Topic: Getting started with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies - page 2. (Read 1872 times)

You are most helpful thank you for taking the time to explain everything I understand it better now. ANN is short for announcement I didnt know that and its great you mentioned about Marketcap I know where to check now. You also explained what airdrop, bounty and signature campaign are. Thanks a lot!

Hi there, thanks so much for stopping by.

Generally ANN threads start out as announcements about new coins and projects. For coins, these threads are often linked to directly from a coin's page on Coin MarketCap. For example, if you go to the DMD Diamond page on Coin Marketcap, you will see a series of links on the left hand side just below the coin name. The headings are "Website," "Announcement," "Explorer," etc. The link called "Announcement" will take you directly to DMD Diamond's Announcement thread right here on Bitcoin Talk. I like that they are posted on Coin Marketcap because there you can easily look up a coin you want to know more about, and from there easily get to the coin's website, the coin's announcement thread, the coin's block explorer, trading platforms that support the coin and more.

An airdrop is a way to distribute a new coin. There are various ways of distributing, including ICOs, mining, proof of stake minting and more. Airdrops involve the distribution of free tokens to people based on some parameter such as geography, citizenship, being a customer of a particular retail store, etc. In order to qualify for an airdrop, you would have to meet its requirements. I personally do not have a lot of experience with airdrops, but I did find this website which claims to monitor airdrops. Anyone who has used that site or who has others to recommend, I would love your feedback.

A bounty is a reward offered for work done in the development of a particular coin or project. For example, maybe a new coin's development team has a wallet for the coin for Windows and Linux, but none of their developers are familiar with Apple computers. If the team wants an Apple wallet developed, they could advertise a bounty offering to reward a programmer with a certain amount of coin once he has successfully created a wallet that people can run on their Mac computers. I am a writer, so I have earned a few bounties for various writing projects for different coins. In one case I earned a bounty for writing up an FAQ page for a website. The bounties I have earned I generally learned about in the course of my normal day to day interaction with a specific project's community (often the announcement thread for the project), but I believe people will also post threads announcing bounties as well. In order to be able to earn a bounty, you usually need some specific skills--programming, writing, etc.--that would help you to accomplish the particular project to be rewarded with a bounty.

Another way to earn money here that is fairly new to me is with signature campaigns. Each Bitcoin Talk user is allowed a signature which will show up at the bottom of each post. People have learned that signatures make great advertising, so the development teams of various projects have been willing to compensate people for placing an advertisement for that project in their signature. My signature at this time is an advertisement for DMD Diamond, and yes, I am participating in a paid DMD Diamond signature campaign.

Earning with your signature is an option that only gets better as you carefully cultivate your Bitcoin Talk reputation, as higher ranked members have better signature options. So please make sure that your posts are courteous, relevant, and either informative or asking good questions. It helps to also use correct grammar and spelling for the language you are writing in. And when you are participating in a signature campaign, be sure that your posts do not degenerate into spam. Do not post just to hawk the product you are advertising with your signature. You can bring it up if it's relevant to the discussion, but otherwise just post good quality posts in threads you are interested in and the people who read your material will also notice your signature.

Hi thank you for sharing relevant and helpful info here for those starting like me. I only got to know about bitcoin this year while surfing online. I tried freebitco and it's really good for newcomers and what I like about it is their lottery they have many prizes that's what I'm also looking forward to. For now I'm really interested on making it in this forum as I've read that many esp from my country are doing well and earning here. its not easy I know but I've been doing a lot of reading and back reading. i already know and understand how to rank up here. What Im interested to learn is about the bounty and airdrops as newbies can join esp on airdrops. Can you share your knowledge about these because even if im reading sometimes I dont understand it well. And what is ANN thread compared to Bounty thread? i hope you can answer in your future posts. Thank you in advance.

I have been not treating my BCT acct so well , but thanks for your vision. I would change it from today!

