A short explanation of how and where to get Bitcoin and then DNotes.
Buying Bitcoin is a simple process made seemingly difficult by the techno jargon of making a trade. It's really as simple as make an offer, make a transfer, you have Bitcoin! Currently the most popular and secure avenue to purchase Bitcoin is through Coinbase. Coinbase employs a very official simple process to get your coins. If you are familiar with using paypal or similar processors you will find it easy to use Coinbase. Creating a coinbase wallet/account is straight forward and only requires a valid email. From there you can familiarize yourself with their system and how the site works. Then you add and verify your account information and you're ready to get your coins. Another option is Localbitcoins.com. Think of it as the Craigslist of Bitcoin with all the same risks associated. One thing that makes LocalBTC different is instead of only being able to use a bank account you can get your coins with cash in person or any other form of online payment really. Localbitcoins should be used by experienced traders who are familiar with the risks.
Once you purchase your bitcoin it will be in the wallet of your choice if you followed proper procedure. There are a few options like online or cloud wallets, desktop wallets, and strait to exchanges. An exchange is a online/cloud wallet but unlike the cloud wallet you can trade your coins. For storage purposes a desktop wallet is the best for any cryptocurrency. If you want to have your coins ready to trade for profits keeping them on an exchange is the best, but keep in mind the risks involved. As many of you may know the recent collapse of a few exchanges have left depositors hanging with no or little compensation. This is why if you store your coins on an exchange you want to use one that will give you interest on them. The higher the interest the better, at least you can sideline interest gains to hedge against a possible loss or you could let it compound and take the risk. And finally there are the online wallets. These I only recommend for people who don't actually have a computer for a wallet and don't want the risk of an exchange collapse. But still there is site security to worry about, as with any website it is susceptible to hacking and a subsequent loss of your coins. Sometimes when and exchange or online wallet is hacked you can recover some of your coins from the site operators but don't count on it. The best way is always going to be in your possession with the official wallet.
To safely exchange your bitcoin for any other alt coin you need an exchange account. Specifically I will be talking about how to get DNotes. Currently the best exchange, in my opinion, is Allcoin.com. There you can easily set up an account, transfer your bitcoin to and from as well as exchange a multitude of currencies, DNotes being one of them. Once you get an account set up you can transfer your coins to there by simply going to the send tab in your wallet and entering the receive address given to you by the exchange, the amount and the pass key if you set one up which is highly recommended. Once your bitcoin is there you can trade it for DNotes by either making an offer or taking someones offer. I recommend making an offer unless you think the price is bottomed or low in which case you may want to take an offer. But in most cases you'll find that if you make your offer around the top of the list you'll pick up some if not all of what you're looking for. The same idea applies to selling as well.
When you trade you want to think of it as a negotiation. You either stay firm in the price you want or if after a while you don't get anywhere you inch a little closer to what the other person wants. When you think about it you don't often walk into a store and buy the first product off the shelf. You look at the same product the competitors are offering and make a decision on which is better. Just like in an exchange why would you go in an buy or sell for the first price you see. This is one of the reasons why prices fluctuate so much with coins because there are a lot of novice "traders" who don't really understand how a market works. Also since these coins are being created daily there is the group of people who don't care for price and just sell sell sell. A lot of people see this as bad but when you think about it like I said earlier if you make an offer around the top of the buy list someone will sell it to you. This makes for a tricky balance because if nobody puts their buy orders high enough, miners will simply stop selling and mining making the actual value of a coin to drop and then the market value to drop. If you aren't a big miner selling no matter the price when you sell you have to negotiate too but it's a little more difficult because you have those pesky big guys undercutting you left and right. You don't want to follow suit and "dump" it's better to as with the buy orders put it at the top of the list and eventually the two will meet and level out. And finally don't take advice from anyone when it comes to when and how much you should invest that decision is best left to yourself as nobody can predict the future.
Links:
Coinbase
https://coinbase.com/Local Bitcoins
https://localbitcoins.com/Allcoin
https://www.allcoin.com/Bitcoin(wallet here)
https://bitcoin.org/en/DNotes(wallet here)
http://dnotescoin.com/(Anyone have anything to add?)