A few days ago, on the beach, a friend who is completely fasting but was genuinely interested in finally owning some crypto, asked me: I have some euro, what should I do? And then, once purchased, where do I keep them? Finally, I wouldn’t mind if they worked and brought home some wages, which never hurts these days.
I suppose that, like him, there are potentially many who ask the same questions. So I try to do a quick refresher under the umbrella for those who have the same interest as my friend.
First. Don’t buy crypto if you’re fasting it. Read at least a couple of books, a few newsletters, a blog (this one, for example). Spend some time informing yourself, or rather invest it: putting your money in something you don’t know at all is always a good way to lose it.
The advices
What happens in the world of blockchain? A guide to understanding
by Giacomo Barbieri
Second: don’t be in a hurry. We are in the so-called crypto winter and I am not aware that the value of Bitcoin will double in the next few days, so if you decide to become a crypto owner, do it carefully and little by little. FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is always a bad advisor.
Third. Miocuggino earned a lot with crypto. Lucky him, but it is more likely that youocuggino also lost a lot and didn’t tell you. So: don’t rush and get informed.
Fourth. Choose an exchange. To exchange your euros with Bitcoin or other crypto you must necessarily go to a centralized exchange (the decentralized ones that are now the most popular as Uniswap, operating totally in blockchain only work with crypto and, even if you want, they cannot accept fiat currency). Once you have chosen one of the many exchanges (my favorite is Young Platform because it is Italian and made up of serious and talented guys), reclaim the euros you decide to transform into crypto and proceed with the purchase.
Savings betrayed
They hoped to make money with Bitcoin. Now thousands are shouting at the first crypto scam of an Italian company
by Arcangelo Rociola
Fifth. But what do I buy? You can choose from several thousand cryptocurrencies, from the most famous (Bitcoin) to the most unknown and insignificant. Generally I divide them into some categories: A) Bitcoin, unique and inimitable; B) Ethereum, the currency of the most important blockchain in the world; altcoins, or cryptocurrencies of other blockchains or projects that run on blockchians and potentially have a function on the market; the shitcoins, or all the others. So let’s say I’d save twenty out of thousands and thousands.
Sixth. How do I rate them? Bitcoin, by its nature, is a case in itself. I judge altcoins as if they were, in some way, shares or startup shares: you know that 9 out of 10 will not go anywhere but that other one is enough to bring home a nice return. You can invest in a startup because you recommended it to you or because you are an expert on what that startup does and convinces you, ditto in the case of altcoins. As for shitcoins, the name already says it all, but I admit through gritted teeth that a friend of mine from Cuneo paid for his holidays with Shiba Inu, a shitcoin born as a mockery and turned out to be less worse than many others, if nothing else. for never having promised anything more than it is: a cartoon of a Japanese dog.
Seventh. Once purchased, what do I do with them? Here it is already more complicated. First, better if you don’t leave them on exchanges, which were not designed to be a custody service and where in some cases they end up in a “cauldron” operated by the exchanges themselves with the aim of increasing their profits (but not necessarily the your).
Eighth. And so? Buy a Ledger (a kind of super secure computer stick) and put them there, but be careful not to lose the Ledger or its keywords. Avoid leaving them on normal flash drives or on your computer, for obvious reasons. Or put them on a custody service (I would have a great one to recommend ..).
Ninth. What if I also want a passive return? Here things get a little more complicated. The collapse of the market a few months ago taught us that, in practice, none of the centralized operators who promised to operate their customers’ cryptocurrencies in exchange for often generous returns were saved. From Celsius down, they are either dead or not at all well and the reason is only one: opacity. You rely on them without knowing what they will do with your crypto and you hope for the best. Therefore, it is better to opt for services where you can choose based on correct information, or, if you are well equipped, directly choose various options such as staking or the provision of liquidity to decentralized pools or exchanges.
Tenth. With what time horizon should I proceed? Crypto is a good defense against the natural inflationary bias of fiat currencies, but it is also very volatile. Consequently, a medium-term strategy is definitely a better option than checking the value of what you bought the day before every hour. Returning to the comparison with startups, those who do it know that they will have to wait years to eventually uncork champagne.