Thanks for sharing these valuable tips/informations. Bieng a newbie in this forum, i need to learn more informations that me improve and succeed later.

Moon Bitcoin wouldn't seem to let me register without the Coinpot account, so I think I lucked out there. Coinpot actually seems like quite a good service, now that I've taken some time to explore it. I have a few other faucets linked into it, both Bitcoin and some Moon alt coins. However, with Coinpot it is free to transfer the alt coins to Bitcoin and there isn't a minimum level - I tried it this morning. I'm actually building up my Coinpot balance quicker than Free bitcoins.

The tips on record keeping were something that I was meaning to start looking into too. I was only going to bother tracking transactions in my main wallets though, rather than anything from Faucets etc. Cointracking and Bitcoin tax are going to be good places to start my research though.

Tip #6: Start keeping records

This is a tip I sincerely wish that I had put into practice when I first got going with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as I am now in the unenviable position of having to reconstruct the story of my involvement in cryptocurrencies as told by hundreds, possibly thousands, of different transactions.

You can see from the above post that sometimes things in the cryptoworld end up being more complicated than anticipated, and that is definitely the deal with Coinpot and its connected faucets. Don't sweat the faucets. The main point with doing anything with them is to start working with actual Bitcoin. There is nothing like actual experience to get a real education. Have fun with the faucets and get the experience, but my sincere hope is that it won't be long before you move beyond them. And anyway, the real important faucet site is Free Bitcoin, not so much because of its faucet feature, but more because of its interest earning feature. So, play that faucet, and keep track of your interest payments, your faucet payments, and if applicable, your referral payments.

Why is it important to keep records of your crypto-transactions? There are several reasons, depending on the direction you take. If you get into trading, you will want a way to objectively analyze the profitability (or lack thereof) of your trades. If you buy and hold a particular coin, you will want to know the price you paid for it in order to determine a good time to sell it. A really important reason is that some of the transactions you make in the crypto-world are taxable events. In order to properly comply with the tax laws where you live, you will need to know what you did.

I am not in a position to give any kind of tax advice. However, I think it is safe to say that your tax reporting will be much easier if you go into it with thorough records, and there is no better time to begin keeping thorough records than right as you're just getting started.

Fortunately, it is not as difficult as you might think, and there are some great tools which have been developed with cryptocurrencies in mind. I know of two, which I will recommend you check out. Both have a free limited account option. Both have a price tag you will need to pay in order to fully utilize them.

Coin Tracking is a very comprehensive service that has been in business since 2013. You can easily import records from over twenty different trading platforms, you can import wallet transactions, and you can run APIs to automatically track future transactions. The tool is loaded with all kinds of analytics and will even generate completely filled in tax forms for a number of countries including Germany and the US. I played around with it some and contacted support with some questions pertaining to my own particular situation (which I'll admit is a bit off the beaten path, even for cryptos). I got a very detailed reply back within 24 hours telling me that yes, this tool could handle the particulars of my situation.

The tool is complicated and takes time to learn the ins and outs of. The free account allows tracking of up to 200 trades and manual wallet transaction entries. As you gain transactions in Bitcoin and other cryptocoins, you can enter those into Coin Tracking and use the information to figure out how it works. You will need to spend time learning how to do it, and the final results of analyses, tax forms, etc. will only be as good as the accuracy of your data. As I mentioned above, I would have loved to have known about this tool back when I had less than 200 trades to my name.

Bitcoin Tax is another tool that I am exploring. Its free version will allow up to 100 transactions, so again, great to work with in the very beginning at no cost. Once you exceed 100 transactions you have the option to buy a premium version for 2017 which will then allow you to input an unlimited number of transactions from 2017. If you have any transactions from 2016 or earlier years you will need to buy the premium version for those years. In that sense its fee structure is similar to the kind of tax reporting software you might purchase in the United States. You buy the software for the tax year you are filing for and then the following year you buy a new license.

