How to Trade Bitcoin?

As soon as day traders realized that Bitcoin may be here to stay, a large number of them decided to start trading bitcoins on various Bitcoin exchanges. Although the early days of Bitcoin were plagued with plenty of scams where exchanges or wallet providers would run away with the bitcoins overnight, the reality is that we are now looking at a much more mature market for trading bitcoins.

Whether you’re looking to enter your trades manually or have some bots do all the work for you, it’s important to understand how Bitcoin trading actually works before you dive into the deep end.

Choosing a Bitcoin Exchange

The first thing you need to do when you want to learn how to trade bitcoins is figure out where you’re going to be doing your trading. Although this is supposed to be a decentralized, P2P currency, the reality is that it’s currently impossible to do high-frequency trading without the help of a centralized server. These centralized servers have been known as a point of weakness for the Bitcoin market as a whole, but improvements in security have slowly been rolled out to various exchanges over time.

If you’re going to trade bitcoins on a regular basis, then you’ll need to have some deposits at one or two Bitcoin exchanges at all times. While platform features and unique trading options may be the most important aspects of exchanges in other markets, the reality is that security is the most important feature to think about when trading bitcoins in a hot wallet. Factors such as longevity, two-factor authentication, and proof-of-reserve are going to be the most important features to look at when choosing an exchange.

Longevity and two-factor authentication are two factors that you probably have in the back of your head for traditional exchanges, but proof-of-reserve is a new feature for Bitcoin exchanges that should be viewed with the utmost importance. Bitcoin exchanges are able to prove that they actually have the bitcoins they say they have by signing messages from Bitcoin addresses containing large amounts of bitcoins, so this should calm some of your fears when it comes to the possibility of an exchange running a Ponzi scheme. Certain exchanges that offer proof-of-reserve, such as Kraken and Bitstamp, should be at the top of your list.

Buy and Hold Bitcoins?

Once you’ve signed up for a Bitcoin exchange and verified your account, you can then start to think about your own trading strategy. There are plenty of traders who try to time the market on a daily basis, but the reality is that the buy and hold strategy is the one that has paid off for the largest number of Bitcoin holders in the past. You never know when a piece of regulatory news out of China or a newly announced killer app could cause a huge price swing one way or the other, so it’s usually a good idea to throw your emotions out the window and simply purchase bitcoins on a regular basis. This will be weekly for some traders, while others will decide to pick up a few bitcoins on the first of every month.

Attempting to trade bitcoins without understanding why you purchased them in the first place can also be a huge issue. Bitcoin has been known to drop in price by as much as 50% in a single day, so you cannot be tempted to exit the market at a loss when these kinds of events take place. Trading bitcoins without a view that the price will eventually go higher as the price increases can be problematic due to the fact that you will probably end up buying high and selling low.

Remember that as with any type of trading, your capital is at risk. New traders should start trading with small amounts or trade on paper to practice. Beginners should also learn Bitcoin trading strategies and understand market signals.

How to secure your Bitcoin Wallet:

Gotten yourself a couple of bitcoins and trying to find a way to keep them safe? Just like a regular wallet, you have to take precaution with your bitcoin wallet since you don’t want to lose your money. It may seem a bit difficult to protect a virtual wallet, but if done properly you can definitely secure it. The following guide will explain a few practices you can do to keep your virtual coins safe and sound.

Keep Only a Small Amount of Bitcoins in Your Wallet

In having a wallet, whether a virtual or physical one, you wouldn’t want to have all of your money in it since if you lose your wallet you are broke. Therefore, it is advised that you store only a few coins on your phone or computer which will be your everyday spending money. The rest should be kept secure at another location.

Online Wallets

This is a web-based wallet that stores your private bitcoin key online. This means your coins are controlled by someone other than you. In addition, it can place great power into the hands of the organization that runs your online wallet because they have the private key. On the other side, having a web based wallet is a good for when you want to have access to your bitcoins anywhere at any time. Here are a couple of known online wallet sites: Blockchain, Coinbase, Strongcoin. Out of these three, Strongcoin is the only one that allows you to encrypt your private keys before sending them online, offering a bit more security.

