Bitcoin Forum

I've been involved in this industry for nearly five years and have been successful with it. In the interest of helping those new to the industry to also succeed I'm going to share a different "getting started" tip in this thread several times a week. I'll also update the top post as I add new tips.

Enjoy the steep learning curve. Do plenty of research and take responsibility to educate yourself, but be sure to also relax and have fun with it.

And now, the tips...

1. Get a good password manager (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2405838.msg24605402#msg24605402).
2. Treat your BitcoinTalk ID as a valuable asset (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2405838.msg24707054#msg24707054).
3. Register a Coinbase account (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2405838.msg24801037#msg24801037).
4. Register a Free Bitcoin account (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2405838.msg24919773#msg24919773).
5. Register a Moon Bitcoin account (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2405838.msg25057842#msg25057842).
6. Start keeping records (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2405838.msg25172852#msg25172852).
7. Understand there's more besides Bitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2405838.msg25333698#msg25333698).
8. Organize your forums and other communication channels (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2405838.msg25825911#msg25825911).
9. Know what makes a good altcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2405838.msg26220448#msg26220448).

NOTE: This forum apparently has a policy against users posting affiliate links. I can understand and respect that. However, if you use my Coinbase affiliate link to open your account, you and I would both receive $10 worth of Bitcoin when you make your first BTC buy or sell. For this reason I don't want you to miss out on that opportunity. If you would like to receive $10 worth of Bitcoin from Coinbase by using my affiliate link to register, you can find it here (https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@wiser/wiser-s-coinbase-affiliate-link).

Tip #1: Get a good password manager

You will be registering accounts and logging into numerous websites. You will also have wallets with private keys and passwords on your computer. And you need to have a unique password for each one of them. In other words, you do not use the same password for more than one website.

LastPass (https://lastpass.com/f?2166266) is a great online service for keeping track of online account user IDs and passwords. It has a basic free as well as premium service. I've never upgraded as the free service meets my needs. There are other online providers as well. You could also build your own password storage vault using a spreadsheet or something similar. Whatever you use, get a good system in place now and start recording your private account information in it. Then keep it secure, while making sure you yourself can access the data.

You can go here (http://cryptomoms.com/forum/guides/31/how-to-secure-and-store-your-passwords/947/) for a more detailed tutorial on LastPass.

you only  mentioned 1-pass key manager-which is an online storage system
how about offline pass manager

I have alwasy been a phobia to online password managers. What if they can access my account or their database is hacked and all my information is out there in plain light. What I do is, to have strong email password, and use google 2fa authenticator to access my email. Is such case before my account is hacked, they will be provided a link to reset through my email, which I thin the hackers cant access.

I shared the password manager that has worked for me for a number of years as an example, but there are other ones out there.

Here is a review article (https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2475964,00.asp) about the top ranked paid services (some of which have free versions).

Here is a review article (https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2475964,00.asp) about the top ranked free services.

I found those two articles by doing a Google search using the key words:  list of best password managers. You can do this too.

Which password manager you use, along with all the other tips I provide, is up to you, and you need to do your homework. I provide tips as a way for you to know the basic steps you need to take, this one being get a good password manager and figure out how to use it :)

This is a good tip indeed, password manager is an extremely useful thing to have. Even for the internet in general. Any other tips you can provide? I want to start making money with cryptocurrency myself, but first need to learn as much as I can. Investing without knowing the basics will probably get me nowhere)

Been using Lastpass for almost a year already and it's really handy. Was an ex user of KeePass(also a password manager); it was also good, but nowhere as good as LastPass in terms of ease-of-use and or user-friendliness. KeePass is kinda safer than LastPass though, as lastpass stores your credentials in the cloud.

I plan to provide a new tip several times a week, at least until I get the basics covered. You are right to focus first on learning. At this stage, putting a small amount of money into it can help with the learning, but look at it as "tuition" for your crypto-education. Even if you lose some, you will have gained knowledge and that makes a huge difference down the road.


I've heard that about KeePass. It's considered more secure but less convenient. That brings up a good point which is that you have to balance out convenience and security when it comes to securing your private information. You can totally encrypt your information with multiple layers and no one can possibly crack it. But the downside is that it's so inconvenient for you to access the info when you need it that you'll subvert it by taking short cuts. Or, you could even lock yourself out of the information. So you have to find the level of security that will keep your data safe but still allow you to get to it at a level of convenience that works for you.

Definitely alot less convenient. You'd have to open the program/app every time you need to use it. Especially on mobile, good lord. You'd have to copy paste the password everytime. Whereas Lastpass has browser extensions and autofills from the app(KeePass' autofill only works sometimes) that make the process alot lot easier. The thing though is, I'm really not sure how safe or unsafe LastPass is.

There's plenty of information online about that. You can start with the Last Pass blog and then also read independent online reviews. My personal opinion/experience is that the service does a decent job with security, including addressing issues in a timely fashion. I personally use two factor authentication and also store my LastPass password on an encrypted disk.

A good password manager has to be both convenient and secure. There is the very real risk of you losing access to your funds because you lost the private key to the wallet or some other non-recoverable password. You're probably more likely to lose your funds that way than by the actions of a hacker, but hacking does happen, so you have to balance both. How to handle password management is a personal decision :)

Tip #2: Treat your BitcoinTalk ID as a valuable asset

That account you're logged into right now is actually an asset. If you're brand new, it may not be much of an asset just yet, but as you learn the ropes, make intelligent posts, and simply allow time to go by, your account will grow in value.

