Buying, selling and storing your crypto

News from the past 7 days (or so): 

Another exciting week in crypto, (as usual!).

last week we said BTC hit its all time high, but it looks like we spoke too soon! 

Bitcoin now sits at $73 000, overtaking silver in market Cap (meaning the total Value of the shares or stock).

Ethereum passed the $4 000 mark.

Solana jumped to $200. 

The Fear and greed index is sitting at extreme greed which means that people are buying aggressively. 

Bitcoin market cap: $1.414 trillion 

Silver market cap: $1.38 trillion 

Considering how “young” bitcoin is, this is really mind blowing! 

It has been outperforming many other assets and is truly becoming “Digital Gold”. 

The digital revolution is here.

Don’t miss out. 

Weekly info mine

This week we go back to the basics. Lets discuss storing, buying and selling Crypto as well as all the fees that are involved. 

Cryptocurrency, just like any other currency,can be stored, bought and sold. Similarly crypto is stored in wallets and mainly bought through Exchanges. There are other ways of purchasing, for instance, P2P (peer to peer), OTC (Over The counter exchange services, usually reserved for higher net worth individuals) and crypto can even be purchased from wallet providers. 

To make it simple, we will go over some easy ways to Store, Buy & Sell using wallets or exchanges, as we have found this to be the simplest way to get involved.

First download/ buy the appropriate wallet of your choice. Think of this as a normal wallet, just digitized, your cryptocurrency storage space.  Ensure to only download wallets from their official websites and affiliate links to maintain your security.

There are a few main types of wallet:

Cold Wallets: Often termed the safest crypto storage solution. Encrypted, with a 12 or 24 word password, referred to as a seed phrase. Cold wallets are able to store cryptos offline in physical devices. Storing the recovery phrase is of utmost importance, as the holder now has full control of their money, and losing this recovery phrase often means losing access to the funds. There are always new developments with recovery phrase storage, for example,  steel engraving plates to ensure fireproof and time proof security. Three examples of cold wallets are:

1. Trezor 

2. Bitbox

3. Ellipal 

Mobile wallets: This is when crypto is stored on mobile phones, the easiest and simplest wallet to use. Not all mobile wallets will use the 12-24 seed phrase ,some will use face id or simple passwords. This method is less secure than cold wallets, but easier to use. Three examples of popular mobile wallets are:

2. Coinbase wallet 

3. Meta mask wallet 

4. Exodus wallet 

Hot Wallets: An app designed for ease of access and use, always connected to the internet and therefore referred to as ‘hot’. On these platforms, one can view their ‘tokens’ and send and receive the desired crypto. Most of these are also mobile friendly and are easy to use, with less security than cold wallets. Three examples:

1. Exodus

2. Meta Mask 

3. Crypto.com Defi wallet 

Now that you know where you can store your crypto, here is how you can acquire some:

Most wallets offer the option to buy within their platform by making a deposit using a credit or debit card after which they will deposit your chosen crypto into your wallet

Many different exchanges have appeared in the market since the creation of cryptocurrency, there are currently around 600 different exchanges, some centralized and others decentralized (we will cover this more in depth later on).

These are the top 5 exchanges by order of volume: 

1.Binance 

2.Coinbase 

3.Bybit 

4.OKX

5.UPbit 

Each exchange has their strong and weak points. Every exchange can charge fees to buy or sell crypto, as well as trading and transaction fees.

Most exchanges offer incentives and rewards, such as free crypto, for referrals,

It is important to note that each cryptocurrency itself charges transaction fees, due to the computational power required to verify transactions.

Ethereum uses something called “Gas Fees”, which are charged for using the Ethereum Blockchain, or for sending and staking Ethereum. The gas fees are measured in units of Gwei, which is short for Gigawei (1 Gwei = 1 billionth of an Eth). 

Don't be fooled by this small number, as gas fees can be very high during times of high traffic, and this can catch many people off guard, so make sure to check the gas fees before sending or staking Eth. If fees are very high, perhaps try another time, when the fees could be lower

You can use a gas fees tracker to see the live price of gas. 

So, why fees? 

Well, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin use a method called “mining” (validating transactions) and the transaction fees are an incentive for the miners to validate the transaction within the blockchain. This fee may vary based on the congestion of the network and the size of the transaction.

The exchanges charge a fee to keep the exchange alive, and to maintain the network and provide other offerings to their users, similar to the way banks charge for transactions.