1. Whitepapers
If you are a total newbie into the cryptocurrency world, and want to become an active participant, it is very helpful if you knew exactly what the whole buzz is actually about and why it is happening.
A lot of people go into cryptocurrency trading, or investing without truly understanding the fundamentals of what it actually is and why some things happen within it. This often exposes them to making investment and trade decisions that often backfire on them, as they usually follow what the crowd around them lean towards instead of making educated choices that would have been possible if they took the time to familiarize themselves with the fundamentals that drive the industry.
A very important resource that will aid anyone in understanding the core ideals that is behind the cryptocurrency industry is by studying Whitepapers, which are effectively blueprints that outline the vision behind cryptocurrencies, the problems they want to solve, and information about the technology they intend to use in solving these problems.
A very important whitepaper above most others will be the first among them all, the Bitcoin Whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto. Studying it and others like the Ethereum Whitepaper will enhance the user’s understanding into the inner workings of this industry and what it actually aims to achieve. Whitepapers can indeed sometimes be full of technical jargon and might require the perseverance of the reader to go through them. This is why it is important that the user goes in with a broad mind that is able to take all the jargon to one side, and take the vital information that is useful in the real world.
Whitepapers of the Most Successful ICOs
What Ethereum intends to provide is a blockchain with a built-in fully fledged Turing-complete programming language that can be used to create "contracts" that can be used to encode arbitrary state transition functions, allowing users to create any of the systems described above, as well as many others that we have not yet imagined, simply by writing up the logic in a few lines of code.
NEO is the use of blockchain technology and digital identity to digitize assets, the use of smart contracts for digital assets to be self-managed, to achieve "smart economy" with a distributed network.
Stratis is a powerful and flexible blockchain Development Platform designed for the needs of real - world financial services businesses and other organisations that want to develop, test and deploy applications on the blockchain
ARK is NOT just a cryptocurrency - it is an ecosystem meant for cryptocurrency mass adoption. By building the ARK platform on top of a highly secure core blockchain, integrating key decentralized technologies, and developing use cases to show off the abilities of the ARK network, ARK Crew provides a user-friendly platform to increase user adoption of blockchain technology as a whole.
The Komodo project focuses on empowering users with Freedom through blockchain
technology. Komodo provides a unique and innovative form of security that is as strong as the Bitcoin network, yet does not require the incredible cost.
Nxt is a 100% proof-of-stake cryptocurrency, constructed from scratch in open-source Java.
The Filecoin ICO has raised over $257 million during its September 2017 token offering after already having raised $52 million from leading venture capital firms such as Union Square Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Digital Currency Group prior to the token sale. Filecoin aims to build a decentralized cloud storage network using the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to securely record and store data on a peer-to-peer basis.
The Tezos project raised over $232 million during its ICO in July 2017. The Tezos team is developing a self-amending distributed ledger that allows for the creation of smart contracts. Tezos stands out from other blockchain projects since it allows token holders to approve and fund new protocol updates and, therefore, pre-emptively mitigate scaling or development disputes that may arise for the network in the future.
The EOS.IO software introduces a new blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications. This is achieved by creating an operating system-like construct upon which applications can be built. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across hundreds of CPU cores or clusters. The resulting technology is a blockchain architecture that scales to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees, and allows for quick and easy deployment of decentralized applications.
The Bancor Protocol enables automatic price determination and an autonomous liquidity mechanism for tokens on smart contract blockchains. These Smart Tokens have one or more connectors to a network, that hold balances of other tokens, and enable any party to instantly purchase or liquidate the Smart Token for any of its connected tokens, directly through the Smart Token’s contract, at a continuously calculated price, according to a formula which balances buy and sell volumes.
2. Exchanges
Once you get up to speed with the main gist of the cryptocurrency industry by studying some of the most important whitepapers around, your next step is trying to become an actual participant in the industry by acquiring your first cryptocurrency.
And since you are a beginner, and as such cannot begin to talk about the highly technical mining facet of acquiring them, your easiest and fastest way in is by purchasing that which you need from a reputable cryptocurrency exchange near you.
Buying cryptocurrencies nowadays has been simplified and made accessible from the early days when buying Bitcoin or any of the other altcoins was a total nightmare. Exchanges have moved with the time and are doing their best to cope with the insatiable demand for these digital assets, and have come up with various easy ways of buying them with different modes of payments including Debit and Credit Cards.
In order to choose the right cryptocurrency for you, there are several things to consider, the most important of which include:
- Reputation: The most important and uncompromisable thing to consider before agreeing to buy from a cryptocurrency exchange is the reputation it has. This is an industry with very little or no regulation worldwide, so the best chance you have in conducting a smooth transaction is by choosing those exchanges with the best reputation in service delivery and customer experience.
- Coverage: Although nowadays there are a lot of exchanges offering worldwide coverage for users from all countries, a lot of the most well-known and highly reputable are restricted to serving customers from certain countries. An Example is Coinbase which is the most popular exchange in the world but which only serves about 33 countries as of present. Therefore check and make sure your chosen exchange will trade with you based on your geographical location
- Modes of Payment: While Credit and Debit Card payment is now widely available for most exchanges, there are still those who often put stringent restrictions on card payments for first time users of their service. So depending on your preferred means of payment, choose your exchange wisely.
- Transaction Charges and Crypto Prices: Ultimately in order to have the best experience you need find an exchange with the best prices of the digital currencies and one that offers reasonable transaction charges for their services. The transaction fees often vary widely from exchange to exchange, from those that have close to zero charge to those that charge up to 5% on every transaction conducted on their platforms
3. Cryptocurrency Forums
In order to be in-tune with the wider cryptocurrency community and get the latest gossips and popular opinions in town, it is very important to be hooked up with all the important cryptocurrency forums. Platforms such as Reddit, and BitcoinTalk, often carry a lot of vital information that can be invaluable to the user on happenings, and imminent opportunities to make good money that often come up.
Cryptocurrency forums give you the chance to meet everyday users just like you, or even experts who truly understand the industry, from whom you can tap vital knowledge. These forums are also platforms on which new startups often rollout their plans for their new products, giving you the chance of being among the first people to learn about them and potentially exploit the opportunities that come with them. It is however very important to be careful of the information you take from forums, as there might be those who pump up certain products intentionally for their selfish gains. You must therefore be careful of what information you take, and always accept investment advice on them with a very critical mind.
4. CoinMarket Cap
As an industry with well over a thousand active participants with potentially hundreds coming aboard very soon, it is extremely important that you have a reliable source of information where you can monitor the past and present performances of the cryptocurrencies you are invested in, and those you are potentially looking to invest in, in the future. CoinMarket Cap without a doubt is your one-stop shop where you can find almost every cryptocurrency or token listed.
On CoinMarket Cap, you will find every information you need about the cryptocurrency you want to learn about, ranging from its official website, its price charts going back to its inception, its present market price as at the time you are browsing through, the total coins or tokens in circulation, its trade volume within the previous 24 hours, as well as its total coin market cap, from which the website gets its name.
CoinMarket Cap is without doubt a treasure trove of very useful information that the user can leverage on to get a better understanding of any blockchain-base digital asset they have interest in. With this site you will be able to monitor all the activities of the cryptocurrency industry in real-time, and see when money is moved in to a particular asset which often translates increase in its prices and when it is facing an exodus of investment.
Having all the right tools at your disposal can often be the difference between starting a successful business venture and one that is doomed to fail from the start.
Conclusion
As a beginner into an industry that is not yet 10 years old, and one that is vast in size, and highly volatile in temperament, it is extremely important that you equip yourself with the above mentioned and even further resources to make your experience an agreeable one from the very start.