Encrypt Your BTC Wallet

A basic, yet imperfective way to protect your coins is to encrypt your wallet. Encrypting means setting a very strong (at least 16 letter) password with capital letters, punctuation marks, numbers, etc. This helps against most robbing mishaps, however there are limitations:

Hackers could use a software to log your keystrokes, hence even if you have a super strong password, it can still be hacked.

If you forget your password.let’s just say you are not seeing your coins again.

Tips on remembering your password:

Write it down on paper and keep it in a vault or something with a powerful lock. Basically any place you keep your most expensive and precious things.

 Make a password that is difficult for anyone you know to figure out, but something you can still remember. In short, memorize it.

Backup Your Wallet!

Backing up your wallet ensures that if all else fails (computer crashes, phone gets stolen, you get fired from work etc) you can restore your coins.

Bitcoin wallets have hidden private keys. If you only have a backup for your visible Bitcoin addresses, you will not be able to restore all of your money. Thus, we advise you backup your entire wallet.

Any computer or device connected to the internet is susceptible to hacking and theft. Therefore, you should encrypt (set a strong password) on backups that are on your computer or phone.

Where Should I Store Backups?

Have multiple secure places to store your backups. Why? Because if you only use one USB that has the backup and you happen to lose that USB, say goodbye to your coins. So, for example, you can use: USBs, CDs, Hard drives, paper, etc and then put these in a vault or something else that is secure. Also, make sure to keep your backups up to date. Any new coins update your backup!

Keep your Bitcoin Software up to date

If you do not have your BTC software up to date, it might be susceptible to theft and hacking. Thus, it’d be in your best interest to keep it updated. This will ensure that your coins receive more security and stability. Remember to update all the other software on your computer or phone as well to keep your wallet secure. A safe environment provides security for your money.

Take Your Wallet Offline!

One of the best ways you can protect your wallet is if you store it in a place that is not connected to the internet. Why? Because anything connected to the internet is susceptible to hacking. This is called cold storage which basically store private bitcoin keys offline. Many software wallets offer cold storage, check to see if yours does.

How would this even work out?

A way you can approach this is by transferring most of your bitcoin wealth into cold storage and leaving only a small amount for your everyday spending wallet. This way you have most of your money in a place that is secured, and some of your coins at hand to trade with. Hey, you get the best of both worlds.

Why use cold storage?

If your computer or phone gets stolen or hacked, only a small amount of coins in your everyday wallet will be taken from you. The rest are secured in your super secret vault (cold storage) that is away from the prying hackers of the web. This results in minimal damage for you and even if your everyday wallet gets robbed you can go on your merry way. You know, by getting more bitcoins and the like.

Paper Security

If you don’t see cold storage working out for you, you can also just use paper to store your wallet. This is known as a paper wallet. Many websites have paper BTC wallet options and this is how it goes down:

1. You’ll get a bitcoin address

2. You’ll also get an image of 2 QR codes (one code is the public address from which you can get BTC; the other is a private key that can be used to spend BTC from that address)

Think About the Future

If you are the only one who has knowledge and access to your bitcoin wallet, you might want to keep this in consideration: if you happen to die, your bitcoins will be lost and no one else will be able to use them. This is similar to the money you earn: if you don’t say in your will or testament that you want your wealth given to a specific person or charity, your wealth will be divided amongst your intestate heirs. However, unlike regular currency, to have access to your coins, you need the private key. Keep this in mind for the future.

What Does This All Mean?

Like with securing your physical wealth, you should review your options carefully and decide the best way to keep your bitcoins safe. This could mean going cold storage, paper storage, encrypting your wallet, backing up, or all of the above. Look through the options we’ve given you and chose the one that offers the most security.

Easy ways to earn Bitcoin for Beginners

Bitcoin has recently gained a lot of awareness from the press, due to its exponential price growth. People from all over the world are beginning to use the digital currency, looking to strike it rich, or simply take advantage of its unique features.

Scrape Bitcoin faucets

Bitcoin faucets have played an essential role in the history of Bitcoin. Faucets are websites which automatically dispense free BTC to a user who enters his or her Bitcoin address. This is an ideal way for newbies to get a small amount of BTC for free.

