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People have made huge sums of money trading crypto-currencies and continue to do so. This doesn’t mean crypto trading is easy and effortless. There is a chance you will lose money, you might end up losing all of it, but with the right strategies you can certainly minimize risk and loses. If you have some money lying around, you too can get started in no time with as little as you like. It’s never too late to start trading. You need to be strategic, patient, able to research and analyze market trends. As a rule of thumb - never invest what you cannot afford to lose. #1 - Acquire Bitcoin In order to start trading cryptocurrencies, you will first need to buy some bitcoins. The best way to do it is through a bitcoin local exchanger in your country. In the US, exchanges like Coinbase, Bitstamp and Kraken are go-to for most people. You can check exchanges in your country here. If there is no bitcoin exchange in your country, you could always use localbitcoins.com and buy bitcoin from other people. Localbitcoins is an escrow service which helps to match buyers and sellers. You can either pay the seller by cash or bank transfer. Most of the sellers advertise whichever payment method they prefer. Remember: you don’t have to buy a whole bitcoin ($2560 as of writing); you can purchase bitcoin in fractions known as Satoshis. For instance, 100k Satoshis is equal to 0.001 bitcoin. Now that you have some bitcoin, it’s time to transfer them to a trading exchange. There are many exchanges, but the most popular and reliable ones are Bittrex and Poloniex. #2 - Prerequisites for Trading Before you start investing your hard earned money in other cryptocurrencies, there are a few things to keep in mind: Research Before placing a trade you must do an in-depth research on the coin you want to invest in. The best starting point is the announcement page of the coin. It shows all the important information you need to know: total coin supply, technical details, development plans, mission statement, community speculation, and a lot more. Just google “coin-name ann” and go to bitcointalk.org forum announcement thread. Other threads you can find information about crypto-currencies are: Top Gold Forum and InvestOpen.com It is highly recommended to read the whitepaper (usually available on the coin’s official website). Join their team on slack and ask them questions in case you have any. You’ll be surprised to see how engaging these communities are. Stay updated News in the crypto world spreads like fire. Thanks to Twitter, Reddit, Telegram and crypto-specific news website, you can stay up to date with what’s going on. Pay close attention to the news on Twitter in particular and make sure they are from reputed sources. Learn to ignore biased sources and rumours. This are where pump and dump schemes take place; people post misinformation on websites and hope for people to fall for it. Recently, hoax of Vitalik Buterin’s (founder of Ethereum) death started spreading from 4chan, which in turn crashed Ethereum price and wiped out $4 billion in Ethereum’s market value. Don’t let these people get you; seek advice through trusted and unbiased sources, and make your investing decisions accordingly. Set achievable goals Cryptocurrency trading is not one of those get-rich-quick schemes. Set a realistic plan of return on your investment, it could be 5%, 10% or 20%. This market is very volatile. If you don’t stick to your expected returns, you’re bound to panic and make mistakes. As the crypto veterans will tell you, setting up realistic long term goals (2-5 years) will take you a long way in cryptocurrency trading. #3 - Begin trading You’re all set to trade. By doing your research, gain the right information at the right time and understand how it will interact with the market. This will help you predict trends - whether or not the coin will rise. Also, look out for any technical analysis on the coin - study charts and find patterns. In a nutshell, this is exactly what you need to do - buy low, sell high. If the price of a coin you’ve bought goes up quickly, cash out into bitcoin and buy back again once the price goes down. If it’s a coin that you really believe in - you’re confident of the idea, tech and team - you’d want to hold on to that coin long-term because a good coin will always rise back up again. There are a lot of apps that can help you track all your crypto investments. My personal favorite is Blockfolio, available for both android and iOS. It has major exchanges integrated to it and almost all the coins. Lastly, greed can be extremely dangerous in trading. The more patient you are, the better you will do. Period. No one knows what will happen to the markets tomorrow. Doesn’t matter how experienced of a trader you are, you will make some mistakes and lose money. Learn from those mistakes, get back up and make sure not to repeat them. #4 - Takeaways Investing in cryptocurrencies is a fun ride. There are a lot of ups and downs. The community is super active and always willing to help you out. Like I said in the beginning, always invest within your means. No need to sink your life savings in crypto trading. We are most likely living in a bubble which could burst at any time. Don’t overreact when the market is doing good and panic when it is down. Learn what affects the bitcoin market growth. Take it slow. Do your research before investing and most importantly, have fun trading.