Because your account is an asset you will want to protect it in two ways. The first way is to give it a robust password. If you registered your account using some kind of easy to remember password that you use for half a dozen other accounts, then change it now. You can easily generate a strong password on Passwords Generator (http://passwordsgenerator.net/) or you can use a different random password generating service. Once you've reset your password to a robust one, please record it in your LastPass vault or whichever password management service you use. Make a point to change to a new robust password at regular intervals.

The second way to protect your account is to make sure that you are posting in a way that will reflect well on you and your account. Do not spam threads with posts that do nothing more than promote some product. Do share your relevant opinions as you develop them but do so in a way that is professional, well thought out, and courteous. Be willing to consider other people's viewpoints as well. Avoid flaming of any kind. At the beginning posting intelligent posts is going to mean asking good questions and then taking the time to read through the replies. At the very beginning you can expect to be doing a lot more reading than writing.

Your account gains status on this forum through a combination of the passage of time and your post count. There is no way to quickly move up levels by simply posting a lot, so don't do that. You can make an effort to log in and post something once a day, but only if you have something to say. If you don't have something to say, then keep reading and educating yourself.

There isn't a magic formula or anything, but in general, people here feel more comfortable doing business with accounts that have been around for a while and which carry higher ranks. Account status makes enough of a difference that miscreants do attempt to hack into high status accounts and lock the original owner out of them, and then try to post as that original owner. This is why a robust password is so important.

Whether or not you own any Bitcoin at this time, you do have your BitcoinTalk account. Treat is as the valuable asset that it is. It may well turn out to be your most important crypto-asset :)

thank you for this tip. doesn't know all this before. your thread is really a great information.

Tip #3: Register a Coinbase account

NOTE: This forum apparently has a policy against users posting affiliate links. I can understand and respect that. However, if you use my Coinbase affiliate link to open your account, you and I would both receive $10 worth of Bitcoin when you make your first BTC buy or sell. For this reason I don't want you to miss out on that opportunity. If you would like to receive $10 worth of Bitcoin from Coinbase by using my affiliate link to register, you can find it here (https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@wiser/wiser-s-coinbase-affiliate-link).

Coinbase (https://www.coinbase.com/) is your gateway from Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Ethereum to US Dollars. If you are in the US, it's going to be the easiest gateway for you to use. If you live in a different country, you will need to find out which companies provide gateway services between Bitcoin and your national currency, and instead of opening up a Coinbase account, you open an account with your country's best gateway provider.

The reason Coinbase is a good gateway for US citizens and residents is that it has been around for a number of years and has proven itself to be reliable. It is also very proactive about conducting business in a manner that complies with applicable US laws.

When you register an account with Coinbase, you will be able to link it with your regular bank account as well as one or more credit cards. You can use either your bank account or your credit cards to buy Bitcoin. When you sell Bitcoin on Coinbase, the proceeds will be deposited in your linked bank account several days to a week after you have made the sale. Depending on your bank, the process of linking your checking or savings account to Coinbase can be instant or can take a few days.

Because Coinbase is proactive about complying with applicable US laws, you will need to go through a verification process in order to buy or sell significant amounts of Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin. This process can also take several days.

When you register your Coinbase account, do plan on some time to work through the account verification steps and the process for linking your regular bank account. You will want to have all that set up before you ever attempt to buy or sell any Bitcoin, Litecoin or Ethereum.

Once you are registered in Coinbase, you can obtain addresses for each of the coins that Coinbase supports in the accounts page. You need addresses in order to do anything with those coins. I will be focusing on Bitcoin in the next few tips, so please make sure you have a Bitcoin address so that you can put them into practice. Copy your Bitcoin address from Coinbase and record it in a convenient and accessible location.

Don't forget to use a unique password for your Coinbase account and enter it along with your other log in information in your LastPass or other password manager.

Unfortunately coinbase doesn't allow nonEU/US/CA residents to join.
But I've signed up for updates for my country - service looks reliable

I'm sorry to hear, and that's good to know. You'll have to research to see what your country has in terms of a gateway service between Bitcoin and national currency. Feel free to post here what you find out.

Tip #4: Register a FreeBitcoin (https://freebitco.in/) account

Free Bitcoin (https://freebitco.in/) started off as a simple Bitcoin faucet. You registered a Bitcoin address (such as your Coinbase address), you solved a puzzle and clicked on the "roll" button and a small amount of BTC was added to your account. You could then return in an hour and roll again.

Free Bitcoin still works like that, and if you roll often (up to once every hour) you might get lucky and win one of the larger prizes. But Free Bitcoin is more than just a faucet. There's a gambling component too, which I recommend you ignore. The really exciting feature on Free Bitcoin is that your account also acts like a very flexible interest bearing savings wallet once your balance reaches 30,000 satoshi, or 0.0003 BTC.

Free Bitcoin's interest rate is currently 4.08 percent. By way of comparison this morning I visited a local bank in the US and was told the interest rate on a business checking account is 0.05%.

