2017 – the year of Bitcoin (BTC)
This year will always be remembered as the year when Bitcoin made it to all newspapers worldwide. There is probably not a person in western world, who would not have heard about it and it’s enormous rise. It went from $963 on 1st January to $19 481 on 17th December. Everyone was amazed by the possibility of investing in it and sell it with profit afterwards when it breaks another maximum the very next week. Getting rich overnight was never that close. Of course it comes with a great risk, but what made it really great was the ease of cryptocurrency investing. It only takes few minutes till you set up your account and buy your own cryptocurrency.
My expectations and experience
I didn’t believe in Bitcoin at first (I still don’t believe it, read next). I thought that it is just something for the masses and I’ve always been against doing the things just because everybody else does it. So I simply ignored all of that buzz around it and continue my life. Of course that I there were so many articles all over internet that I clicked on some and tried to understand why is it so popular. The buzz word is Blockchain technology. Bitcoin is just one of the multiple currencies that is using this technology. What makes it special is that it was the first one that had a real success among wide range of people. As I see it Bitcoin is not the best one (far from that), however the technology (blockchain) is the real deal here. It really has a huge potential to be used everyday by all of us. And that is why I decided to start with cryptocurrency investing.
Why I don’t invest in Bitcoin
This is only my personal feeling, but I am scared of investing into Bitcoin. Sure, there are a lot of articles and well-respected names who say that it can go up to $40 000 this year, but I am scared of it. There are so many people investing it and these people don’t have any financial education and this is their first investment ever. How will these people act, when the BTC goes down 25% in few days? The volatility of it is really scary. Honestly I would rather have a steady 10-20% increase year by year then +500% one year and -90% the very next one …
Why I do other cryptocurrency investing (ETH, LTC, IOTA, BAT)
Even though I said that I don’t invest in BTC I still believe in the idea in general. Lowering the transactional fees is one of the crucial tasks in everyday life. Savings that can be generated by using any cryptocurrency instead of regular bank transfer, can be huge. And this will impact all of us, as we are using credit/debit cards everyday. I believe that big companies are even more eager to start saving serious money on their daily transfers and will start using this technology. That’s also why I think that 2018 will be a really good time to start investing into cryptocurrencies. As I already stated in my previous articles here and there I am very careful about where to put my money. After some research I decided to go with Coinbase.
Why to use Coinbase
- VERY easy to use
- backed up by several Financial Authorities
- $50B+ in digital currency exchanged
- BUY/SELL 4 most used cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH)
- over 10M customers
- one of the lowest fees
- well established – since 2012
Coinbase registration and deposit
The registration process for individuals is very easy and everyone can do it. Simply go to www.coinbase.com (this is a referral link – you will get 10$ worth in BTC if you will follow this link – this will pretty much cover the transfer fees. I will also get small reward for writing this article). Once there, fill in your Name, email and password. Check your email and confirm your email address. After this you will be asked for a scan of your Driving license / ID / Passport. I chose my ID and the process went through authentication very quickly – less than 3 minutes. You don’t need any special software / equipment. You will only scan it through your phone or web camera. Once this is finished you can already transfer money to your account.
The transfer officially takes up to 3 days, however my deposit arrived the very next day. From this point you can buy your first cryptocurrency. I would suggest ETC or LTC as your first purchase, but I know that many of you will be far more happy with Bitcoin.
If you want to learn how BTC and Blockchain works watch this video (technical)
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