If you want to know what is Ethereum and how it works and what it can be used for, without going deep into the technical abyss, this guide is perfect for you. At its simplest, Ethereum is an open software platform based on blockchain technology that enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications. One key difference in open blockchains (such as bitcoin and ethereum) is that users can generate an identification number for their funds at any time. They don’t need to wait for a bank to approve a bank account application and present the credit card. What is Ethereum? Before it is possible to understand ethereum, it helps to first understand the world wide web. Now, our private information, passwords and financial details are all mainly stored on other people's computers - from servers and clouds owned by companies such as Amazon, Facebook or even Google. This setup has numerous conveniences, since these businesses deploy teams of experts to help secure and store this information, and eliminate the prices that have bandwidth and hosting. But with this advantage, there's also vulnerability. As we have learned, either a hacker or even a government may gain unwelcome access to your documents without your knowing, by changing or assaulting a third-party support, meaning that they could steal, flow or change significant info. Brian Behlendorf, founder of the Apache Web Server, which has gone so far as to label this centralized design the "original sin" of the net. Some like Behlendorf claim the Net was always intended to be decentralized, and also a splintered movement has sprung up about using new resources, like blockchain technology, to help accomplish this objective. Ethereum is among the most recent FinTech technologies to join this motion. Even though bitcoin intends to disrupt PayPal and internet banking, ethereum gets the objective of utilizing a blockchain to replace web third parties -- those who store information, transfer mortgages and also keep an eye on complicated financial instruments. Ethereum - The 'World Computer' In short, ethereum wishes to become a 'World Computer' that could decentralize -- and some might argue, democratize -- the present client-server model. With ethereum, clouds and servers are replaced by tens of thousands of so-called "nodes" run by volunteers from throughout the planet (hence forming a "world"). The vision is that ethereum will allow the exact same performance to individuals everywhere around the world, letting them compete to supply services in addition to this infrastructure. Scrolling through a normal app shop, by way of instance, you will see a number of vibrant squares representing everything from banks to fitness center to messaging programs. These programs trust the business (or another third party support) to keep your credit card info, buying history and other personal information -- someplace, typically in servers controlled by third-parties. Your selection of programs is obviously also regulated by third parties, as Apple and Google claim and curate (or in some instances, censor) the particular programs you are in a position to download. Ethereum, if all goes according to plan, would yield control of the information in these kinds of providers to its owner as well as also the creative rights to its writer. Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs on a custom-built blockchain. Ethereum is used in payment systems, crowdfunding, gold investing, and many other cloud computing functions. Industry users include Accenture, Microsoft, Intel, a number of banks, and several blockchain startup innovators. Considering the scope of usage around the world, users have come together to form the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). In a nutshell:  Ethereum is a  decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference. Who Created Ethereum? In 2008, an unknown developer that goes by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto,  invented Bitcoin as a new way to send value over the net. Four year later, a new platform based off of this invention in a bid to transform the world wide web was dreamed up by a 19-year-old. A developer from Toronto, Vitalik Buterin, first grew interested in bitcoin.He co-founded the online news website Bitcoin Magazine in the same year, writing hundreds of articles on the cryptocurrency world. He went on to code for the Dark Wallet and the marketplace Egora. Along the way, he created the notion of a platform that would go beyond the use cases. He released a white paper in 2013 describing an alternate platform designed for almost any kind of program developers would want to build. The system was known as ethereum. Ethereum makes it easy to create wise contracts code that developers can tap for a selection of applications. Ethereum makes it easy to create smart contracts, self-enforcing code that developers can tap for a range of applications. For his work, Buterin was named a 2014 Thiel fellow, a contest that awards winners $100,000. Later Buterin unveiled the ethereum white paper, other programmers joined ranks. Co-founder Dr Gavin Wood composed the ethereum yellow paper, the "technical bible" which outlines the specification to its ethereum virtual machine (EVM) which manages the condition of this ledger and runs intelligent contracts, such as (notice: The Way Ethereum Works). Co-founder Joseph Lubin went on to launch the Brooklyn-based ConsenSys, a startup which specializes in construction decentralized apps. For the project off the ground, Buterin along with the other creators started a crowdfunding effort in July 2014 where participants bought ether, or the ethereum tokens that serve as stocks in the undertaking. The wise contract platform took away, swelling into the ecosystem of tens of thousands of developers as well as drawing the attention of technology giants like IBM and Microsoft. The capital from Ethereum's first $18m crowdsale and job improvement are now handled from the Ethereum Foundation, a nonprofit item based in Switzerland. What is Ether? But while nobody owns ethereum, the system which supports this operation is not free. Instead, the network requires 'ether', a exceptional part of code which may be used to cover the computational resources necessary to conduct an application or application. Such as bitcoin, ether is an electronic bearer asset (like a safety, like a bond, issued in physical form). Exactly like money, it does not take a third party to process or approve a trade. But rather than working as a digital money or repayment, ether seeks to provide "fuel" for your own decentralized programs on the network. While this may seem complex, you can think about a more tangible illustration of how tokens may power a consumer encounter. In this way, 'ether' has occasionally been known as 'digital petroleum', and carrying this analogy farther, ethereum trade fees are