Your Free Bitcoin (https://freebitco.in/) account comes with its own deposit address. This means that if you have a small amount of Bitcoin sitting somewhere else, you can deposit it to your Free Bitcoin wallet and it will earn daily compounding interest. You should consider depositing at least enough to get your balance up to 0.0003 BTC so you can begin earning daily interest.

When you need to withdraw funds, you have two withdraw options. One is an expensive immediate withdrawal. The other is a slow (6 to 24 hr) very low fee withdrawal. With enough planning ahead the slow option will work fine. In my experience the wait time is six hours or less.

One thing to keep in mind when using services like Free Bitcoin and Coinbase is that although you can control the funds that go to the addresses you are assigned on those services, you do not get the private keys for those addresses, so in that sense you really do not have full control of your funds. All this means is that if the service is unreliable you could lose complete access to your funds. I personally consider both Coinbase and Free Bitcoin to be stable and reliable, and for that reason I'm happy to recommend them anyway. However, you should start your experience with Free Bitcoin using a small amount of BTC and then as you get more comfortable with it you can add more BTC to your account in order to get earn more interest.

You do not have to do anything to earn the daily interest. To get the faucet earnings, you do need to log in and roll. I'm going to recommend at least one other Bitcoin faucet on this thread, so this is a good time for some words of wisdom about faucets.

Faucets are advertising sites which dispense small amounts of cryptocurrency as an incentive for traffic. There are lots of Bitcoin faucets out there, and they can be fun to visit. You will not get rich on faucet earnings unless the faucet is a lottery and you happen to score a big prize. With that said, I believe that spending a bit of time visiting faucets is a valuable learning experience especially when you're new. However small the amount, the faucets do give you some Bitcoin and when you have an actual balance to deal with it starts to make more sense. You start to get good at doing math to the eighth decimal place. You might get curious about what the Dollar value of your balance is, so you start checking sites like Coin Marketcap (http://) and then do the math to figure it out on an actual balance that you hold.

It's a given that you will go through a stage where you visit faucets. You might visit just one or two several times a day or you might spend hours at a time visiting a lot of them. At some point you'll probably do the math and figure out that you're earning substantially less than minimum wage doing it, but that's OK, because it's part of the education process.

Start visiting the Free Bitcoin (https://freebitco.in/) faucet as often as you'd like (up to once an hour). When you decide to venture out into other faucets, then use your Free Bitcoin deposit address as the claim address. In this way, all your faucet earnings funnel into a single interest bearing address.

Thanks for the heads up about Free Bitcoin, I wasn't going to get involved in Faucets, but that doesn't seem too bad.

You're welcome. I just discovered Free Bitcoin (https://freebitco.in/) has a Bitcoin mining function as well. I'm trying it out now just for fun, though I know I'm not going to get much trying to mine Bitcoin with a laptop.

 :D I was stuck on bitcoin faucets for about a week before I realized it was more of a long term, slow build type of thing. Sadly, I fell into the gambling trap which wasnt so bad since I didnt gamble any of my own money (although my time is another issue). I never thought about using it as a funnel for other faucets, and also allowing it to grow interest. Great stuff here. Thanks.

Tip #5: Register a Moon Bitcoin (http://moonbit.co.in/) account

Moon Bitcoin (http://moonbit.co.in/) is a faucet in the classic sense. I recommend it here because like Free Bitcoin (https://freebitco.in/), it is a longstanding and stable faucet. You register on Moon Bitcoin by simply entering a receiving address. Enter your Free Bitcoin deposit address so that your earnings can get sent over to your interest bearing Bitcoin wallet.

Moon Bitcoin uses an intermediary service called CoinPot. It sends your earnings to CoinPot, which also aggregates earnings from other faucets. You can then request a withdrawal of the coins directly to your registration address. If you visit five other faucets which use CoinPot, then your faucet earnings will pile up faster than they would if you were only visiting one supported faucet.

Once you've registered on Moon Bitcoin, then find and register for a few other fauets, making sure to use your Free Bitcoin deposit address each time you register.

Visiting faucets is fun. You just don't want to overdo it. I recommend regularly visiting no more than ten faucets, and make sure that all proceeds from all the faucets go directly to your Free Bitcoin deposit address.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, especially those living in the US.

I too have problem with password  ???

This tip isn't as good as you other ones - you can't simply send your earnings over to Free Bitcoin and I'd can't find five faucets that link to CoinPot...

I did check, and Coinpot will send your earnings to the Moon Bitcoin registered address once 25,000 satoshi accumulate, so in that respect you don't have to do anything. But with the high Bitcoin price which corresponds to low faucet earnings, it's going to take a long time to reach that threshold on just one faucet.

Coinpot is one of several faucet aggregation services. I remember one called Faucetbox and another called Coinbox. Not sure if either of those are working now.

Honestly the reason I recommended Moon Bitcoin is because of its longevity. So many faucets come and go, but this one, along with Free Bitcoin, has stood the test of time. They recently contracted with Coinpot for distributions, but before that, their own internal threshold was 25,000 satoshis before they would pay you, so that part hasn't changed.