There are many different faucet websites, each with its own unique features. For example, some websites require players to complete a simple game, instead of solving a boring old CAPTCHA. A number of Bitcoin casino sites give out coins which can be used to bet on a dice roll or sports event. You could potentially earn a lot more from these sites, compared to regular faucets.

Mine Bitcoin

Mining is the process of generating Bitcoins through solving computationally-difficult problems. It also serves the purpose of confirming transactions, which secures the network. In layman’s terms, this simply means that you can use computers to crunch numbers, and earn BTC as a reward.

Bitcoin mining is actually a lot harder than it sounds. In 2009, when the virtual currency was first released, you may have been able to mine hundreds of BTC with any regular computer effortlessly. Today, miners employ specialized devices in a race to earn the 12.5 BTC block reward. In fact, the Bitcoin network is around 256 times faster than the world’s top 500 supercomputers combined.

So is it possible for ordinary people like you and me to take part in the Bitcoin gold rush? The answer is simple. You can join a mining pool to work with other miners, and then split the reward based on how much computational work you did. USB-powered mining hardware, such as the ASICMiner Block Erupter, are readily available, and affordable to the average Bitcoin user. Although there is a chance that you won’t make back the money you spent on purchasing hardware, you will still learn how Bitcoin works, and earn some extra money along the way.

Sell goods and services

Instead of simply purchasing Bitcoins on an exchange, you can also earn it through selling useful items and services to the community. If you’d like to sell something, you should consider accepting Bitcoins, instead of simply listing the item on eBay. Even a number of Subway shops now accept BTC as payment.

One of the key features of Bitcoin is that it allows you to send and receive money from anywhere in the world. That means that you could make money by providing useful services to international customers. If you are skilled at a particular job, such as programming, or graphics design, you could earn a good amount of Bitcoin doing freelance work.

Choosing a Bitcoin Wallet:

If you want to use Bitcoin, one of the first decisions that you will have to make is which wallet you will be using to store your Bitcoin and make transactions. As Bitcoin is an electronic currency not controlled by a central authority, it allows any developer to create a wallet.

It is important to understand that a Bitcoin wallet doesn’t actually store the coins themselves. Actually, the coins are stored on the blockchain, a giant public ledger of every Bitcoin transaction in history. A wallet allows you to access your coins using private and public keys. The public key is used to receive Bitcoins and can be published anywhere without security concern. The private key is used to send coins, and like a password must be guarded to protect your wallet’s security. Because all of the transactions are actually stored on the blockchain rather than inside the wallet itself, you can access your coins from many different wallets, as long as you have the public and private keys.

Consider Your Operating System

When selecting a wallet, there are a couple of questions that you would need to ask yourself. One would be what computer platform would you like to use to access your coins. There are wallets that can run on a PC which are available for every major operating system, such as Windows, OSX, and Linux. You will also find wallets that can run on mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad, or Android-powered smartphones. Perhaps the most popular platform is the web or cloud based wallet. These wallets are often the easiest to set up and least secure. They are quite convenient as they can be accessed from any device with an internet browser.

Web-Based Wallets

As a general rule, wallets that run on your computer will offer a wide variety of features, while also providing you with better security when compared to their web-based counterparts. There have been several high-profile incidents in which web-based wallet services were targeted by hackers and coins belonging to the users were stolen, without any way to retrieve them. If you want to use a web-based Bitcoin wallet, you should select one that has a good reputation in the Bitcoin community and that also offers good security features, such as two-factor authentication. Many Bitcoin experts argue that a mobile Bitcoin wallet is actually the most secure online option because the way that mobile phone processors segregate encrypted data makes an encrypted mobile wallet nearly impossible to hack.

Offline Wallets

If you are considering storing a large amount of money in a Bitcoin wallet, make sure that you educate yourself about security first. Unlike a bank that insured by the Federal Government, if someone breaks into your Bitcoin wallet and steals your Bitcoins they are likely gone forever. Experts agree that you should use an offline wallet for storing large amounts of money. Often referred to as cold storage, offline wallets are not connected to the internet and therefore cannot be hacked. A common practice is to store the wallet on a USB thumb drive in a safe deposit box.

