Making mistakes COULD cost you $$$ and all of your savings. People suicide over cryptocurrency. I hope this post saves some beginners.
The difference between public and private keysPublic Key = Wallet Address. Only needed for receiving coins to your wallet. Or you can use someone else's public key to send coins to them. Make sure the wallet you send the coins to have compatible wallets. For example, you can't send a TRX-20 token to a MEW or other ERC-20 token compatible wallet.
Private Key = Password NEVER, under ANY circumstance, give your private key to ANY website, person, place, etc. NEVER give out your private key. That's the key that will allow you to restore your wallet or give someone else access to all of your tokens in your wallet.
Scams/Ponzi SchemesThere are TONS of websites that claim to give 10% back every day. These are Ponzi schemes. Many of the top exchanges will revoke projects when they guarantee returns of 10% a day or other goals, for that reason. People pay the first people, and the next people pay the people that got in before them. There isn't an actual product. Have a look at Bitconnect if you'd like to know what the biggest ponzi scheme of this year was.
Stay off the hook of Phishers Phishers can be in the form of an email, website, wallet, app, etc. The goal of the phisher is to take your sensitive information, like a username/password, a private key, etc. Always check the URL, the email address, etc. For example, KuCoin.com as opposed to KuCoinn.com Some apps look official as well in the playstore and ask for your login information to Binance or another exchange, but they're complely fake and will steal your Binance funds.
Only trust yourself on the internetTelegram, Discord Servers, etc. are full of fake news, pumping/dumping, and much more. They don't care about you, they care about your money. If something sounds too good to be true, despite crypto being full of prosperous opportunities, it's most likely to be a scam.
DYOWNEVER take the advice of a Medium post, Steemit post, YouTube video, Facebook post, Reddit post, etc. no matter what the comments, numbers of likes, views, or whatever it is. They can be fake social signals, pumps/dumps, paid for content that wasn't mentioned, and other incentives for making the content that may not be in your best interest.
Don't invest more than you can afford to loseSome people bought Bitcoin for around $20k at the beginning of last year. Look at the price now. Look at other alts. This market is unlike any other market. Avoid loans for crypto, please! If you don't have money, but want to invest/make money in cryptocurrency. I'll tell you about bounties.
A couple more useful tipsBounty programs are usually simple tasks that allow ANYONE to earn cryptocurrencies for free. How does this work? New cryptocurrencies allocate certain funds in order to promote their cryptocurrency. The most common bounties are Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Blog posts, YouTube videos, Telegram, and others. Some only involve upvoting reddit posts daily, while others involve having a huge social presnece and creating original content. Start participating in bounty programs here on BitcoinTalk:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=238.0 Here are my referral links to some of the most reputable bounty platforms. Feel free not to use them: bountyhive.io/r/matthewoz
https://beta.bounty0x.io/bounties (Use referral code e5b8d9)
Use escrow on BitcoinTalk for trading. This will make it much safer. It's a trusted middleman.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.44205656 A list of escrow services:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/recommended-bitcointalk-escrow-services-2439910https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-bitcointalks-escrow-providers-ranking-blacklist-avoid-scam-276897