Edit: I tried to link a full blown Coinpot account to my Free Bitcoin deposit address and I will admit that is going to be at best an annoying process and at worst won't even work at all. What happened was I tried to register a Bitcoin Bonus faucet (http://bonusbitcoin.co/) account, and it required me to register with an email account. Well, that registration automatically registered me with a full blown Coinpot account which wasn't the same account as the one connected to my Moon Bitcoin faucet address. So then I tried to link the two accounts and Coinpot wants me to either sign a message with the address or send a small deposit from it to prove that I own it. Well, since it's a Free Bitcoin address, I don't technically own it. I tried to send a small deposit, but it's probably not going to come from that particular address, which means I just blew many many claims worth of faucet earnings to try to prove ownership of an address I really don't own. I contacted their support to explain the situation but I'm not holding my breath for a reply. Personally I think demanding proof of ownership of addresses for faucet earnings is overkill.

So, what I would recommend you do once you register a Moon Bitcoin account (using your Free Bitcoin address) is to immediately then register the Coinpot account as a full blown account and hopefully the address will link that way with no fuss. Then when you register for other faucets using your email address, just use the same email address as you used to register your Coinpot account. But the important thing is to register your Coinpot account first, then register for the other Coinpot faucets. Someone who does this, please post here how it went.

I unfortunately did it in the wrong order, so for now I have one Coinpot account that is linked to my Moon Bitcoin faucet address (which is my Free Bitcoin address), and another Coinpot account with no addresses that will collect earnings from Bonus Bitcoin and Bit Fun (http://bitfun.co/). This simply means that I'll have to accumulate 25,000 satoshis in two accounts rather than just one, so not as efficient. And in order to send the earnings from the email-based Coinpot account I'll have to locate a Bitcoin address that I actually own, which may honestly not be worth it to me at this point. I'm hoping for a favorable response from my support request.

Tip #6: Start keeping records

This is a tip I sincerely wish that I had put into practice when I first got going with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as I am now in the unenviable position of having to reconstruct the story of my involvement in cryptocurrencies as told by hundreds, possibly thousands, of different transactions.

You can see from the above post that sometimes things in the cryptoworld end up being more complicated than anticipated, and that is definitely the deal with Coinpot and its connected faucets. Don't sweat the faucets. The main point with doing anything with them is to start working with actual Bitcoin. There is nothing like actual experience to get a real education. Have fun with the faucets and get the experience, but my sincere hope is that it won't be long before you move beyond them. And anyway, the real important faucet site is Free Bitcoin (https://freebitco.in/), not so much because of its faucet feature, but more because of its interest earning feature. So, play that faucet, and keep track of your interest payments, your faucet payments, and if applicable, your referral payments.

Why is it important to keep records of your crypto-transactions? There are several reasons, depending on the direction you take. If you get into trading, you will want a way to objectively analyze the profitability (or lack thereof) of your trades. If you buy and hold a particular coin, you will want to know the price you paid for it in order to determine a good time to sell it. A really important reason is that some of the transactions you make in the crypto-world are taxable events. In order to properly comply with the tax laws where you live, you will need to know what you did.

I am not in a position to give any kind of tax advice. However, I think it is safe to say that your tax reporting will be much easier if you go into it with thorough records, and there is no better time to begin keeping thorough records than right as you're just getting started.

Fortunately, it is not as difficult as you might think, and there are some great tools which have been developed with cryptocurrencies in mind. I know of two, which I will recommend you check out. Both have a free limited account option. Both have a price tag you will need to pay in order to fully utilize them.

Coin Tracking (https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@wiser/cointracking) is a very comprehensive service that has been in business since 2013. You can easily import records from over twenty different trading platforms, you can import wallet transactions, and you can run APIs to automatically track future transactions. The tool is loaded with all kinds of analytics and will even generate completely filled in tax forms for a number of countries including Germany and the US. I played around with it some and contacted support with some questions pertaining to my own particular situation (which I'll admit is a bit off the beaten path, even for cryptos). I got a very detailed reply back within 24 hours telling me that yes, this tool could handle the particulars of my situation.

The tool is complicated and takes time to learn the ins and outs of. The free account allows tracking of up to 200 trades and manual wallet transaction entries. As you gain transactions in Bitcoin and other cryptocoins, you can enter those into Coin Tracking and use the information to figure out how it works. You will need to spend time learning how to do it, and the final results of analyses, tax forms, etc. will only be as good as the accuracy of your data. As I mentioned above, I would have loved to have known about this tool back when I had less than 200 trades to my name.

Bitcoin Tax (https://bitcoin.tax/) is another tool that I am exploring. Its free version will allow up to 100 transactions, so again, great to work with in the very beginning at no cost. Once you exceed 100 transactions you have the option to buy a premium version for 2017 which will then allow you to input an unlimited number of transactions from 2017. If you have any transactions from 2016 or earlier years you will need to buy the premium version for those years. In that sense its fee structure is similar to the kind of tax reporting software you might purchase in the United States. You buy the software for the tax year you are filing for and then the following year you buy a new license.

Bitcoin tax in my opinion is simpler and more intuitive than Coin Tracking, and it's much less expensive. You will be spending more time working with your data, though. While Coin Tracking is programmed to accept whatever CSV format its numerous exchanges spit out, Bitcoin Tax really only accepts a particular format, which means that when you get the CSV exports from your exchanges (and they are all different) you will then need to import the data yourself into a program like Excel in order to put it into the right format for Bitcoin Tax, and then you can import it in. That is not an issue for me as I have those skills. There may be some other features that Coin Tracking has that Bitcoin Tax does not have. It also seems to be mainly geared with US tax filing in mind, so if you file taxes in a different country it may not be as helpful to you.

