Crypto Advice for Friends & Fam, Pt. 2: The Tools

Where can I buy? Is there a website?

Friends & fam ask me a lot these days, “what’s with Bitcoin and all? Do we get in now or what?” I’ve already laid out my basic answer to this in Part 1, and before I move on, I want to repeat a few points:

Don’t get involved because it’s fashionable. Do it if you have a reason to use a cryptocurrency now or in the future, or a well-grounded fundamental belief about why you want to own some. Realize that what you are talking about is called investing, and that it takes time and effort to invest well.

Truth is, people I talk to have already made up their mind. They either already know all that shit about investing, or they don’t care anyway. They just want to know where and how to get the goodies. So now I’ll explain y’all that.

Let’s assume you already picked a coin or whatever that you want to own. (There’s always the tiny detail of how you pick what to invest in, which will be the subject of Part 3 — stay tuned.) Actually, let’s go over a real scenario, say, you want you some Iota (which is what most people seem to want these days). Here’s what you do

Step 1

Go to CoinMarketCap. (Believe it or not these muffhuggers are getting more hits than The Wall Street Journal these days.)

Side note: scroll down. Realize that there’s 100+ more pages listing 1000+ more cryptothings. Be amazed. If you’re a beginner, stay away from anything that’s not on page 1.

Side note 2: Funny how everything is “in the red” up there. Contrary to popular opinion, that actually means it’s a good time to buy.

Step 2

Click on Iota or whatever it is you want.

Step 3

Click on Markets.

This is where you decide who you’re going to go to buy your shit from. You need to pay attention to a few things:

1. Volume. You need to hang out where the action is. Don’t go shopping in places where there isn’t significant volume — a.k.a. liquidity. Stick with the top 5 or so.
2. Currency. Look at the column called “pair.” You’ll notice that there’s no place where you can buy Iotas with the Turkish lira or the Swedish krona or whatever. In fact, for a huge number of cryptothings, you can’t buy them at all with old-fashioned money. You will need to buy bitcoins or ethers etc. first, send that to the exchange, and use them to get your preferred poison.
3. Location. Once you decide what currency you will use to buy your shit, you need to make sure that you live in a country where your preferred exchange can serve customers. You need to go to their websites and check this individually. These rules sometimes change too, because the laws and regulations that have to do with cryptothings are being written as we speak, and cryptostuff exchanges are not exactly the most well-behaved companies in the world, which brings me to…
4. Trust. You have to realize that these places where you buy cryptocoins are not fucking charities run by cute old ladies who go to church every Sunday and Wednesday. These things exist to profit their owners, and human beings, especially those who run money-related operations, are kind of known for being assholes when it boils down to making profit on these scales. Some of these cryptoexchanges are involved in legal disputes and rumors of shady practies as we speak. Do your research, and never trust any of them, or anyone really, with more than what you can afford to lose.

After you go through all these steps, it’s likely that only one or two places remain which satistfy your needs anyway. So you pick one, and go sign up with some info like photos of your ID and shit, which will feel like a little too much work, until you compare it to the scrutiny you’ll go through if you sign up to trade stocks or bonds or something like that. To buy options from a bank, for example, you may need to call a guy — on the telephone — and the fucker will laugh at you if you even mention any numbers with less than 5 digits.

So that’s where you go to buy your crypto.

However…

In all honestly just going out and spending money to buy these things is just fucking unsophisticated, IMO.

With all the talk on cryptos being the next big thing and an investment opportunity and all that, what you might be missing is that we are talking about technologies that can have the potential to fundamentally change how we live our lives and how societies are organized.

Bitcoin, when it was invented, was proposed as an alternative to the financial and monetary systems that we have and use today. We are well aware that shit like inflation, debt, and banking are serving to enrich some people more than others. Cryptocurrencies are supposed to be an alternative to all that, not a part of it. Here’s some problems with going online and just buying them with “regular” money:

• Cryptocurrency exchanges are companies like any other. They are subject to regular laws and taxes and greedy management. When you buy from them, you are feeding the monster.
• You are using government-issued money to buy, which completely misses the point.
• You trusting the exchanges to keep your assets safe for you, which misses an even bigger point.

So I will propose to you 3 alternatives:

Mine.

“Mining” means you run some program on your computer that connects to the infrastructure of a cryptocurrency and contributes to keeping it alive and thriving, and you get fees (in the form of crypto) for your services. This used to require you to have an expensive computer and be a nerd, but there is new tech like Vertcoin which is engineered to be mined on cheaper machines and has “one-click” apps that you can set up easily. They are not perfect yet, but very soon, expect every single device you own to be mining crypto, all the time.

Share.

If you are committed to shilling out money for this, talk to some friends who have been in the game for longer. If you know someone who’s been interested in cryptoshit for a few years, it’s likely they will have a good amount at hand, which they can part with, in exchange for beer or whatever. They are probably a believer who will help you get set up with a wallet and things too.

Demand.

Think about how you making and investing your money right now. Use the same channels to acquire cryptostuff. Ask your boss or clients to pay in crypto. Your employer probably already has you enrolled in some sort of pension plan — tell them you want to save some in crypto. Today they will think you are an idiot. In 2020 they will ask you for investment advice.

Part 3 will follow soon, where we talk about how y’all decide which particular cryptoshit to invest in.