computed based on how far 'gasoline' the activity requires. Each activity costs an quantity of gas that is predicated on the computational power needed and how much time it takes to operate. A trade costs 500 Gasoline, as an instance, which can be compensated in ether. As an economic strategy, the rules for ether's market are somewhat open-ended. Even though bitcoin includes a hard cap of 21 thousand bitcoins, ether doesn't have a similar limitation. Eighteen million ether, at all, are mined annually. Five ether are made about every 12 seconds, each time a miner finds a block, or even a package of trades. So, nobody knows the entire amount of ether however, and the speed of ether production will not be as apparent after 2017 when ethereum intends to transfer to some other proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. This will result in an alteration in the rules of ether production, and so the mining subsidy may diminish. How to Use Ethereum Ethereum may not be as intuitive as the internet as we understand it now, but nevertheless, anyone using a pc or a smartphone may try out the platform out provided that they possess 'ether' - exceptional parts of code that enable upgrades to the blockchain's ledger. Ethereum wallets First, you will need a place to securely store your ether (or at the very least a place to store your keys). This brings us to ethereum wallets. 1 caveat is that dropping your personal key is a far bigger deal than misplacing a password: it means dropping your ether, eternally. Removing reputable parties is just a two-edged sword. Even though intermediaries are no more required to verify trades, there is no help desk to turn to for help recovering your key key. With that in mind, there are lots of alternatives for wallets to shop cryptocurrency: desktop pockets, internet wallets, hardware wallets and newspaper wallets. Selecting one depends upon your own preferences for convenience and safety. Usually both of these notions are at odds with one another: the more convenient, the more difficult the safety (and vice versa). Desktop wallets Desktop wallets run in your own PC or notebook. One choice is to download an ethereum customer (a replica of the whole ethereum blockchain). There are a couple of ethereum customers written in various programming languages and also with different performance tradeoffs. This procedure can take as much as a few days, and may only rise as ethereum rises. The wallet subsequently needs to remain in sync with the most recent trades on the blockchain. Mobile wallets Mobile customers, or 'light' customers, require less information to be downloaded to link to this network and create trades, so they're more acceptable for downloading to your intelligent phone. The lighting client alternative is much more suitable, but not as secure. Complete ethereum clients offer you a more secure means of receiving transactions since they don't have to trust miners or nodes to ship them true information -- they affirm transactions themselves. Storing personal keys on a system that's detached from the web (a method called 'cold storage') is far more difficult to hack and can be best utilized for storing big ether holdings. On the other hand, the procedure isn't quite as simple to use as if ether is saved on a smartphone or even internet-connected computerkeyboard. Hardware wallets If you’re serious about securing your altcoins I suggest storing your Ethereum on a hardware wallet. However these hardware wallets aren’t free and cost anywhere between $50-$100 (shipping not included). Today’s leading hardware wallets TREZOR, Ledger and KeepKey all supply you with the option to store Ethereum on them. These protected devices which could frequently be detached on the world wide web, and can signal transactions without being online. But this deposit-box-like system isn't a fantastic alternative if you would like to use ether often or on the transfer. Paper wallets Another cold storage choice is to publish or attentively handwrite a personal key on a slip of paper, a 'paper pocket', and lock it someplace secure as a deposit box. Online tools can create keywords straight on your own pc -- maybe not on a site's servers, which might leave keys vulnerable in the event the website is hacked. Additionally, it is likely to make keys with the command line, as long as you possess the required cryptographic packages set up to your favorite language. All that said, again, in case you lose your private key, it is gone permanently. Thus, best practice would be to devote a little additional time creating several copies of this private key and stashing them in various places that are secure, if one is lost or destroyed. How to purchase Ether Obtaining ether changes by state, or at the least by money. You want to locate someone online or in-person who's ether and wishes to trade. There is always the choice of meeting in-person to purchase or sell ether, particularly if residing in a town with regular ethereum meetups, like New York or Toronto. That is not always a choice in less populated regions. Exchanges enable users to purchase ether straight with bucks or bitcoin. Typically there's a sign-up procedure. Purchasing ether with a different currency may take an additional step. Bitcoin is the most widely used cryptocurrency, and folks around the world are more inclined to wish to trade to it in their money. Therefore, if you would like to purchase ether to get dollars, for example, the simplest way may be to buy bitcoin with an exchange and then trade that for ether. Best Ether Exchanger The best Ether exchange is Kraken because it has the best reputation and volume in the Bitcoin/Ether, USD/Ether and EUR/Ether pairs. Ether wallet options are somewhat limited, although its passionate user base has already created a few decent wallet options. Conclusion Ethereum applications are quite different than Bitcoin ones. Users with ether can join or create smart contracts (code that automatically executes the terms of an agreement so that you don’t have to rely on a third party). Bundles of smart contracts can be used to create decentralized applications ('dapps'), which you can use or join. Using Ethereum, you can create a contract that will hold a contributor’s money until any given date or goal is reached. Depending on the outcome, the funds will either be released to the project owners or safely returned back to the contributors. All of this is possible without requiring a centralized arbitrator, clearing house or having to trust anyone. While there are many competing blockchain programs out there, with the backing of the EEA by so many high profile companies, it stands to reason that Ethereum could become the go-to as more businesses seek to incorporate the technology. Now that you know what is Ethereum, what is ether and how to use it, do you want to step in and make money trading cryptocurrencies?