If you are at the point where all you have are a few wallet transactions, that is a great time to begin the discipline of record keeping. You can enter your transactions manually, and that's a good discipline at first as another way to work with your information and really get to know what you're doing. But most coin wallets do allow you to export data into an importable file format, and it's a matter of then working with that data to get it into whichever record keeping tool you're going to settle on. I would recommend trying out both tools and getting to know how they work, so that when you need it to give you some actual results, you don't feel like you're just running everything through a magic black box. Hopefully by the time you max out what you can do with a free account, you will be comfortable enough with one of the services to be willing to pay for it and consistently use it.

When entering records, keep in mind that it's not a transaction until funds hit your wallet. So, for example, if you are accumulating faucet earnings in Coinpot, you don't really need to track those until you get a payment from Coinpot to your own wallet. At that point it's a transaction you should record as some form of income. Since interest and faucet rolls are immediately credited to your Free Bitcoin account, and you have access to those funds, you can record those as they happen. At this point Free Bitcoin doesn't offer historical records (I have submitted a support requesting that for my own account), so the best thing is to record your interest and referral earnings at least once a week and your faucet claims as they occur. With that said, since you don't technically own the Free Bitcoin wallet, one could make the argument that you don't need to record anything until you make withdrawals, at which point you would consider any amount beyond what you have deposited to be income. This is the part where I'm supposed to say you need to consult with your own qualified tax advisor.

Bottom line: start keeping records of what you are doing with your cryptos.

Moon Bitcoin wouldn't seem to let me register without the Coinpot account, so I think I lucked out there. Coinpot actually seems like quite a good service, now that I've taken some time to explore it. I have a few other faucets linked into it, both Bitcoin and some Moon alt coins. However, with Coinpot it is free to transfer the alt coins to Bitcoin and there isn't a minimum level - I tried it this morning. I'm actually building up my Coinpot balance quicker than Free bitcoins.

The tips on record keeping were something that I was meaning to start looking into too. I was only going to bother tracking transactions in my main wallets though, rather than anything from Faucets etc. Cointracking and Bitcoin tax are going to be good places to start my research though.

Thanks for sharing these valuable tips/informations. Bieng a newbie in this forum, i need to learn more informations that me improve and succeed later.

I have been not treating my BCT acct so well , but thanks for your vision. I would change it from today!

Hi thank you for sharing relevant and helpful info here for those starting like me. I only got to know about bitcoin this year while surfing online. I tried freebitco and it's really good for newcomers and what I like about it is their lottery they have many prizes that's what I'm also looking forward to. For now I'm really interested on making it in this forum as I've read that many esp from my country are doing well and earning here. its not easy I know but I've been doing a lot of reading and back reading. i already know and understand how to rank up here. What Im interested to learn is about the bounty and airdrops as newbies can join esp on airdrops. Can you share your knowledge about these because even if im reading sometimes I dont understand it well. And what is ANN thread compared to Bounty thread? i hope you can answer in your future posts. Thank you in advance.

Hi there, thanks so much for stopping by.

Generally ANN threads start out as announcements about new coins and projects. For coins, these threads are often linked to directly from a coin's page on Coin MarketCap. For example, if you go to the DMD Diamond (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/diamond/) page on Coin Marketcap, you will see a series of links on the left hand side just below the coin name. The headings are "Website," "Announcement," "Explorer," etc. The link called "Announcement" will take you directly to DMD Diamond's Announcement thread right here on Bitcoin Talk (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=580725.0). I like that they are posted on Coin Marketcap because there you can easily look up a coin you want to know more about, and from there easily get to the coin's website, the coin's announcement thread, the coin's block explorer, trading platforms that support the coin and more.

An airdrop is a way to distribute a new coin. There are various ways of distributing, including ICOs, mining, proof of stake minting and more. Airdrops involve the distribution of free tokens to people based on some parameter such as geography, citizenship, being a customer of a particular retail store, etc. In order to qualify for an airdrop, you would have to meet its requirements. I personally do not have a lot of experience with airdrops, but I did find this website which claims to monitor airdrops (http://airdropalert.com/). Anyone who has used that site or who has others to recommend, I would love your feedback.

A bounty is a reward offered for work done in the development of a particular coin or project. For example, maybe a new coin's development team has a wallet for the coin for Windows and Linux, but none of their developers are familiar with Apple computers. If the team wants an Apple wallet developed, they could advertise a bounty offering to reward a programmer with a certain amount of coin once he has successfully created a wallet that people can run on their Mac computers. I am a writer, so I have earned a few bounties for various writing projects for different coins. In one case I earned a bounty for writing up an FAQ page for a website. The bounties I have earned I generally learned about in the course of my normal day to day interaction with a specific project's community (often the announcement thread for the project), but I believe people will also post threads announcing bounties as well. In order to be able to earn a bounty, you usually need some specific skills--programming, writing, etc.--that would help you to accomplish the particular project to be rewarded with a bounty.

