I’m definitely not a Crypto expert or qualified to give advise, so do your own due diligence – don’t take my word for it – nothing here constitutes financial advise.

Not exhaustive – but 99.99% more information than I got my from crypto-head friend when I started – he basically just gave me his affiliate links, and left me to it.

All crypto are sensitive to money printing, tend to go up when printers are on, and down when central banks are tightening – aka more liquidity and less liquidity – liquidity is key in financing.

BTC – As far as I know, won’t be considered a security by the SEC.

ETH – We don’t know if this will get classed as a security by SEC.

Security vs commodity is a big deal, as commodities are less regulated, therefore easier to use buy/sell/swap/pay/doo-the-boogalo with, whereas securities are potentially highly regulated, to the point that they may not be available to “retail traders”, ie you and me.

US, is currently the biggest market from Crypto, and why they are significant to what happens in Crypto.

BTC/ETH are largest crypto by “market capitalisation” and what I’ve invested in. Also near the top of the market capitalisation are XRP/Cardano/Solana/ADA.

How I do things

The way I’m doing things, and have been since early-2022 – Get GBP into Revolut UK, from whatever bank (will be a different crypto friendly bank in your country, Revolut is a fintech bank, who’s overall bankers are “Clear Bank”).

Try keep the amount under 1000GBP or FCY equivalent at a etc at a time, to avoid raising eyebrows, if you get a fraud call from a bank then you’re “transferring for a better savings rate”, don’t mention crypto to TradBanks, if you can help it, they think it’s their money and will at best give you a lecture, at worst the might freeze your account.

Then move funds onto Gemini exchange, I use their “advanced” interface for BTC/ETH, I place “limit” orders under the current price, based around logarithmic spacing, using equations based on the golden mean ratio (each lower order, the more distance between each order). Once these are filled I (usually) get an email with all the detail which I put onto a spreadsheet. And then when I’m ready, transfer/withdraw onto my Trezor hardware wallet.

The advantage of this approach is I benefit from fast moves to the “downside”, without having to watch the screen 24/7.

Wallets

I use both Trezor One (cheaper, basic does the job for BTC/ETH) and Trezor Model T (more expensive, supports more coins, has colour touch screen)

https://trezor.io/coins

Either buy from Amazon (not marketplace) or Trezor shop in Czech – there are fakes and scams out there. The reason for hardware wallet, is relative simplicity, and removal of counterparty-risk – “not your keys, not your crypto”. Might be prudent to buy two, in case one breaks, then one’s crypto can be “restored” on a new fresh wallet.

Your “private key” will be a list of words you write down on a card – it’s important to keep this card somewhere safe (as you can recover your hardware wallet, and a bad actor can also do the same with the wordlist)

However, hardware wallet, isn’t necessarily the safest wallet, these are worth a glance :

Security rankings –

https://cer.live/wallets

Report –

https://cer.live/post/crypto-wallet-security-rating-report-key-insights-findings

Coin video about the report –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTTqp1bU_js

And, a recent article on Coin Bureau blog –

https://www.coinbureau.com/review/top-mobile-wallets/

A bit about what I learnt about buying crypto

I use Gemini exchange for BTC/ETH as I’ve found them the cheapest for fees, and have had few problems with them.

Then there’s onto “alt-coins”, which are generally smaller players, smaller market cap, I have a little FTM, Fantom which is an alt-coin. Some of these are what’s termed “layer 2’s” – a simple example would be hypothetical XYZ coin, which uses smart contracts on Ethereum blockchain, and XYZ coin kinda hangs off it (called an ERC20 token).

There are also what’s termed “stable coins” – the two main ones are USDT and USDC – supposedly backed by T bills (goverment bonds) – crypto traders use these to take profits (and pay for losses) and are a way to “stay in crypto”, and out of tradfi/fiat currency, whilst considering next investment, or can be redeemed for cash. Or, stored on a hardware/software wallet.

Exchanges also have their own coins, BNB is the Binance one, GUSD is the “Gemini dollar”.

And then there’s so called privacy coins like Monero (XMR), which for obvious reasons powers that be don’t like. And a new contender Verus, I heard of recently, people are mining it. Also also “Pirate Chain”. Privacy coins, do basically what they say on the tin, but can be harder to obtain (not all exchanges list them). I heard BTC didn’t get through during the trucker protests, but Monero did.

