What Is Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) And How To Get Started
Thousands (or probably millions) of books/tutorials/posts/threads/blogs/sites have been written about Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) so far. It's impossible to include everything here, so i will just try to reply to a few noobish questions!
More or less the same applies for Ethereum (also well known) and many other cryptocurrencies. We just mostly mention Bitcoin, since this is the most famous at the moment.
Many users are wondering "what is Bitcoin?".
Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, created and held electronically. No one controls it. Bitcoins aren’t printed, like dollars or euros – they’re produced by people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world, using software that solves mathematical problems.
Why Bitcoin is so popular?
Virtual currencies such as Bitcoin are becoming more and more popular as an alternative investment thanks to their rising value.
Last but not least, most users love Bitcoin, because it's more anonymous than any other payment method. Somebody has to create an account, verify his ID only once and most well known Bitcoin companies are considered as very trusted, so users feel comfortable with the verification process. Then, nobody (Bitcoin sender or receiver) can see each other's real name/address/company/whatever so both parties love those anonymous transactions.
That's why all the trackers accept only Bitcoin as a donation method nowadays! And not only trackers... Actually i really believe that everybody will use Bitcoin sooner or later!
Some things to keep in mind:
- ONLY if you buy Bitcoin from a company with your credit card the transaction will be instant. If you buy with a bank account, it might take up to 5 working days for the payment to clear.
- While the Bitcoin/USD exchange rate was 1 BTC = $1 USD a few years ago and at the moment of writing this post 1 BTC worths $16.500 USD, NOBODY knows what is gonna happen after 1 day/month/year/decade. So if you want to buy Bitcoin as an investment, keep in mind that it might go down and lose your money (nothing goes up forever)! But if the exchange rate will go up, you will obviously make a profit.
- If you decide to store your BTC in your own wallet (PC or any other kind of wallet), don't forget to make a backup of it. And remember that storing cryptocurrencies in your own wallet is always safer since only you can access those.
At this point, everybody is probably wondering "how can i buy Bitcoin and how much it costs?".
Well, it's easier than ever to buy Bitcoin, with so many companies around the world. Some of these companies are faster and some are slower, some companies might offer their services in your country and some not, some have higher fee and some lower, some have harder and some easier verification process and some accept more payment methods than others! But in any case, won't take longer than a day to buy your first Bitcoin (some guys bought even within half an hour) and you will be able to buy instantly Bitcoin in the future (only the first time might be kinda slow).
You can use a search engine like google (or any other) to find out everything you need. If you don't have time to search yourself, you can just check out this site, which has plenty of options about buying Bitcoin:
https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/
If you are lucky enough and you have a Bitcoin ATM near you, it's possible to buy BTC with cash. Check this out:
https://coinatmradar.com/
In my opinion the most accurate Bitcoin exchange rate (accordingly with the average market value of the Bitcoin) is this one:
http://preev.com/
And it's interesting/useful to see the Bitcoin chart (you can set the chart to 1 Day, 7 Days, 1 Month, 3 Months, 6 Months, 1 Year, All time):
https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/bitcoin
You better use any search engine to find out the best company to use, but some well known companies to buy cryptocurrencies at the moment are:
https://www.bitstamp.net/
https://www.coinbase.com/
https://www.coinmama.com/
https://cex.io/
Trust me, there are MANY more companies and MANY more cryptocurrencies around!
Feel free to post any other info or any other possible ways to get started with cryptocurrencies :)