Another way to earn money here that is fairly new to me is with signature campaigns. Each Bitcoin Talk user is allowed a signature which will show up at the bottom of each post. People have learned that signatures make great advertising, so the development teams of various projects have been willing to compensate people for placing an advertisement for that project in their signature. My signature at this time is an advertisement for DMD Diamond, and yes, I am participating in a paid DMD Diamond signature campaign.

Earning with your signature is an option that only gets better as you carefully cultivate your Bitcoin Talk reputation, as higher ranked members have better signature options. So please make sure that your posts are courteous, relevant, and either informative or asking good questions. It helps to also use correct grammar and spelling for the language you are writing in. And when you are participating in a signature campaign, be sure that your posts do not degenerate into spam. Do not post just to hawk the product you are advertising with your signature. You can bring it up if it's relevant to the discussion, but otherwise just post good quality posts in threads you are interested in and the people who read your material will also notice your signature.

You are most helpful thank you for taking the time to explain everything I understand it better now. ANN is short for announcement I didnt know that and its great you mentioned about Marketcap I know where to check now. You also explained what airdrop, bounty and signature campaign are. Thanks a lot!

Tip #7: Understand there's more besides Bitcoin

This forum got started back when Bitcoin was pretty much the only game in town when it came to cryptocurrencies. To this day its focus is on Bitcoin. However, we are now almost done with 2017, Bitcoin has been around for eight years, and it has inspired lots of new coins and other cryptocurrency related projects.

You may be feeling overwhelmed by all the information you are encountering about Bitcoin. I remember feeling that way too. I kept seeing these ads for writing to earn a different coin, also known as an altcoin, and I ignored them for several months because I thought I should just focus on Bitcoin until I'd mastered it.

If you ignore the other coins you are going to miss out on a good 99 percent of what the cryptocurrency world has to offer, including a lot of ways to earn.

There are currently over seven hundred actively traded coins, and several thousand more defunct coins. It is very important to understand that there are more dead altcoins than live ones.

So at this stage, I am only going to advise that you get to know about some of the other altcoins. I am going to show you how to most easily get the information and your "homework" will be to get to know two or three altcoins. Just get to know them, but don't buy any yet. I will provide future tips on what to look for in an altcoin, but today I'm going to focus on how you can find the information you'll need to make an informed judgment about an altcoin before you buy it.

Coin Market Cap (https://coinmarketcap.com/) will be your go to site to connect with all the active altcoins. You can also use it to look up inactive coins as long as you know the exact name or ticker symbol of the coin. Go ahead and bookmark coinmarketcap dot com.

The home page is a list of the top one hundred coins in terms of market cap. Market cap is the total value in Dollars represented by all the coins currently in circulation multiplied by the current market price of the coin. Right now, the price of one Bitcoin is $9607.11 and there are 16,705,012 BTC in circulation. So the market cap for Bitcoin is $9607.11 x 16,705,012 = $160,486,887,835. It's a very simple math problem and a good way to rank coins. It is an inflated number for a couple reasons. First, this amount would be realized only if every single Bitcoin were to be sold at its current market price all at once. However, if everyone who owned Bitcoins tried to sell them, the price would drop and drop until the last person to unload would get next to nothing. Second, it doesn't account for any coins that are lost. We know from various anecdotes that a few people who mined Bitcoin early on wiped their hard drives or in some other way lost access to those coins and so they are not actually in circulation.

The rank of coins has nothing to do with the coin's quality, only its market cap. You can have a coin that is high quality but still has a low market cap. Diamond (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/diamond/), for example, has a current circulating supply of 2,531,992 and a price of $9.66, so its market cap is $24,447,193. Because the supply is so low compared to Bitcoin, even if Diamond were priced at $10,000 each, its total coin market cap would still be lower than Bitcoin's. As for the coin's actual value, well, you need to know right now that a lot of very poor quality coins go through periods of rapid price rise due to hype, pump and dump schemes or random weird market forces, so you can't just consider the price or the market cap in making your investment decisions.

If you click on the name of a coin from the Coin Market Cap home page, it will take you to a page that is just for that coin. For example, click on Ethereum (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/) to get to its page. You will see a repeat of the information for Ethereum that you saw on the home page. On the left hand side, under the name "Ethereum," you will see a short list of hyperlinked words like "Website," "Announcement," "Explorer," and more. The Website hyperlink takes you straight to Ethereum's website. The Announcement hyperlink takes you straight to Ethereum's announcement thread on this forum. the Explorer hyperlinks (in the case of Ethereum there are several) take you to block explorers for Ethereum. Other hyperlinks take to you other sources of information about Ethereum, such as Ethereum's own forum or message board, Ethereum's chat channel and even Ethereum's source code. If you were interested in investing in Ethereum, you would first want to spend time looking over those different sites.

We're still on Ethereum's page. Scroll down a bit to where the charts are. That shows a graph of the overall price (in BTC and USD) and market cap trends over time. You can click on Markets to learn where Ethereum is traded, Social to get updated feeds of various social media sites where Ethereum has a presence, and Historical Data to find out the daily high, low, open and close price for Ethereum as far back as you want to go (default is 30 days).

