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After having watched the crypto world from the outside for years, the Covid lockdowns were the reason for me to finally become an active part of the crypto community.
Deprived of my usual spare-time activities, I had enough time on my hand to dip my toes into a space I knew almost nothing about. It was a pretty daunting experience and I want to help make this journey easier for people who are either completely new to crypto or want to improve their knowledge.
This guide will be a hands-on description of the way I do things and errors I have made so you don?t have to make them yourself.
How to buy your first cryptocurrency?
As easy as it sounds, this was a pretty tough question for me at first. Since I knew absolutely nothing, I had to rely on the results of my Google search to guide me through this and the results were pretty mixed, to say the least.
I will explain a few simple options to buy the most basic cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin and Ether) with US-Dollars or Euros.
Presumably the most well-known centralized crypto exchange (but CRYPTO.COM is catching up quickly) and geared towards people who are new to crypto, was the first crypto exchange I have used.
As an exclusive offer to my readers, I can offer a 10% discount on all trading fees on BINANCE to everyone signing up through this link or the referral ID AGK2EGKX.
Binance offers everything a crypto beginner needs and I have always been pretty happy with them. I must point out, however, that Binance does not have the greatest reputation amongst more experienced people in the crypto world (mainly regarding their US operations).
To buy crypto on , you have a variety of options of which credit / debit card usually is the easiest option.
After a brief KYC process, you?re ready to go and can buy the crypto of your choice.
I solely use Binance in my web browser so I can?t speak to the merits of their mobile app. If you want to trade crypto using an app, the next suggestion is the one for you.
Crypto.com
Crypto.com has pursued quite an aggressive marketing strategy recently and is quickly catching up to Binance.
Contrary to Binance, I mostly use their mobile app and rarely use their web exchange
The way to transfer fiat money (€ in my case) I use most is bank transfer.
To deposit money into your crypto.com account, select your fiat wallet and click “Transfer”.
You?ll then be asked to confirm the currency you want to deposit and then the app will display the bank details for the transfer you need to make.
You can then simply transfer money from your bank account and within a day or two, the amount will be credited to your account.
Apart from buying and selling crypto, crypto.com also offers free pre-paid credit cards that come with a wide range of perks.
To get a crypto.com card, you need to buy and stake CRO, crypto.com?s own coin. Depending on how much CRO you stake, you can get better versions of the card with more perks.
Personally, I own a Ruby Steel cards that gives me 2% cashback from most purchases and 100% cashback on my Spotify account.
is a smaller exchange than the two mentioned above and has a slightly different focus, at least from my experience.
I first heard about KUCOIN when I wanted to buy a less well-known coin that neither Binance nor crypto.com offered and KuCoin was the only option I could find.
KuCoin works very similarly to the two exchanges mentioned above but feels less user-friendly to me. It can, however, be valuable once you are a bit more experienced and want to buy coins that aren?t listed on the larger exchanges, yet.
Where should you store your crypto?
Once you have bought your first crypto, the next big topic is the question of where to store it.
Keeping the crypto on the exchange you used to buy is an option but it is seen as risky by most experienced crypto people. The reason for this is more or less frequent hacks of exchanges that sometimes (but rarely) result in the loss of crypto for users.
If you don?t trust the exchanges, you need to get your own wallet. Depending on the cryptocurrency you are holding, there is a range of wallet options you can use. One topic I will not cover here, because I do not have enough experience myself are hardware wallets. These are certainly the most secure option but can also be expensive and inconvenient.
is the most common and, in my mind, easiest-to-use wallet you can get. I have the Chrome extension installed and interact with it every single day.
MetaMask supports most cryptocurrencies (do research on this before transferring any coins there, though) and blockchains. The biggest feature of METAMASK is how easily it can be integrated into dApps (decentralized applications) like play-to-earn games
Metamask will provide you with a wallet to store your crypto, send your crypto and also exchange your crypto for a fee.
You can set up multiple accounts within your MetaMask browser extension and use a variety of blockchains (Ethereum Mainnet in this example) with them.
Since not all networks are supported on MetaMask, please make sure to check the availability of each coin you want to send to your wallet before actually sending it.
Other wallets
MetaMask certainly is a must-have and all other wallets you may or may not need depend on the specific currencies you want to use.
Examples are for the Cosmos blockchain and for the Stellar blockchain.
What other resources do I need?
The crypto ecosystem is growing at an amazing rate and so does the number of more or less useful applications to help you.
I?ll outline a few I am using on a regular basis here but there are a lot more that might be useful for you.
Coinmarketcap
If you want to know how much a coin is worth and how it developed over time, you?ll want to check Coinmarketcap
There are loads of other functionalities there but checking price graphs certainly is the most important.
Another functionality that is great for anyone new to crypto are Coinmarketcap diamonds.
After you sign up to Coinmarketcap, you?ll see the option to collect diamonds in the top right corner of the application. You can collect diamonds once per day (for free) and later exchange them for a variety of crypto-related rewards.
The crypto community is pretty active on and I have found loads of useful tips there. Be careful not to trust anyone, though, and do your own research!
If you are interested in my main topic, play-to-earn games, I refer you to this post on Reddit to get you started ;)
also is a crypto exchange, I have never used it as such and decided to only list it here.
I never had the need to use it as an exchange but it seems to work fine for everyone I have talked to.
My main reason to check COINBASE is to find additional information about crypto and they have a learning section that might help a few of you.
What?s next?
Once you have managed to buy your first crypto, know how to use wallets and where to look for information, the whole crypto ecosystem is open to you.
The one area I am most interested in myself is the play-to-earn space. Games that let you earn money.
I have extensively written about this in the past and I encourage you to click through the articles in my profile.
Games I can recommend wholeheartedly to people who are new to crypto are Gods Unchained. Both are geared towards people who have a very limited understanding of crypto and are a great place to get into play-to-earn games.