Bitcoin tax in my opinion is simpler and more intuitive than Coin Tracking, and it's much less expensive. You will be spending more time working with your data, though. While Coin Tracking is programmed to accept whatever CSV format its numerous exchanges spit out, Bitcoin Tax really only accepts a particular format, which means that when you get the CSV exports from your exchanges (and they are all different) you will then need to import the data yourself into a program like Excel in order to put it into the right format for Bitcoin Tax, and then you can import it in. That is not an issue for me as I have those skills. There may be some other features that Coin Tracking has that Bitcoin Tax does not have. It also seems to be mainly geared with US tax filing in mind, so if you file taxes in a different country it may not be as helpful to you.

If you are at the point where all you have are a few wallet transactions, that is a great time to begin the discipline of record keeping. You can enter your transactions manually, and that's a good discipline at first as another way to work with your information and really get to know what you're doing. But most coin wallets do allow you to export data into an importable file format, and it's a matter of then working with that data to get it into whichever record keeping tool you're going to settle on. I would recommend trying out both tools and getting to know how they work, so that when you need it to give you some actual results, you don't feel like you're just running everything through a magic black box. Hopefully by the time you max out what you can do with a free account, you will be comfortable enough with one of the services to be willing to pay for it and consistently use it.

When entering records, keep in mind that it's not a transaction until funds hit your wallet. So, for example, if you are accumulating faucet earnings in Coinpot, you don't really need to track those until you get a payment from Coinpot to your own wallet. At that point it's a transaction you should record as some form of income. Since interest and faucet rolls are immediately credited to your Free Bitcoin account, and you have access to those funds, you can record those as they happen. At this point Free Bitcoin doesn't offer historical records (I have submitted a support requesting that for my own account), so the best thing is to record your interest and referral earnings at least once a week and your faucet claims as they occur. With that said, since you don't technically own the Free Bitcoin wallet, one could make the argument that you don't need to record anything until you make withdrawals, at which point you would consider any amount beyond what you have deposited to be income. This is the part where I'm supposed to say you need to consult with your own qualified tax advisor.

Bottom line: start keeping records of what you are doing with your cryptos.

I did check, and Coinpot will send your earnings to the Moon Bitcoin registered address once 25,000 satoshi accumulate, so in that respect you don't have to do anything. But with the high Bitcoin price which corresponds to low faucet earnings, it's going to take a long time to reach that threshold on just one faucet.

Coinpot is one of several faucet aggregation services. I remember one called Faucetbox and another called Coinbox. Not sure if either of those are working now.

Honestly the reason I recommended Moon Bitcoin is because of its longevity. So many faucets come and go, but this one, along with Free Bitcoin, has stood the test of time. They recently contracted with Coinpot for distributions, but before that, their own internal threshold was 25,000 satoshis before they would pay you, so that part hasn't changed.

Edit: I tried to link a full blown Coinpot account to my Free Bitcoin deposit address and I will admit that is going to be at best an annoying process and at worst won't even work at all. What happened was I tried to register a Bitcoin Bonus faucet account, and it required me to register with an email account. Well, that registration automatically registered me with a full blown Coinpot account which wasn't the same account as the one connected to my Moon Bitcoin faucet address. So then I tried to link the two accounts and Coinpot wants me to either sign a message with the address or send a small deposit from it to prove that I own it. Well, since it's a Free Bitcoin address, I don't technically own it. I tried to send a small deposit, but it's probably not going to come from that particular address, which means I just blew many many claims worth of faucet earnings to try to prove ownership of an address I really don't own. I contacted their support to explain the situation but I'm not holding my breath for a reply. Personally I think demanding proof of ownership of addresses for faucet earnings is overkill.

So, what I would recommend you do once you register a Moon Bitcoin account (using your Free Bitcoin address) is to immediately then register the Coinpot account as a full blown account and hopefully the address will link that way with no fuss. Then when you register for other faucets using your email address, just use the same email address as you used to register your Coinpot account. But the important thing is to register your Coinpot account first, then register for the other Coinpot faucets. Someone who does this, please post here how it went.