I used Ethereum as an example, but the pages are laid out the same for each coin. Some coins may have slightly less information than Ethereum, but it will all be there.

So, for your "homework," spend some time on Coin Market Cap (https://coinmarketcap.com/). Get familiar with the home page and the pages of a few individual coins. When selecting coins to learn more about, don't limit yourself to the top 100 ranked coins. You can easily ask to see the next 100 to get lower ranked coins. Once you've picked a few, then start digging into the hyperlinked information found on each of their pages. Feel free to post any summary information of what you've learned here.

Yes I agree that Bitcointalk account is an asset.

@ Wiser a BIG thank you for your contribution. I've been reading as much as I can during the day on and off on this site. Doing research with Google based upon what I've read here. I'm an "OLD" new guy and if there's one thing I've learned in life is education pays huge dividends. I'll continue to follow this thread as you update it and continue to educate myself. I'm really not interested into getting into trading but I am looking to invest a small amount of say $2000 or $3000. After 10 plus days of research and reading I'm slowly narrowing down a list while I wait for my Ledger Nano S to arrive which should be by the weekend.

@Wiser,

Really appreciate this post. I'm just getting started with Bitcoins/altcoins so this will help me out tremendously. Thanks.  :)

Wow. This is great. I'm new at cryptocurrency and Bitcoin so I will try this out. I'm outside US so coinbase might not be for me. Hope you can right more posts similar to this. Thanks.

Thanks for this article. It is really helpful to me. Will try your step by step guide. Hope you can have more of these. Thanks again.

I recommend Waves because you do not have to spend huge sums of money like ETH or BTC. In addition, I prosper all the time and it seems to me that it will mean a lot in the future.

I'm taking a little break from sharing tips because I had some things come up in my life this past week that required more intense attention. However, I'm hoping to keep going with it by the middle of the week.

In the mean time, I came across this very well written nontechnical piece explaining what cryptocurrencies actually are, why they are valuable, and why they might not be valuable down the road. It's a very balanced, realistic view. I learned a lot from reading it, and I'm not exactly a newbie. It's a great article, one everyone involved in this industry should keep in their virtual library.

https://blog.chain.com/a-letter-to-jamie-dimon-de89d417cb80

Does anyone know of a website that can help to start this whole bitcoin? From the setup and stuff?

This is that website, especially this beginner section! With regards to set up, the wallet thread stacked at the top of this section is a good place to start!

Tip #8: Organize your forums and other communication platforms

This one is actually huge. If you did your homework and actually researched a few altcoins you have surely discovered as many new forums as the number of altcoins you studied. Some coins have multiple forums and several other means of communication.

As a case in point, take the coins in my portfolio. I currently hold NEM, DNotes, DMD Diamond, STEEM and VIVA. I've got dust in a few other coins, but those are the main ones. So NEM, DNotes, and DMD Diamond (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=580725.0) each have threads on this forum and I follow them. NEM (https://forum.nem.io/), VIVA (https://forum.vivaco.in/) and DNotes (http://cryptomoms.com/forum/) also have their own forums, although the forum I'm referring to for DNotes is not exclusively dedicated to DNotes. STEEM (https://steemit.com/) has its own entire social media site and within that site you can follow the important people involved in STEEM development for news and discussion. In addition to all that, NEM has its own Telegram channel (which I used to be part of), DMD Diamond has its own Slack channel (https://bit.diamonds/contact.php), STEEM has at least one chat group on Rocket Chat and VIVA has a presence on Basecamp and Discord.

You see how it works?

When it comes to getting involved in the cryptocurrency industry, communication channels multiply at an alarming rate.

And when you invest in a particular altcoin, it is very important that you keep up with that coin's news and other communication, which means you have to very regularly catch up on its thread here, its own forum, and its various relevant chat groups. In other words you'll be doing a lot of reading and interacting. If you don't, you could miss some very important information affecting your holdings. Case in point. One of the other coins I hold that I didn't mention above is FIMK. FIMK also has its own thread here, its own forum, and who knows what else. I unfortunately ignored the FIMK channels but continued to hold the coin. And then one day it was announced that the development energy was going to shift to this coin called HEAT. I could be wrong but I believe during a certain window of time you could exchange your FIMK for HEAT on a one to one basis. I wasn't paying attention and missed that window. The last time I checked HEAT was worth a lot and FIMK was practically worthless. And you could trade 200 FIMK for one HEAT, or something like that. So because I wasn't paying attention rather than holding a winner, I'm now bagholding a loser which is not likely to ever go anywhere, though the development team supposedly is still working on it.

With the above said, I will say that any coin that you have to monitor very intensely is likely to wind up being a loser. However, when you've acquired large amounts of a coin at cost, you don't want to take chances, especially at the beginning, so you need to be keeping tabs on its news. When the coin has proven itself to be stable in the news department, then you might be able to relax the intensity a bit, but you never want to stop monitoring it altogether.

Since for every coin you hold you're going to be following around three to five communication channels, you need to keep them organized. You can use bookmarks in your browser, a list with hyperlinks in a spreadsheet or word document. There might even be an app for keeping track of such things.

The bottom line: come up with a system that works for you for keeping all those channels straight and ensuring that you will visit them regularly and make it happen.

