I'd advise to start by understanding the different components of this world and answer these questions. This involved hours and hours of reading as for me but this is worth it. The more you know, the more you will be part of the future so indeed, do your own research. Crypto is only starting, if you start learning now, you'll have a considerable edge compared to the millions of people that don't know about it or don't want to know about it (yet).
So here are a few questions to help you do your own research. Hard to do your own research if you don't know what to search, so this might save you some time.
- What is a ledger in accountancy?
- What is blockchain and its various applications to the real world? (I suppose you know about it)
- Why is blockchain useful for money transactions? What is the advantages of a currency using blockchain (crypto-currency) compared to FIAT?
- What are the actors of this world? Users, miners, traders, holders, believers, developers, exchanges, mine pools, shills, scammers etc...
- Which role do I want to play in this world?
- What are bitcoin and ethereum? Differences between the two ?
- What are altcoins and their differences with the two above mentioned currencies ?
As a user: How can I buy crypto-currency (usually first timers buy BTC)? How do I open a wallet? How do transactions work concretely?
As a miner: Which currency is more profitable to mine? What are the electricity costs involved by my mining activity? Which hardware do I need? How much hardware do I need to reach a particular level of profitability? Where do I set the thing up? How much is my initial investment going to be? Is it worth it? (a business plan analysis in a nutshell)
As a trader: Which exchange is the best for what I wan to trade? Do I only want to trade major coins (BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH) or altcoins too? What is the technical trading approach? What is the fundamental trading approach? Which indicators do I need to perform a profitable trade?
As a hodler: Generally you would hold BTC, ETH, BCH or LTC and the only question you need to ask yourself is: How much is the price going to rise today?
As believer: Is the truth really out there ?
As a developer: Not computer literate enough to quote the questions they would be wondering but if you are a developer, you can find a good job and be more useful to the community than anybody.
Mine pools: Is it a scam? What is the pool ROI? (Hard to know but you will generally see comments online about a particular pool to have an idea. Still I would be very cautious with them.) I personally don't trust that stuff
at all.
As a shill: You don't question anything as a shill as you need to pretend to be sure your investment is solid and worth the time.
As a scammer: Well, with all the information above, as a scammer, you will wonder how can I take an illegal advantage of all that shit ? But then again, crypto is future, scamming in that world just means you would be a war opportunist in times of war, so not too good for your self-esteem.
There are a lot of other questions you could ask yourself, but these would get you acquainted nicely. Just read, read this forum, type 'crypto news', 'blockchain news', 'bitcoin news' in your favourite search engine and read everything. If you do read when you can, in a month time (depending on your motivation) you'll know where you are heading and have a better outline of the crypto world.
Hope this helps.
Edit: PS: Oh and yeah, I would not touch ICOs until I really know the technical aspect of everything and still, equity on these projects is not positive imho. But that's me, if you go there, I suppose you know what you are doing.
