I asked a friend of the podcast, Jake Larmour, to whip up a quick checklist for some of the basics behind Bitcoin. With his permission, I am reposting them here on our blog. Jake will be writing an upcoming CryptoCurrency blog for Tackle Trading in the near future. Enjoy!
Best Charting Platforms:
- COINIGY.COM uses Trading View Charts. It’s the nicest to use, and you can use an API plugin to the exchanges, and trade everything from one platform.
- CRYPTOWAT.CH is also nice. It’s the second-best charting platform on the market for cryptos. Again, you can use APIs to trade from one screen on multiple exchanges.
Best Exchanges:
- BITFINEX is the largest for BTC trading. One of the most likely to be hacked due to volume.
- POLONIEX is the largest for Altcoin trading, and lending. They offer margin and shorting capabilities. One of the most likely to be hacked due to the amount of people who store coins on the exchange to collect the lending rates. I also have not received a response from my support ticket from 3 weeks ago…
- KRAKEN is my favorite exchange. It is a slow exchange that sometimes I have to enter the orders a few times to get filled. However, they allow shorting BTC and up to 5x on BTC trades. I think up to 3x on ETC trading as well. It is ok in terms of its Altcoin offerings.
- BITTREX is where I would buy some of the more exotic Altcoins. It has good volume and liquidity, but is not the biggest exchange, and therefore has a lower risk profile in terms of hacking based on history (the biggest get hacked).
- International Investors can look at trading Bitcoin Futures and Optios Contracts, but I have not found an exchange that allows US investors in said products. OKcoin is the largest Chinese exchange that also allows futures and options up to 20x leverage, but they lock out the US for regulatory reasons.
Wallets
- Coinbase (internet based wallet)
- Exodus (desktop based wallet)
- Trezor, Ledger NanoS, Keepkey (the top 3 Hardware wallets, also listed in the order of my opinion of best to worst)
Tips:
- Always store your coins on a hardware wallet for long-term storage.
- Never put too much on any one crypto exchange
- This market volatility is unsustainable in the long term, most of bitcoin’s life it moved like 30% at a time not 100%. However, take advantage of the current volatility.
Mining
- Just talk to Jake 😊