcoin: 1HqP5ngr55tqdxJynkR3vw5xU4HGkAw7iC
Litecoin: LhLiU7qUMpbsaZN6sqoixVa82UDnGL1Ypv
Ethereum: 0xD1612e1CE0A2BA45D6d5d1f73c126ae7af874FbB
A friend of mine alerted me to the fact that the Bittrex exchange is currently not accepting new customers. The Bitcoin/cryptocurrency industry recently received a lot of attention from the masses. This seems to be overloading just about any service related to the space. If you want to get in, be patient and you will. Everyone is trying to expand their capacity as quickly as possible.