I unfortunately did it in the wrong order, so for now I have one Coinpot account that is linked to my Moon Bitcoin faucet address (which is my Free Bitcoin address), and another Coinpot account with no addresses that will collect earnings from Bonus Bitcoin and Bit Fun. This simply means that I'll have to accumulate 25,000 satoshis in two accounts rather than just one, so not as efficient. And in order to send the earnings from the email-based Coinpot account I'll have to locate a Bitcoin address that I actually own, which may honestly not be worth it to me at this point. I'm hoping for a favorable response from my support request.

This tip isn't as good as you other ones - you can't simply send your earnings over to Free Bitcoin and I'd can't find five faucets that link to CoinPot...

I too have problem with password 

Tip #5: Register a Moon Bitcoin account

Moon Bitcoin is a faucet in the classic sense. I recommend it here because like Free Bitcoin, it is a longstanding and stable faucet. You register on Moon Bitcoin by simply entering a receiving address. Enter your Free Bitcoin deposit address so that your earnings can get sent over to your interest bearing Bitcoin wallet.

Moon Bitcoin uses an intermediary service called CoinPot. It sends your earnings to CoinPot, which also aggregates earnings from other faucets. You can then request a withdrawal of the coins directly to your registration address. If you visit five other faucets which use CoinPot, then your faucet earnings will pile up faster than they would if you were only visiting one supported faucet.

Once you've registered on Moon Bitcoin, then find and register for a few other fauets, making sure to use your Free Bitcoin deposit address each time you register.

Visiting faucets is fun. You just don't want to overdo it. I recommend regularly visiting no more than ten faucets, and make sure that all proceeds from all the faucets go directly to your Free Bitcoin deposit address.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, especially those living in the US.

THANK you for your tips. THIS IS A VERY BIG HELP FOR US BEGINNERS

You're welcome. I just discovered Free Bitcoin has a Bitcoin mining function as well. I'm trying it out now just for fun, though I know I'm not going to get much trying to mine Bitcoin with a laptop.

Thanks for the heads up about Free Bitcoin, I wasn't going to get involved in Faucets, but that doesn't seem too bad.

Tip #4: Register a FreeBitcoin account

Free Bitcoin started off as a simple Bitcoin faucet. You registered a Bitcoin address (such as your Coinbase address), you solved a puzzle and clicked on the "roll" button and a small amount of BTC was added to your account. You could then return in an hour and roll again.

Free Bitcoin still works like that, and if you roll often (up to once every hour) you might get lucky and win one of the larger prizes. But Free Bitcoin is more than just a faucet. There's a gambling component too, which I recommend you ignore. The really exciting feature on Free Bitcoin is that your account also acts like a very flexible interest bearing savings wallet once your balance reaches 30,000 satoshi, or 0.0003 BTC.

Free Bitcoin's interest rate is currently 4.08 percent. By way of comparison this morning I visited a local bank in the US and was told the interest rate on a business checking account is 0.05%.

Your Free Bitcoin account comes with its own deposit address. This means that if you have a small amount of Bitcoin sitting somewhere else, you can deposit it to your Free Bitcoin wallet and it will earn daily compounding interest. You should consider depositing at least enough to get your balance up to 0.0003 BTC so you can begin earning daily interest.

When you need to withdraw funds, you have two withdraw options. One is an expensive immediate withdrawal. The other is a slow (6 to 24 hr) very low fee withdrawal. With enough planning ahead the slow option will work fine. In my experience the wait time is six hours or less.

One thing to keep in mind when using services like Free Bitcoin and Coinbase is that although you can control the funds that go to the addresses you are assigned on those services, you do not get the private keys for those addresses, so in that sense you really do not have full control of your funds. All this means is that if the service is unreliable you could lose complete access to your funds. I personally consider both Coinbase and Free Bitcoin to be stable and reliable, and for that reason I'm happy to recommend them anyway. However, you should start your experience with Free Bitcoin using a small amount of BTC and then as you get more comfortable with it you can add more BTC to your account in order to get earn more interest.

