How to Start Trading Cryptocurrencies: Instructions for Beginners

Digital money or Cryptocurrencies are attracting more and more people who want to make money. The correct start of cryptocurrency trading determines how successful and how long the trader will trade in the future. So, here is how to learn how to trade on the cryptocurrency exchange.

Basic strategy

How to earn cryptocurrencies? You can, as most cryptocurrency hoarders do, just buy cryptocurrencies at a certain price, and sell when the price seems right. The advantages of this strategy include the fact that it is a simple and relaxed process that requires no training or deep dive into crypto trading. On the contrary, digital coin trading – is a serious undertaking that requires training, concentration, and time.

Top 5 best cryptocurrency exchanges

Trading will inevitably be accompanied by stress and losses until the trader figures out how to successfully trade on the cryptocurrency exchange. That’s why it’s worth considering whether to remain a peaceful hodler or think about how to learn how to make money on the cryptocurrency exchangeIf you choose to trade in cryptocurrencies. You can start learning how to trade cryptocurrencies from scratch, for example, by choosing a wallet.

Wallets

First of all, there are custodial and non-custodial wallets. A custodial wallet is a wallet whose personal keys and security features are held by the developer. Such wallets are placed on crypto exchangeswhere cryptocurrencies are mostly traded. A non-custodial wallet is a system whose keys are held only by the user, in the form of a mnemonic phrase. The user retains full control over the funds in the wallet and is fully responsible for them.

Image. 1
The most secure, in terms of security, cryptocurrency wallet is a paper wallet. The user literally writes or prints on a piece of paper a private key or sido phrase, which is generated, for example, on the Bitaddress website (Fig. 1). There are three kinds of danger: loss of the piece of paper with the key, viruses on the computer and the very moment of key generation – at that moment the computer is connected to the Internet and can theoretically be attacked by hackers.

Web wallets are necessary for users who constantly use cryptocurrency, because such a wallet allows the fastest possible transactions. The main danger when using such a wallet is that it, like everything on the Internet, can be attacked by hackers. Therefore, it is very not recommended to keep large amounts of cryptocurrencies on a web wallet.

Image. 2
Mobile wallets, for example, Trust Wallet (https://trustwallet.com) (Fig. 2) – work as applications on smartphone, it is convenient to store some amount of coins in them in case it is necessary to quickly transfer cryptocurrency somewhere. The same thing, they are vulnerable to attacks.

Desktop wallets are programs that are downloaded to your computer, such as Exodus or Electrum. They are more secure than web wallets and smart applications, and can function without the Internet. You just need to generate complex passwords and not forget them. And you can’t forget the sid-phrase, which you need in case you lose all your data in order to restore the wallet. And there are even more secure wallets – physical carriers like Trezor (online) or Ledger (go online). This is a real electronic device, which can be carried around, it contains all the necessary information and can provide some operations with cryptocurrencies.

Coins

All novice traders dream of trading Bitcoin. But cryptocurrencies are not limited to Bitcoin. There are 6,594 cryptocurrencies on the CoinMarketCap aggregator, so there is plenty to trade (Figure 3). Many of these cryptocurrencies are inexpensive, even less than $1, and are available to almost anyone.

Image. 3
The difficulty is in choosing which cryptocurrency will be interesting in terms of trading. That is, it must be represented on crypto-exchanges and be popular – it must have sufficient liquidity and volatility to be able to earn on price jumps in short periods of time (short timeframes). And it is desirable that its value is constantly growing in the long term.

It is necessary to choose not just one coin, but several, for trading – this is called asset diversification. In general, the crypto market moves pretty smoothly, because about half of its capitalization is bitcoin, where its price moves, the price of all other currencies moves the same way. But there is still a difference in dynamics. Some coins are more volatile, some are less volatile, some have higher speed of transactions, some have built infrastructure, sometimes some cryptocurrency moves against the trend, some coins are needed to reduce commissions on exchanges and so on. Diversification makes a trader’s investment portfolio more stable.

Where to trade?

Cryptocurrency trading, as a qualified type of trading, is done on centralized crypto exchanges, because they have all the necessary functionality for this. There are also decentralized trading floors, but this implies that the trader is already more or less familiar with the crypto market.

In addition, the cryptocurrency exchange website has texts, instructions, videos and a demo mode for the trading terminal with tools for technical and fundamental analysis. That’s why it’s better to study cryptocurrency trading and make your first steps in trading on a centralized exchange. But training and demo mode are not the most important requirements when choosing a cryptocurrency exchange; after all, you can train outside the exchange as well.

And the first of the main requirements will be a suitable jurisdiction of the crypto-exchange. Nowadays, not all crypto-exchanges support trading in all countries (but it is possible to register with them) and not all crypto-exchanges are allowed to operate in all countries. It is optimal to choose a crypto exchange in the country where the trader lives and trades, but it is not always possible. When registering and verifying an account, it is necessary to be sure that trading on this particular exchange in the place where the trader is, does not violate any laws.

