A Noob's initial experiences upon entrance to Cryptocurrency: Part 1

Are you a noob to cryptocurrency? I am. I have been actively learning about it for about 1 week. Here is what I have found as part of my search to understand how to buy and hold for the long term.

Cryptocurency is only utilized by a small portion of the world’s population. Why is that? Most would have you believe that it is due to it being “new” or associated with anti government and anti establishment people like Anarchists or drug dealer. That just does not prove to be the case from a noob’s prospective. I think there are real bars to entry, some intentional and some just intrinsic to new technology.

Within the last week I decided to get into crypto as a long term investment. I have no need or desire to use crypto for daily transactions, even though I see the benefits to dumping all my income into crypto and taking funds out as needed. I have had a passing knowledge of cryptocurrency for the last couple of years as most people who pay attention to fringe news would. So when I decided to literally and figuratively buy into crypto, I knew that I needed to understand everything there was to know about it shy of being a developer in order to reduce, and possibly eliminate, risk.

My first concern was with how owning a currency that bypasses the need for the US dollar would affect my holding in the US. The US government is a temperamental bastard and could chose to make crypto ownership illegal and then seize all my assets. Crypto evangelists will scoff at this concern and say that this an unfounded non-posibility. A rather immature response given how the US government is known for just doing whatever it wants to whoever without regard for laws or rights.

My second concern was privacy. This ties in with my first concern, but goes further than just remaining anonymous to hide my involvement from the US government, but I am concerned with hackers and identity thieves. Exchanges get hacked. People lose their holdings. If I wasn't concerned about this, I might as well just set my fiat currency on fire and enjoy the flames.

My third concern was long term storage. Why would I trust online storage? I don't trust electronic devices to last more than 5 years. I certainly don’t trust someone else’s electronics. If I was to keep my crypto on an electronic device and it was damaged or destroyed, the I would lose everything.

These are three every real concerns that should be addressed. But actualizing them is another story. I have talked to several different people that hold cryptocurrency and that appear to be vary comfortable with the process. I have gone to original source web sites like bitcoin.org to attempt to understand the process of purchasing and holding. I am not going to go to Wikipedia or YouTube for information regarding money. Those are unofficial sources and can contain a lot of hearsay and unfounded opinions by uninformed or misinformed attention seekers.

So, what have I found?

The entire process of purchasing cryptocurrency contains barriers to entry in the form of being overly complicated in comparison to adopting any other new tech and reliant upon the one attempting entry to have a vast understanding of advance computer operations in order to fully understand the scope and intricacy of the cryptocurrency universe.

I laughed out loud when I read on Changelly.com, “How do I buy cryptos using a bank card? The process is quite simple and takes a few minutes” (located at: https://changelly.com/faq#what-is-recipient-address Accessed: December 14, 2017) and found an incomplete list of 11 things that needed to be done. Incomplete in that it didn't take into account that one should use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to maintain privacy, nor did it bother to assume that anyone asking the question above would not know the specifics about wallets or what 3D-secure is. Everyone is a noob once. Why is there no central information repository where simply factual answers to complicated questions can be found. Scouring the internet for all the information needed, is frustrating and likely wrought with misinformation.

Setting up a VPN is not as easy and straight forward as it would appear to be, especially on Linux. I have a VPN that works for every website I visit except CoinBase. They somehow can tell that I am not in the US. Selecting a different VPN on Linux is not the same as it would be for Windows. Linux is not made for the average computer illiterate Windows-like user.

If you are a noob to crypto like I am, you may not be aware that there are 8 different types of crypto wallets for you to chose from depending on how you define them and who you are talking to about them. So the simple point of choosing your wallet address is not as simple and straight forward as exchanges would have you believe. Choosing the wallet that is best for your situation is very important. Just going with the “default” because it is easy, will undoubtedly increase your risk. Even understanding this little bit does not help me wrap my head around a “wallet.” More research is needed.

I am a smart person, so I know that I will figure this all out with enough research. It just bugs me that those already into crypto try to portray it was being simple, when it clearly is not. Everyone I know that buys and sells crypto could code a web page in their sleep. Could you?

I posit that it may be easier for some to learn a second language than understand crypto enough to sufficiently reduce risk enough for investment. That wont stop me and it shouldn't stop anyone.