A Complete List of Blockchain, Crypto and ICO Resources

11 burning beginner questions answered on HelpTap

Since you’re reading this I assume you’re the kind of person who wants to understand one of the most exciting technologies out there: the blockchain.

Now unless you haven’t been on the internet for the last seven years, I’m sure it’s been really difficult (close to impossible) to ignore the craze, speculation and confusion surrounding the blockchain space, most popularly the various cryptocurrencies it powers.

However, what really saddens me is that although most of us have heard about this booming space, few of us really understand how decentralised networks work leave alone the gravity, potential and possible implications not only on banking and finance but also on all other sectors (practically anything with a database/transactional value)!

And I don’t blame us.

//In this article, I’m going to address the hurdles faced by beginners to dive into the blockchain space, why there’s really nothing to be afraid of and answers to the top 10 questions every blockchain beginner is asking. //

Current studies go to show that only a little more than 3 million people WORLDWIDE actively use cryptos. Simply put that’s roughly 3 million/world population of 7 billion x 100= 0.04 % of our entire world’s population!

Let that sink in for a moment…

As of now technical terms like distributed ledgers, decentralized systems, mining and nodes are as unknown to most of us as https, websites and the cloud were a decade ago.

So if blockchain is one of the most trending technologies and cryptotokens are being touted as the currency of the future, then shouldn’t everyone in the world have a better understanding of it?

Speaking from personal experience, when I first ventured into the blockchain space I found it extremely difficult to wade through the noise, the countless scams and marketing spams that come with any financial opportunity. I spent sleepless nights just figuring out the technicalities- I read whitepapers, top blogs, Quora answers and countless group threads.

To my surprise, all of this amazing information online wasn’t as easy to find as I’d imagined. Competing to rank on Search, interesting perspectives and in-depth explanations looked lost in the clutter and noise.

As far as I can tell (and this is based on common opinion found on Fb groups and why I myself didn’t venture in earlier), a few factors come together to hinder crypto and blockchain mass adoption:

👉👉 lack of actionable information and guidance for individuals from backgrounds other than banking, finance, accounts and economics

👉👉 cloud of technical jargon and noise which often results in the ‘not for me’ attitude

👉👉 difficulty in understanding the value proposed by blockchain and the possible impact on all sectors

In order to encourage more beginners and rookies to venture in, I wanted to compile a list of blockchain and crypto beginner questions and their answers.

Which is exactly what I’m doing and I’m hoping that this will encourage those who’ve been shying away to dive right into this uber promising space.

So without further ado, here’s a compiled list of the top blockchain questions and answers for beginners and rookies alike (asked and answered on HelpTap):

General Blockchain

Q1: I’m trying to understand everything about bitcoin, and now, I meet ‘blockchain’. Is there any relation between the two?

A1: “Of course! Blockchain is the platform that lists all transactions of bitcoins and altcoins. Look at it as a ledger that records all transactions happening in the crypto sphere. It is decentralized and no one party can manipulate it which makes it so secure and safe. Blockchain is the best thing invented since the internet.” — Ziad Tannous, runs Crypto Fans, one of the largest scam and spam free groups on Facebook.

Q2: What are your favorite Blockchain and Crypto related sites (blogs/channels/podcasts) that you follow regularly? Making a comprehensive list to share with the community.

A1: “Bitcointalk.org, reddit subs, Coindesk and Bitcoin Warrior.” — Brandon Radford, heads Cryptofunds, an online crypto knowledge bank.

A2: “Here you go with some very useful crypto resources:
- Indexes: Bletchley Indexes, Smith + Crown, CRIX
- Rankings sites: CryptoCompare, CoinGecko
- Data: BitInfoCharts, CoinDance, Blockchain.info, Token Data
- Tools and dataviz: Sifrdata, Correlations, MapOfCoins, CryptoMaps, Bitcoin Volatility Index
- Blogs: Willy Woo, Ari Paul, Matt Levine, Elaine Ou, Chris Burniske, Token Economy, Preston Byrne, Tuur Demeester, BitCrypto’ed
- Research: Ark Invest, Grayscale, Coindesk,Smith + Crown, Ledger
- Selected papers: Wang and Vergne (2017),Naranayan et al (2017)
- Books: Digital Gold; Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor’s Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond; The Bitcoin Standard: Sound Money in a Digital Age” — Ziad Tannous.

