Newbies thoughts on the Cryptocurrency world

Hi all!

I’m really, really new to this but I’ve done a little digging and this is a whole new world I’m only just coming to understand and it’s very exciting.

Besides buying and holding crypto for its growth potential, you can also trade it against other crypto’s and make some very good money if you’re savvy and can avoid the admin fees. Just this week, bitcoin depreciated by R5000/unit when China banned ICO’s but as that was happening, Litecoin shot up in value and was the winner of the day allowing huge profits on their sale allowing traders to buy bitcoin at a massively discounted rate. Even taking fees into consideration these guys must’ve coined it.

Top crypto’s right now are Bitcoin(BTC) , Ethereum(ETH) and Litecoin(LTC) although there are 100’s more and its always changing.

https://www.cryptoversity.com/ has been an amazing resource for me. Sure, they’re mostly selling dreams but a lot of their info is sound and their daily podcast is very informative and doesn’t appear to favour one crypto over another. It’s through them that I first heard about China’s ICO ban and how to milk the situation and now about this new EOS. Give them a listen if you get some time.

My big thing right now (above trading) is mining. There is magic in the idea of digital goldmining, right? Sometimes I run at a loss over 24hrs (cost of electricity vs payout), sometimes I juuuuuuuuuust break-even but for two days over the last 6 day cycle I was very lucky and made enough money to come out at a little profit overall mining ethereum. Granted it’s never as much as what I’d make trading but as a hobby it’s so much fun! My handsome better half bought me a very good pc with an exceptional GPU earlier this year and I’ve set it up to mine and can monitor it from the office since it sends notifications of its activity on the hour every hour. I’m part of a pool so we share the workload allowing each block to be processed must faster than if I did it solo. Downside is that I only get paid for my contribution to the block so I cannot really compete with the serious guys running multiple GPU’s but I get enough to keep me interested 😊 http://www.learn2ai.com/2017/06/how-i-learned-to-mine-eth-ether.html

Other than buying/ saving, trading, mining there are so many other flourishing ideas that creative peeps have developed.
Web surveys that payout in cryto
https://www.earncrypto.com/earn-free-bitcoin/?r=66175

Bitcoin lotteries
https://yabtcl.com/userAccount.aspx

Social media where you can upvote posts with credits which can then be traded for crypto
https://steemit.com

So many things, right?!

Now for the risks… because these things are online and anonymous there is a huge incentive for thieves to take very chance they can to make a quick buck off you. Best practise is to have a secure wallet for your crypto that is not a trader if you have a lot to lose. I spoke with my collegue and his flash stick wallet is actually a product that is bought online. https://trezor.io/
These are pretty expensive and an alternative is to rather store your coins on your pc (https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases/tag/v0.9.0 for ethereum which is my personal main crypto) or with a trusted online wallet. Best right now are xapo.com as well as coinbase.com

If you want to try a very high-risk new crypto that’s coming out next year then try https://eos.io/
What makes EOS special is that all of the other crypto’s run on a linear block process meaning that each block must be completed before the next can start, etc. EOS is able to run the block process in parallel at an enterprise scale and will be the first crypto to do this. Sure there are nay-sayers and yes, totally high-risk but this is really pioneering stuff and I’ve bought a couple of tokens for when it launches. https://hackernoon.com/a-primer-on-eos-ethereums-newest-competitor-and-why-it-grew-3-2x-overnight-5211b7207a85

Last but not least, I really know so little so take any advice here with a big pinch of scepticism and do tons of your own research and please comment below on your thoughts too! I'd love to hear from you.

Keep well!