The second requirement for the exchange when choosing it – security. The safest cryptocurrency exchanges that have never been hacked in years. And there are such. The disadvantage would be if the exchange at least once was hacked. The fact that users can not verify whether there was a real hacking, or money had gone from the account for another reason. Therefore, it is better to choose an exchange with no history of hacking and unexplained missing cryptocurrencies, even if the exchange compensated for the loss. Exchange must indicate where it is registered and, preferably, under the control of which financial regulator it is (but there can be exceptions, for example, Binance). The term of existence of the exchange is also an important factor, in the list of the top no of new cryptocurrency exchanges in 2021. There will be mostly the longest-established and largest crypto exchanges.

It is desirable that there are confirmations of independent audit. The site of the exchange must begin, of course, with HTTPS. The presence of a translation into the language in which the trader trades can also be considered a security factor. Cryptocurrency exchange in Russian (Fig. 4) for the Russian-speaking client – a guarantee of understanding what happens on it, and this is the key to minimizing errors.

Image. 4
Because of pressure from government regulators, crypto exchanges have almost universally introduced a KYC system – “know your customer”. Cryptocurrency exchange without verification – endangered species (but they still exist). This means that the beginning trader, who intends to trade seriously and for a long time, needs to prepare documents, which confirm that he is him. If there are any doubts, it is necessary to look for an exchange that gives the opportunity to trade small volumes.

Somewhere on the exchange there must be information about how exactly clients’ accounts are protected from hacking and how vulnerabilities are neutralized. All top exchanges now offer two-factor authentication (and it is better not to ignore it).Deposit money to the exchange and withdraw money from the exchange must be made to those payment systems, which are used by the client. Separately and very carefully consider the commissions that the exchange offers traders.

For more information about the exchange, you can read what they write about it on professional forums, on Reddit or on Bitcointalk. But the opinion of users is not the main source of information about the exchange. Because there are bots on forums, trolls, angry users, and so on, it will be rash to rely entirely on the opinion of the community.

It’s hard to learn

So, the exchange is chosen, checked, the wallet is ready to receive profits, where to start trading and, most importantly, how to successfully trade on the cryptocurrency exchange? Certainly not with filling up the balance of exchange with all your savings and boldly placing orders. As it was already said, crypto-trading is a serious occupation, which needs to be learned. Everything described above is preparatory organizational measures, not trading itself. And now the novice trader should start looking for quality trading courses. The good news is twofold:

• There are plenty of educational materials on crypto-trading on the Internet.
• Learning to trade on your own without high-paying mentors is difficult, but possible.

YouTube is probably the most popular and easiest method of learning right now. You can find videos on how to trade on cryptocurrency exchange for a beginner from scratch (Fig. 5), both on trading, in general, and on separate, the most narrow aspects. The advantage of videos is their clarity – the author shows the trading terminal and what actions to perform, or how to withdraw money, or how to navigate in the stock market. YouTube is often used to link to more in-depth courses. You can find information on the platform, how to trade on a cryptocurrency exchange step-by-step instructions, the question is whether it will be of high quality. The downside is that any dilettante can download the lessons and it is difficult for a beginner to determine how professional the author is and how useful his courses are. But good courses are evidenced by reviews, and bad ones, too.

Image. 5
Big and famous online universities like Udemy (online) or Coursera (https://www.coursera.org), also recently offer cryptocurrency trading courses. Most likely, really good courses on how to play cryptocurrency exchange will be in English – at the same time, it’s a good reason to improve it. Online courses from experienced traders how to properly trade on the cryptocurrency exchange is the best choice.

If these are really professional courses, they give well-structured information about trading on the cryptocurrency exchange for beginners, prevent errors that are difficult to see in self-study, give understanding of trading strategy, and the interactive nature of courses allows you to ask questions and get a qualified answer right away. The only disadvantage may be the price of the course.

And it is possible that the teacher will turn out to be a user who has learned to juggle with words like “stop-loss”, “take-profit”, “bitcoin halving”, “false-breaking”, and promises one-day courses on “how to play cryptocurrency trading for beginners” with the guaranteed profit and so on. An indicator of quality courses should be that they have been running for a long time, there are students, and there is feedback from them.

How to learn how to trade on the cryptocurrency exchange on your own? There are tutorials, there are videos, forums, analytical resources, articles by experienced traders how to trade on cryptocurrency exchange, step-by-step instructions with photos for beginners, video tutorials “how to earn on cryptocurrency exchange for dummies”, finally. And, as it was already mentioned above – demo account on cryptocurrency exchange is a great help in learning.

When entering the real digital currency market, remember that demo mode and manuals do not give a sense of risk and do not teach you how to cope with losses. Therefore, start trading very cautiously, only with money whose loss will not lead to a decrease in the quality of life, constantly analyze actions, work on mistakes and constantly improve your skills. In any case, training is unlikely to take a short period of time.