Thank you very much for your very informative and great post! I read through it and I feel like I've learned a lot, but of course there is still a lot to go. I also read the article you linked and it was most certainly the best explanation of cryptocurrencies that I've read so far, so thank you very much for that too!

I'm having a bit of an internal debate as to what should be my next tip. I could flesh out further what to look for in an altcoin that you're considering buying or otherwise acquiring, or I could go more in the direction of how to earn your way into cryptocoins (yes, there are better ways to earn cryptos than faucets!).

I'll eventually cover both topics; it's a matter of in what order. So, those of you following this thread, what would you like to see next?

In the mean time, I have quite the roundup of interesting cryptocurrency related articles for your education and enjoyment.

How normal people get involved in cryptocurrency (https://dnotesedu.com/2017/12/key-points-how-normal-people-get-involved-in-cryptocurrency/). This article is a list of the many different ways to catch the crypto-bug. There really is no one size fits all. Everyone's story is going to be unique.

Bitcoin 2017: a year in review (https://dnotesedu.com/2017/12/bitcoin-2017-a-year-in-review/). This was quite a year for Bitcoin. This infographic gives you a great snapshot of how much things have changed in just one year.

Will the futures market do to Bitcoin what it did to gold? (https://medium.com/@ImagineTraffic/will-the-futures-market-do-to-bitcoin-what-it-did-to-gold-b7d35704641) Today Bitcoin futures enter the scene. In a nutshell, all the Bitcoin naysayers can now put their money where their mouth is and bet against it. How will that affect the price of Bitcoin?

CryptoKitties takes the Ethereum network by storm (https://cointelegraph.com/news/cryptokitties-sales-hit-12-million-could-be-ethereums-killer-app-after-all). You have to put real money into this, but what a fun way to learn about the block chain technology, smart contracts, and what it takes to run a decentralized app. I think if you wanted to play this game, you could count the cost as tuition in your crypto-education journey. Just use some common sense. Allocate a certain amount to this and stick with it, and only put in what you can afford to lose. Most of all, have fun :)

Really you are giving good updates to the people who don't have proper knowledge about what is happening around the crypto world. Newbie like me will go through all your updates and acquire some knowledge about the what is happening.

Be sure to read all the tips provided here. I keep adding more once or twice a week.

Thanks for the tip @ Sir Wiser! I'm glad that I bump into your thread, I've learned a lot of things in just a short period of time. This will help a lot of newbies like me, that this site isn't just any other forum to which accounts are useless.

Tip #9: Know what makes a good altcoin

This morning I read this article (http://www.cityam.com/277359/bitcoin-price-rocketing-spurring-people-mortgage-their-home) describing what you absolutely never want to do: mortgage your home to buy Bitcoin. Please, don't ever do something like that. Earlier this year I sold off some NEM I was holding (at a much lower price than it is now) and used the proceeds to pay off some crippling credit card debt we'd gotten into years ago. Even though today I could have gotten four times as much for the coins I consider it to be a good decision. The added peace of mind getting out from under that debt has added to my family has been priceless. My point is you want to use your cryptocurrency venture to reduce your debt, not add to it. You certainly don't want to place your home at risk for the sake of a coin that may be entering into a bubble phase in terms of its price.

Looking at Bitcoin's current price, it's certainly possible that you missed the Bitcoin train, and that's OK. There are still plenty of great opportunities with altcoins. Not all altcoins are created equally, so it's important to know how to distinguish between the ones likely to succeed and the ones likely to fail. No one can know the future for sure, but there are definitely characteristics that make success more likely. Today I'm going to list some of them, then flesh them out further in subsequent posts.

A good altcoin needs to have most, preferably all, of these characteristics.

1. A solid business plan
2. Value added infrastructure beyond the coin
3. A solid and professional development team
4. A solid community
5. Good communication from the development team
6. A strong incentive to keep coins off the market
7. Systematic buy support for the coin on the market

I will flesh out each one of these further in subsequent posts. If you've done your previous "homework," you have probably already encountered a few altcoins that look really interesting to you. Try going back through their information and communication channels and see if you can spot the presence or lack of these characteristics.

Even when you believe you have found a winning altcoin to invest in, please only invest what you can afford to lose.

I deleted two identical posts from two different users because they appear to be spam. Everyone is welcome to learn and ask questions, but let's keep our posts original. Thanks :)

Are you looking for some free cryptos?

There is a NEM airdrop going on for people who sign up for WeChat and add the NEM wallet extension.

If you have a cell phone, follow the instructions on this video (https://youtu.be/N2DGUDOKerw). Be especially careful about keeping your passwords and private keys safe and accessible to you as there is no way to recover them.

I'm not sure how long the airdrop will last, so don't wait too long!

With the crypto market making moves again, it might be wise to revive a few of these topics on how to get started.

I remember when I started out with BTC, i ran into a lot of issues. From wallets, block confirmations, private keys and all the beginner mistakes one can make.
Heck, I even was highly nervous purchasing my first Bitcoins, just because i wasn't sure about the source.

Anyone who is a beginner, make sure to stick to bigger platforms, to reduce the risk. Use wallets that are easy but secure, and make sure you understand the difference between private and public keys!

here's a short guide on how to get started: https://pokerceo.io/crypto/how-to-invest-in-cryptocurrency-like-a-shark/