Q3: Heard that blockchain has huge potential. What else can we use it for other than cryptocurrencies?

A1: “Blockchain can be applied to everything you want to decentralize and make transparent — from contract execution and confirmation to your fridge ordering missing supply of milk for you.” — Alex Povolotski, crypto investor, partnerships with JP Morgan Chase.

A2: “Blockchain can solve for a great number of real world problems. I will point directly to the recent hacks in the U.S. Most recently, a major credit reporting agency Equifax was hacked leaving me and millions of others personal information for sale on the blackmarket. Now, if our world was running on blockchain, this information would be worthless — it would be the equivalent of your public address for your coins. More so, once a transactions or recorded in completed on the blockchain, in theory it is ‘unhackable’ — why? Because blockchain runs off of separate nodes world wide, a hacker would need to learn the precise location of all nodes and hack each node at the same exact time in order to change a previously completed record. Why is this so important? Many reasons, however I will point to one that the world will be running very soon. Connected cities using IoT devices run off of cellular networks. If we run this technology off of our standard internet, a hacker ‘could’ potentially gain access to an entire city or worse. Many see this same vision. Researching Masa Son from SoftBank in Japan, he has made efforts to move SoftBank into a major player in the chipset industry citing IoT devices as the wave for the future — made big moves to obtain as much 5G spectrum as he could and is now working on building a consortium of wireless carriers focused on blockchain technology. Possibilities are huge for blockchain. The real question is which blockchain will win the lion share of this — all current projects (ETH, NEO, IOTA etc) are far to immature to carry the amount of traffic required for these solutions.” — CryptoJayson, Cryptocurrency Enthusiast and Entrepreneur.

Cryptocurrency Investing and Trading💸

Q4: What Bitcoin exchange company comes highly rated to buy and sell?

A1: “I would recommend Bittrex. Has a huge collection of altcoins and it’s relatively easy and user friendly to navigate through and perform your transactions.” — Ziad Tannous.

A2: “GDAX” — Alex Povolotski.

Q5: What do I need to get started with investing in crypto? Any help is much appreciated!

A1: “You will be needing a wallet, either a soft wallet or hard wallet and an account with one of many cryptocurrency exchanges out there. Coinbase is one of the popular ones. Most exchanges come with their own wallets so you may not need an extra wallet for that. Then you buy and sell currency, just like you would do on fiat currency FAX pairs (i.e. USD/EUR)” — Alex Povolotski.

A2: “First familiarize yourself about what cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is all about. then go through the top 10 coins in terms of market cap which you can find on this website: CoinMarketCap, go to their relevant official websites and read about them… then consider ICOs as the right ones could give you 10x the returns of more established coins once they hit the exchange after launching and finalizing their campaigns. You can learn more about active, upcoming and recent ICOs on this website: ICO Alert, if you need any further help please know that i am always a message away. Hit me up whenever you need any assistance.” — Ziad Tannous.

Q6: I have very little money, how do I start cryptotrading with the little amount?

A1: “Great! If you don’t have a lot of money, atleast you won’t be tricked into a pump&dumb coin to lose all your money in 1 go. I mean… you won’t be making thousands of dollars per day if you have only a little amount, but you can turn that small amount into a large amount in a couple months.

The main thing you have to do is to start researching coins. Besides, do you have a solid cashflow to fund more investments? Otherwise, try noting down your “imaginary investments” on coins, like when to buy and when you’re selling. Even if you aren’t investing real money yet, you should do your research too, otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense to do the investments with your “imaginary budget”, which is mainly meant for training your trading skills without the risk of losing real money. I wasn’t a supertalent on it, but I did have the motivation to keep trying. I also started investing small amounts of bitcoin I obtained through signature campaigns on bitcointalk.org. I slowly started improving on it.