Other Considerations

If you are new to Bitcoin, the best way to find the right wallet for you would be to check out the Bitcoin.org website, the official website of the Bitcoin foundation. They compare the various wallets available and give descriptions of their unique features, as well as the pros and cons of using them. If you are considering a mobile wallet, both the Apple App Store and the Google Play store have a variety of Bitcoin wallet apps with extensive user reviews.

After finding out more about some of the wallets available out there, you will be able to narrow down your choices to a few that would be most appropriate for your unique needs. There is no such thing as the “perfect” wallet for everyone, as different users will have different needs. As a general rule of thumb, each wallet is a unique compromise between convenience and security. For example, someone who only keeps the equivalent of a few dollars in their wallet will probably not care too much about advanced security features, while an ecommerce site operator that receives thousands of payments each day would need a wallet that is as secure as possible.

What are crypto currencies?

A cryptocurrency (crypto currency) is a digital medium of exchange that functions similar to traditional money, but has no physical equivalent and is only in digital form. The first major cryptocurrency that kind of started it all was Bitcoin in 2009, and since then a lot of other alternative cryptocurrencies have become available thanks to the huge popularity that Bitcoin has managed to generate. Cryptocurrencies are a form of digital currency that uses the principles of cryptography to implement a distributed, decentralized and secure economy where you can mine and trade them. When comparing cryptocurrencies to fiat money, the most notable difference is in how no group or individual may influence significantly the production of money (in the case of crypt it is called mining), instead only a certain amount of cryptocurrency is produced by the entire cryptocurrency system collectively, at a rate which is bounded by a value both prior defined and publicly known.

Dozens of cryptocurrency specifications have been defined, most are similar to and derived from the first fully implemented cryptocurrency protocol, Bitcoin. Within cryptocurrency systems, the safety, integrity, and balance of all ledgers is ensured by a swarm of mutually distrustful parties, referred to as miners, who are, for the most part, general members of the public, actively protecting the network by maintaining a high hash-rate difficulty for their chance at receiving a randomly distributed small fee. Averting the underlying security of a cryptocurrency is mathematically possible, but the cost may be unfeasibly high. For example, against Bitcoin’s proof-of-work based system, an attacker would need computational power greater than that controlled by the entire swarm of miners in order to even have 1 / 2^(# authentication rounds for this cryptocurrency – 1) of a chance, which means directly circumventing Bitcoin’s security may be a task well beyond even a technology company the size of Google.

Most cryptocurrencies are designed to gradually introduce new units of currency, placing an ultimate cap on the total amount of currency that will ever be in circulation. This is done both to mimic the scarcity (and value) of precious metals and to avoid hyperinflation. As a result, such cryptocurrencies tend to experience hyperdeflation as they grow in popularity and the amount of the currency in circulation approaches this finite cap. Compared with ordinary currencies held by financial institutions or kept as cash on hand, cryptocurrencies are less susceptible to seizure by law enforcement. Generally cryptocurrencies are considered a pretty anonymous and untraceable means of payment.

The first cryptocurrency was Bitcoin that was created in 2009 by developer referring to himself as Satoshi Nakamoto (probably not a real person). Bitcoin uses SHA-256 as its proof-of-work scheme, later on the Litecoin appeared which uses scrypt as a proof-of-work, as well as having faster transaction confirmations. Another more notable alternative coin is the Peercoin (XPM) which uses a proof-of-work/proof-of-stake hybrid different from the other two. There are of course a lot more alternative crypto currencies available, but many of them are just clones of the major ones that add none at all or just a few innovations in order to generate a lot of user interest like the major cryptos already mentioned.

Bitcoin (BTC) and other major SHA-256 crypto currencies

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital crypto currency introduced as open source software back in 2009 by a developer referred as to Satoshi Nakamoto, though it seems that nobody knows the real developer’s name. Bitcoin is called a cryptocurrency, because it uses cryptography algorithms to control the creation and transfer of the digital money. Users send payments by broadcasting digitally signed messages to the P2P network and participants in the decentralized network known as miners verify and timestamp transactions into a shared public database called the block chain. Bitcoins can be obtained by the process of the so called mining or in exchange for products, services, or other real currencies. There are multiple Bitcoin exchanges where you can trade BTC for other crypto currencies or real money, both buying and selling.

