How to get involved in crypto in 2021
I promise it’s really easy
Well hello! I thought that today I would try something a little different. Over the last few posts I’ve written about a few topics, including NFTs and Dogecoin. Many of these topics are fun, but they’re useless if you can’t manage to get involved. That’s what I want to do with this post today, a quick and dirty guide on getting your first Bitcoin, and then what to do with it. I promise, it will be really easy.
Step 1: Coinbase
This guide is mainly for my friends in the United States, although there are options for basically any country out there to acquire some form of crypto. However, since I live in the US, I can really only guide from my experience purchasing crypto as a US citizen. As a result, I choose to use Coinbase.
While there are many other fantastic services out there, (such as Gemini or Binance) I prefer Coinbase because it’s the oldest one out there and they’ve always been easy to use. They also support a wide variety of cryptocurrencies, so it’s a good place to start if you’re looking for a wide range of investments. Binance definitely has more, but we’ll get to why they might not be so easy in a moment.
Once you’ve signed up for Coinbase, you’re going to want to go through the “KYC” process, otherwise known as Know Your Customer. This process will likely be very quick, as it just involves some basic information. For Coinbase, the more info you give them (proof of residency, ID, etc) the higher of a purchasing limit you will be granted.
Regardless, once you’re through that, you’re ready to start purchasing! Simply link a bank account or a debit card and you’ll be off to the races.
Step 2: To Trade or to Hodl, that is the question
Now, technically, you have bitcoin. That’s it, you’re done. Honestly, if your goal was just to buy bitcoin as an investment, this is actually where you could stop. Sure, you could open a nifty high-yield savings account over at Blockfi and earn interest on your crypto, but I’ll be covering that in a later article I’ll be writing on properly investing in crypto. The goal of this guide is to get you to experience in holding and trading crypto in as few steps as possible.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, Binance.com has a TON (and I mean a TON) of crypto currencies that you simply can’t find easily anywhere else. However, Binance.com is only available OUTSIDE the United States, and if you wanted to use it you would need to use a VPN to spoof your IP address, and that just makes life complicated. However, most states (not including Texas for some reason) can use Binance.US, which is the official partner of Binance.com. This can be tricky, so I’ll also go into them in my later article, for now, let’s stick to Coinbase.
Now, you’re on Coinbase and you’ve bought Bitcoin. You can either hold it in your account as Bitcoin, or you can begin to explore some other currencies such as Ethereum, or maybe Litecoin. Coinbase is fantastic in that it has a slew of learning opportunities built into the site, some of which will even give you a couple of bucks in FREE CRYPTO!
That’s free money, just for watching some videos.
My recommendation is to watch as many of these videos as you can and pick a currency you believe in. Find one that matches what you believe a future of decentralized currencies could use, and begin to learn more about it. I’m sure it may seem overwhelming at first, but there’s a lot to uncover and it’s all free to learn.
What’s the point?
While this article is one of my briefer ones, I wanted this to serve as a starting point for a larger crypto series I’m going to be working on for this blog. Opening a Coinbase account is one of many steps that one should take when trying to get involved in the crypto space for their first time. It’s quite easy, yet many fail to take that first step.
I firmly believe that the world is headed to a decentralized future. That may sound vague, but the crypto space is part of a larger movement among many communities on the internet to move away from things that are centralized into a world controlled by the people that utilize it. I can’t wait to see where that takes us, and I want everyone to know how to join in on the fun.