Getting started with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

[wiser]

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.
2. Treat your BitcoinTalk ID as a valuable asset.
3. Register a Coinbase account.
4. Register a Free Bitcoin account.
5. Register a Moon Bitcoin account.
6. Start keeping records.
7. Understand there's more besides Bitcoin.
8. Organize your forums and other communication channels.
9. Know what makes a good altcoin.

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.

[wiser]

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 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 for a more detailed tutorial on LastPass.

[SlimShadyMmp]

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

[triciaa478]

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.

[wiser]

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 about the top ranked paid services (some of which have free versions).

Here is a review article 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

[Meaning.OfShock]

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)

[mk4]

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.

[wiser]

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)

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.

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'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.

[mk4]

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.

[wiser]

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

[wiser]

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 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

[sabine80]

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 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.

[wiser]

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.

Coinbase 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.

[smartass111]

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

[wiser]

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.

[wiser]

Tip #4: Register a FreeBitcoin account

Free Bitcoin 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 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 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 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.

[MR2O4]

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

[wiser]

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 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.

[gelonm]

Tip #4: Register a FreeBitcoin account

Free Bitcoin 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 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 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 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.

Moderator edit: Removed referral link

  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.

[wiser]

Tip #5: Register a Moon Bitcoin account

Moon Bitcoin is a faucet in the classic sense. I recommend it here because like Free Bitcoin, 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.