Commercial use of Bitcoin is still very small in the form of goods or services that you can purchase for bitcoins compared to its use by speculators on exchanges, which has fueled price volatility. The fact that the exchange rate of a single BTC can greatly vary not only form day to day, but it can also change very quickly in just a minute is one of the most serious concern to merchants that are considering of accepting bitcoins as a means of payment, but still the high exchange rate that is currently over $2,000 USD for 1 BTC makes it attractive alternative to real money, especially when you also consider the very minor taxes you need to pay for a Bitcoin transaction as compared to credid card processing taxes for example.

Bitcoin is the biggest and most widely known crypto currency nowadays, in fact it is the crypto that started it all and since it generated so much attention many other crypto currencies have appeared. Nowadays it is hard to just mine bitcoins with your computer and in order to actually mine bitcoins at a good rate per day you need a specialized hardware called Bitcoin ASIC or Bitcoin Miner. In the earlier days you could mine with just the processor of your computer, then it was possible to use your video card, but nowadays the network difficulty has gotten so high that mining Bitcoins with your computer you would not be able to just cover the electricity bill with what you earn. Bitcoin uses SHA-256 as its proof-of-work scheme, but there are a few other major alternatives of Bitcoin that use SHA-256 and can be mined the same way as Bitcoin and with the same hardware including the specialized Bitcoin ASIC hardware miners. These are Acoin, Crown, Curecoin, eMark, Joulecoin, Mazacoin, Peercoin and others. You can mine these coins and then trade them at crypto currency exchanges for Bitcoins and sometimes mining an alternative crypto currency and then trading it for BTC can yield a better profit than mining Bitcoins directly, especially if you have dedicated powerful hardware for that. And one of the latest trends is not buying directly the hardware, but renting it instead and as you can expect it is called cloud mining.

Litecoin (LTC) and other major Scrypt crypto currencies

Litecoin (LTC) is the second most popular peer-to-peer digital crypto currency released as an open source software project after Bitcoin has gained quite a lot of popularity. Similar to Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin generation and transfer is based on cryptographic proof-of-work scheme and is not managed by any central authority and is relaying on a P2P network consisting of the users that are mining the crypto currency. Litecoin is intended by its developers to improve upon Bitcoin, offering new improvements and relying on a different crypto algorithm that made it a popular alternative to Bitcoin. Litecoin was released in 2011 by Charles Lee, a former Google employee, who used the Bitcoin-Qt client as a basis, bud modified it in order for the Litecoin to have a decreased block generation time, increased maximum number of coins, different hashing algorithm, and a slightly modified GUI.

What made the Litecoin very popular and the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization at the moment is the fact that it was one of the earlier alternative crypto currencies that offered both differences and new things that set it apart from the competition. But the most important thing was the fact that it is a Scrypt based and not SHA-256, making it ASIC-proof or with other words not being able to mine LTCs with the already available Bitcoin ASIC miners. This brought back the GPUs as the primary mining solution for generating Litecoins, something that has been left in the past by Bitcoin, so you can say that Litecoin is following in the footsteps of Bitcoin. Another way to look at the to crypto currencies is if we compare the Bitcoin to Gold and the Litecoin as Silver.

Much like with Bitcoin, Litecoin also has a lot of alternative crypto currencies based around its basic code and concept, in fact LTC has much more alternatives that cannot be mined with Bitcoin ASIC. And the fact that Bitcoin ASIC miners are so powerful nowadays there is not much point in releasing SHA-256 based alternative crypt currency similar to Bitcoin, it is better to have it based around Litecoin and scrypt. Some of the more interesting and notable alternatives to Litecoin that are also Scrypt-based are: FeatherCoin, WorldCoin, DogeCoin, Lottocoin and many others appearing all the time, though a lot of these don’t get much attention from the users and die quickly.