Bitcoin tools for investors
Having the right tools and process makes all the difference in the world to maximize your crypto-investments. With this current and fast-pace new market, it’s essential to keep track of every current tool.
Where to buy?
First step: Convert your money ($) to Bitcoin (or any other crypto currency).
My best recomendations are:
- coinbase.com: Here you can buy BTC, LTC, ETH using your credit card or bank transfer. It’s by far the most popular one, not the cheapest but a very safe option.
- uphold.com: I love this company and use several of their services. Not only do they support cryptocurrencies, but they also have support for 27 different FIAT currencies and gold. It’s the perfect place to diversify your portfolio.
Where to mine?
You don’t necessarily need to buy your cryptocurrencies. You can also mine it.
In this case, the best service is genesis-mining.com. They have contracts for mining different currencies and provide a great service. I am currently getting a 350% return on my investment with them.
I you want to learn more I wrote an article pertaining to their service here: https://goo.gl/9xjXey
Where to exchange?
As you may know, there are plenty of different currencies, and new ones added every day. A common practice is to own a portfolio with more than one, therefore, you need an exchange where you can buy and sell (convert from one currency to other, or from one currency to USD).
My top choices are:
Where to store assets?
The next steps once you have it (and assuming that you won’t be doing daily trading), is to store those assets somewhere. Security has become a key point, specially because of the decentralized nature, there is no one to contact if you have been hacked or if something goes wrong, there is no bank to call in this case.
There are numerous solutions to this problem.
- The common/basic solution is to leave your assets in the platform that you used to buy it. Example: leave in CoinBase. This is not ideal, but ok specially if you don’t have a big amount.
- A software wallet: This is an app that you install on your desktop or phone and store your assets. You will have more control/higher security assuming that your computer does not get compromised. There are several alternatives here, by far the most widely used and my preferred service is www.exodus.io
- A hardware wallet: This is the safest option allowing you to take your assets offline. My personal preference here is Ledger Nano S
Where to monitor the market?
This is where things get very interesting since the volatility of the current market is insane. It’s important to be aware of what is happening and easily identify the trends and current valuations.
Few options here:
- Basic but ease: https://www.coinbase.com/charts
- Advanced with more info: https://onchainfx.com/
Where to invest?
This is a very delicate and complex topic, in the future I will create a new blog post with more in-depth information on this topic.
For now I will only list two examples so you can get a basic idea on the number of possibilities and path to follow:
Auto trading with robots:
Sounds like science fiction, but its very easy to set-up. Basically you have an automated robot and when performing, trades for you based on a specific algorithm.
You need to select one service, connect it to your exchange account and let it run.
Different platforms offer this service, I am personally using cryptotrader.org
Lending
In this platform you transfer your BTC to them, they do a mix of mining, trading and more and pay you a daily interest.
There are several examples of this (many of which are scams).
Advantages:
- Fully automated process / passive income
- You get a daily payment
- You keep your investment in BTC. Meaning, you also benefits for the price increase on BTC
- You can use compound to speed up the process
In this category my personal favorite is USI-Tech.
How to spend it?
Another common question I hear is, “how can I spend/use my cryptocurrency?”
Let’s assume that you have 1 BTC (today that will be around 16,000 USD). How can I use that “money?”
Alternatives:
- Many places (and more every day) accept BTC payments. You can use your wallet to transfer the money directly without converting that to FIAT currency.
- You can use your exchange to move BTC to USD and then transfer that to your bank account
- You can get a Debit Card connected to your BTC wallet (finally things are getting interesting :)). There are several companies offering this service, my personal favorite is TenX. Basically, every time that you use your DebitCard to pay (anywhere) the company converts your bill total from USD to BTC on the fly using the current rate.
Conclusion
This is a very quick overview of the different tools that I use almost on a daily bases. The ecosystem keeps growing every day and it’s truly exciting what is going on from a technical point of view as well as from a investment angle.
I hope that this list helped provide you additional information on what could be a very new subject to you.
Please feel free to contact me at any point if you want further information or to say hello!
