The recent months have seen an incredible influx in people interested in Cryptocurrencies (also called crypto's). There has been a tremendous amount of media attention and this has sparked interest with people from all domains. From Wall Street bankers to your local butcher. What is often the biggest step is understanding how and where to start. That's why this post will walk you through all the steps of buying cryptocurrencies, what is important, what to watch out for, what news outlets to follow and most importantly: what to expect.

Buying Your First Crypto.

The main crypto's that are bought with fiat are Bitcoin(BTC) Ethereum(ETH) and Litecoin(LTC). This can be most easily done though the website Coinbase. With the following link you can start an account on their website. To deposit money to the account you have to verify your identity (against fraude). To verify your account, the following information will be asked of you: Name, Surname, Phone number and a picture of your driver's license, identity card or passport. After you have successfully verified your identity you can deposit and withdraw funds through debit or credit card. (Disclaimer: when people sign up on coinbase with this link and make a deposit of 100$ (~85€) or higher, we both get 10$ extra) Coinbase

Note: The crypto's you can buy on coinbase are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. If you want different crypto's, It is best to get either Bitcoin or Ethereum since these can be traded against other cryptocurrencies on most exchange websites.

Another option is BTCDirect. It follows the same process with verification and is a great substitute if your verification is not working on coinbase.

If you have successfully followed the steps above you are now the proud owner of your first cryptocurrency. This means coinbase has created a wallet for you where the virtual currency is stored in.

How to Use Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is stored in a wallet, just like your other money. The special thing about a cryptocurrency wallet is that it exists out of 2 long strings of characters looking like this: 0x80c91A42f196803a5F92f03300b505ecdAbd6059. One is public for everyone to know, the other one is private and should only be known to the owner. A good analogy is that the public one is like your real address where you have you mailbox, and the private one is the key to that mailbox. So when we are transferring cryptocurrency from one wallet to another, all we need to do is fill in the public address of the receiver and press send.

Good Sources of News

Some of the best places to get your daily dose of crypto news are CoinDesk and Reddit. There are loads more but these are good to start with. ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK WHAT YOU READ. It is very important to be critical about the information you read online. Double check with other sources and read comments about what you read to see what other opinions on the subject are.

What to Expect

If you go and buy cryptocurrency, do not expect to get rich overnight. There are many success stories out there, but it is a very volatile market and drops happen just as often as rises, nobody can predict where the prices go. Most cryptocurrencies are still in early development and do not even have a working product yet. So, money that is invested in these is for the long run in hopes that their product is everything they promise and gets adopted into daily life. A few fun projects to look into are IOTA, EOS and Substratum.
Mandatory disclaimer: I own some IOTA, EOS and Substratum.

So I hope that with this short read I have helped at least some souls with their journey into crypto and I wish you guys all the best with it.