You do not have to do anything to earn the daily interest. To get the faucet earnings, you do need to log in and roll. I'm going to recommend at least one other Bitcoin faucet on this thread, so this is a good time for some words of wisdom about faucets.

Faucets are advertising sites which dispense small amounts of cryptocurrency as an incentive for traffic. There are lots of Bitcoin faucets out there, and they can be fun to visit. You will not get rich on faucet earnings unless the faucet is a lottery and you happen to score a big prize. With that said, I believe that spending a bit of time visiting faucets is a valuable learning experience especially when you're new. However small the amount, the faucets do give you some Bitcoin and when you have an actual balance to deal with it starts to make more sense. You start to get good at doing math to the eighth decimal place. You might get curious about what the Dollar value of your balance is, so you start checking sites like Coin Marketcap and then do the math to figure it out on an actual balance that you hold.

It's a given that you will go through a stage where you visit faucets. You might visit just one or two several times a day or you might spend hours at a time visiting a lot of them. At some point you'll probably do the math and figure out that you're earning substantially less than minimum wage doing it, but that's OK, because it's part of the education process.

Start visiting the Free Bitcoin faucet as often as you'd like (up to once an hour). When you decide to venture out into other faucets, then use your Free Bitcoin deposit address as the claim address. In this way, all your faucet earnings funnel into a single interest bearing address.

I'm sorry to hear, and that's good to know. You'll have to research to see what your country has in terms of a gateway service between Bitcoin and national currency. Feel free to post here what you find out.

Unfortunately coinbase doesn't allow nonEU/US/CA residents to join.
But I've signed up for updates for my country - service looks reliable

Tip #3: Register a Coinbase account

NOTE: This forum apparently has a policy against users posting affiliate links. I can understand and respect that. However, if you use my Coinbase affiliate link to open your account, you and I would both receive $10 worth of Bitcoin when you make your first BTC buy or sell. For this reason I don't want you to miss out on that opportunity. If you would like to receive $10 worth of Bitcoin from Coinbase by using my affiliate link to register, you can find it here.

Coinbase is your gateway from Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Ethereum to US Dollars. If you are in the US, it's going to be the easiest gateway for you to use. If you live in a different country, you will need to find out which companies provide gateway services between Bitcoin and your national currency, and instead of opening up a Coinbase account, you open an account with your country's best gateway provider.

The reason Coinbase is a good gateway for US citizens and residents is that it has been around for a number of years and has proven itself to be reliable. It is also very proactive about conducting business in a manner that complies with applicable US laws.

When you register an account with Coinbase, you will be able to link it with your regular bank account as well as one or more credit cards. You can use either your bank account or your credit cards to buy Bitcoin. When you sell Bitcoin on Coinbase, the proceeds will be deposited in your linked bank account several days to a week after you have made the sale. Depending on your bank, the process of linking your checking or savings account to Coinbase can be instant or can take a few days.

Because Coinbase is proactive about complying with applicable US laws, you will need to go through a verification process in order to buy or sell significant amounts of Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin. This process can also take several days.

When you register your Coinbase account, do plan on some time to work through the account verification steps and the process for linking your regular bank account. You will want to have all that set up before you ever attempt to buy or sell any Bitcoin, Litecoin or Ethereum.

Once you are registered in Coinbase, you can obtain addresses for each of the coins that Coinbase supports in the accounts page. You need addresses in order to do anything with those coins. I will be focusing on Bitcoin in the next few tips, so please make sure you have a Bitcoin address so that you can put them into practice. Copy your Bitcoin address from Coinbase and record it in a convenient and accessible location.

Don't forget to use a unique password for your Coinbase account and enter it along with your other log in information in your LastPass or other password manager.