So in short: Do your research. If you have a solid cashflow, start with investing some real money already.” — Popa pona now at Panda Trump

A2: “I suggest you pick a good ico since they offer very low entry rates. Choose solid ones backed up by a good team, a good business concept and a large community of supporters. Make sure they have the necessary technology to pull this off. Preico offer icos at extremely low preferential rates for adopters and successful ones can give u at least 10× your investment.” — Ziad Tannous.

Q7: I’m trying to understand the underlying technology behind Litecoin? How is this different from the Ethereum network and BTC?

A1: “The basic difference between litecoin and any other blockchain like bitcoin and ethereum is the time to generate the block- technically they use different POW(proof of work).

Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 hashing algorithm, which involves calculations that can be greatly accelerated in parallel processing. Litecoin, however, uses the scrypt algorithm — originally named as s-crypt. This algorithm incorporates the SHA-256 algorithm, but its calculations are much more serialised than those of SHA-256 in bitcoin. Scrypt favours large amounts of high-speed RAM, rather than raw processing power alone.”— Mayank Agarwal, co-founder at HelpTap

Q8: Can you please recommend an android app which keeps me updated on crypto coins prices?

A1: “CoinCap and Blockfolio are the best in my experience. Even then there are minor drawbacks to each. Blockfolio has been the best for me and allows me to track my actual portfolio” — Crypto Jayson, Crypto Enthusiast and Entrepreneur.

A2: “Check out this link. It compares 10 crypto related android apps. Hope I helped out!” — Crpyoworld, crypto medium for daily informative content.

All about ICOs💱

Q9: What would be the best way to create a more stable ICO that maintains it’s value and attracts buyers?

A1: “I think before jumping into ICO for the sake of it (which is mostly what’s happening atm) the team needs to deliver a product that adds value to people’s life and have a token/coins system which is part of the overall experience. ICO should be a byproduct of this not the other way around…this is the most important part I guess.
When you do decide to do an ICO, I guess keeping the process transparent in terms of token supply, distribution and usage of funding will attract more investors.” — Abhimanyu Godara, founder at HelpTap.

Q10: What are some of the best ICO whitepapers you have read so far? Looking for recommendations!

A1: “I highly suggest if you havent already, the original Satoshi Nakamoto White Paper! https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I have read a bunch of ICO white papers and these project corner stones tell a lot about the project and capability of the developers. Some you can tell right away if their native language is English. Others come off as blatant scams. A good example in my opinion, of a well thought, organized, legit white paper comes from the team at Golem. They have a structure, road-map, & goals with team integrity.”— Blake, Cryptocurrency enthusiast and developer.

Q11: How do I spot a scam ICO project?

A1: “I keep this checklist/criteria: 1/ Working product. 2/ Solid user base qith good validation. 3/ Balanced and credible team with right tech and non tech skills. 4/ prior investors and solid advisors. 5/ Mission driven with long term detailed plan. 6/ Token dynamics e.g. issuance process, cap, reserved for team, reserved for future etc.” — Abhimanyu Godara, founder at HelpTap.

Final Thoughts

All in all it’s amazing to see more people eager to learn about blockchain and more people happy to help them out.

I’m open to ideas and on the lookout for any feedback that could help improve the HelpTap experience and truly bring valuable, free-flowing information to anyone, anywhere in the world. Please feel free to encourage/discourage me in the comment section.

Update: Helptap is no more. As an exciting side experiment, me and my team felt like it had seen its’ end. However, we’ve kept the database of questions answered by a passionate community of blockchain enthusiasts and experts, so if anyone is interested in getting access, please feel free to contact me!

If you made it this far/learned something new, please tap on 👏 to help this reach more people.