With bitcoin nearly reaching all-time highs we are seeing a lot of renewed interest in cryptocurrencies. There is a lot of newcomers to the space and I want to remind everyone to be helpful and welcoming to them. I joined this sub and bought my first coins during the last big bullrun in December 2017. I remember how lost I felt when I first joined.If you are new to the sub, WELCOME!! If you have any questions you can make a text post (if you have 500 comment karma) or post a comment in the daily discussion thread that is pinned daily to the top of the sub. There are many knowledgeable users here who will be happy to answer your questions or give advice. There is a list of beginner resources below. If you know of any other resources or would like to add anything to the list below, please leave a comment and I will add it to the list (Nothing with Referral Links Please).Here are some things newcomers should watch out for that I have learned during my time here:Don't put in more money then you are comfortable losing. There have been many large drops in bitcoins history and some even larger ones for alts. Some of the alts I bought a few years ago are still -90% from the ATH. Cryptocurrencies are still very volatile. If a big drop in prices will cause you financial stress you should reconsider your position. Here is a screenshot from my old portfolio from 2017-2018. If I had not bought anything since, I would still be down roughly 20% and was down over 50% at one point even with half of my holdings in bitcoin.Most, if not all reputable exchanges require KYC, which is the process of verifying your account. This is a common practice, but make sure you are signing up to a reputable exchange. You need to trust these people with your personal data and identity. There is most likely a waiting period to get verified on exchanges so be patient. Stick to the larger more reputable exchanges such as Kraken, Coinbase, Gemini or whatever exchange is reputable in your local area. Don't make hasty decisions when it comes to choosing an exchange. Watch out for scam exchanges that offer lower then spot rates and have no KYC you may see advertised on social media.Do not base your decisions off price alone. Some peoples first instinct is to buy coins that are under a dollar thinking they will someday be valued at the same price in dollars as bitcoin. Marketcap is a much better metric to determine if a coin is over-priced or not. Market cap is the price of the coin times the number of coins in circulation. Some coins are cheap because they have literally billions of coins in circulation but still have a massive marketcap. XRP is a good example of this. I would suggest sticking to BTC and ETH until you understand the market better.Be very weary of trading groups. These groups mostly exist to dump on the people they give the signals to. These groups were very prevalent last bullrun. They load up on a low-cap alt with low liquidity, signal a pump to the followers, then dump on them as they buy in.Scammers. Everywhere in this space is scammers waiting for you to make a mistake and steal or trick you into sending them your coins. Consider everything a scam until you can prove otherwise. Do not make any hasty decisions. The term "if its too good to be true it most likely is" really holds true in this space. Watch out for fake support staff trying to trick you into revealing your private keys or mnemonics and You-tube videos offering to double your bitcoin. There is no such thing as free money (unless you got the uni airdrop 🦄). Be especially careful on social media sites like twitter, facebook and discord.Watch out for phishing websites when doing google searches. Scammers will often use special characters to make the domain look similar to the real domain. If the site is one you visit often save a bookmark to that site instead of using google search.Mining these days is mostly a waste of time unless you have the newest equipment and very cheap source of electricity. Watch out for cloud mining schemes as these will become very unprofitable as the mining difficulty rises. These are targeted at newcomers who do not know how mining works and the contract will run way longer then it's profitable.Consider picking up a hardware wallet if you have a good amount of coins. These are highly recommended by users of this sub and for good reason. Hardware Wallets will offer a much higher level of protection then software wallets and are very user friendly. Trezor and Ledger are the two most popular models. Keep your 24 words safe in a secure offline location. If you forego getting a HW wallet, make sure the device you use is free of malware and viruses. Do not save backups of private keys in plaintext on your computer.Use good two-factor authentication wherever possible. SMS 2FA is not good enough. You can search all the horror stories of people who have had their exchange accounts hacked because they only had SMS 2FA and got sim-swapped. TOTP 2FA such as Google Authenticator or AUTHY are much better solutions or if you want to go even more secure get a hardware key like yubikey. Do not re-use common passwords, consider using a password manager like 1password or lastpass as these will also help mitigate phishing attacks because they will only input your password if you are at the correct domain.Beginner Resources/r/bitcoinbeginnershttps://bitcoin.org/en/getting-startedhttps://ethereum.org/en/what-is-ethereum/https://ift.tt/3m82cEk Guide to MetaMaskWhat is DEFI?Beginner’s Guide to (Getting Rekt by) Impermanent LossLedger 101: Do You Really Need a Hardware Wallet?Guide to Cryptocurrency SecurityGlossary of Cryptocurrency Terms
Submitted November 23, 2020 at 07:17AM
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