NFTs are basically trash from what I can make out.

For market capitalisation, and other info, this is the site :

https://coinmarketcap.com/

The best crypto channel that I know of is “Coin Bureau” :

https://www.coinbureau.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@CoinBureau

https://t.me/cbinsider

And here’s a couple of explainers on Bitcoin/BTC :

Exchanges

I guess I should cover exchanges, I do have referral codes for some so please ask, if you’re signing up (usually we both get some free cytpo) :

These are thought to be reputable, and my comments :

(Try and avoid using Credit/Debit cards, I got absolutely smashed on several of these type of transactions when I started, nobody to advised me better.)

Binance – under now pressure from various regulatory agencies, and fiat on/off ramps could be an issue. I found their withdraw fees for small amounts of Bitcoin expensive (it’s a fixed amount of bitcoin).

Kraken – Compared to Gemini fees were expensive for BTC/ETH, however they do have a lot of coins and fiat on/off ramps (Including I think Monero, via USDT).

Bitget – Again I found their fees for BTC/ETH relatively expensive, however they are popular.

Coinbase – fell out with them after I removed a bank account, and they refused to let me put another bank account in its place, customer service was crap. They are significant as institutional players use them, and listed on stock exchange.

Gemini – I got recommended to by Brave browser, couple of glitches sorted out by the customer service fairly quickly, and as far as I know, the cheapest fees on BTC/ETH I’ve seen anywhere, other coins, they have a different pricing structure. Customer service very good. MOST RECOMMENDED BY ME. However they are currently being sued for $1B, so some caution may be prudent.

OKX – (Not used)

Bybit – not used yet, they are a non-KYC exchange for smaller amounts, and recommended in quite a lot places.

Localmonero.co – is worth a mention, not just for Monero can buy other crypto here – it’s a peer-to-peer exchange, with no-KYC with some protection offered by the exchange. Various method of payments from local bank transfer, to cash-in-ATM, to exchanging for other cryptos. I haven’t used, but was suggested by someone who knows more about crypto than me

Fiat on/off ramps

Revolut (UK) – Can buy/sell/trade crypto there, but withdraws are limited to 1000GBP of BTC per month, other coins – “not your keys, not your crypto” – might be fine for short term trading, but personally I wouldn’t trust them long term. Within that they are the best fiat on/off ramp I know for outside exchanges.

Add to that LocalMonero.co

Fees

Here’s a site that compares withdraw fees (with the caveat there may be other (opaque) fees not listed here !) :

https://withdrawalfees.com/exchanges

You can also use the same site to find out which exchange lists the coin you want to buy :

https://withdrawalfees.com/coins/ripple

Or this one :

https://coinranking.com/coin/YRTkUcMi+paxgold-paxg/exchanges

Crypto people

Some people to watch out for :

Michael Saylor (Microstrategy)

Elon Musk

Simon Dixon – https://www.youtube.com/@BankToTheFuture

Winklevoss Brothers (Gemini exchange)

Robert Breedlove (although he’s a bit of an evangelist)

Raoul Pal (trafi guy, but likes Crypto)

and here’s Investopedia’s take on people :

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/people/083016/who-are-top-5-bitcoin-millionaires.asp

Summary

At the moment I’m only invested in BTC/ETH, as a mostly a diversification strategy (and X-border ease), but hope there will be a chance to realise gains at some point. I generally use Gemini exchange to buy, then put on Trezor wallet. My buying strategy has it’s flaws, but it’s basically dollar cost averaging with buying the dip strategy. There’s quite a lot to crypto, so takes a bit of studying, and I still class myself as a “relatively unsophisticated investor”.

I hope the above gives you the basics – NOT FINANCIAL ADVISE.

Don Charisma

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Disclaimer

Disclaimer – This is creative writing, for the purposes of freedom of expression and shared connection, in the realm of the divine via communication, you know, art. If you take offense to anything herein, then I suggest you may be the intolerant, bigoted, hateful, ideologically possessed, sinful, undiverse, uninclusive, extreme, misinformed, uninformed, propagandised one, not I. But who knows I could be wrong, I have been before, and will be again.

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