Get Started

Required: You will need a Coinbase & Binance account

Please note, if you are a US citizen you’ll need a Bittrex account instead of Binance.
(Binance has a US-only section but it is very limited)

Getting Started and Purchasing Your First Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin

Starting with Coinbase – Before you get started and buy anything, you first need to verify your identity.
When everything’s been verified, you’ll land on your dashboard:

Here, you can view the charts on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and the rest of the currencies available on Coinbase, as well as a quick history on cryptocurrencies bought, sold, sent, and received.
But before you can buy anything, you’ll need to link your bank account or credit card.

Linking A Bank Account or Debit/Credit Card

Click the “Settings” button.
Then, click Linked Accounts, and then click “Link a New Account”.

A popup like this will appear:

You can use your credit/debit card, or you can also link your bank account. Using your credit or debit card to purchase is quick, but they add an extra fee.
Your bank account usually takes about a week, but there’s fewer fees.

In order for Coinbase to verify that you’re actually using an authorized account, they’ll do two small verification transactions (under $1 each). This may be instant if you used your card, or it may take a couple days for your bank account, but if you have online banking, they will generally show up under pending transactions.

Note: Your bank or credit card may deny your transaction from Coinbase initially and place a freeze on your account. It’s a toss-up.
Before you proceed to buy anything, I’d recommend calling them up and letting them know that you’ll be making a purchase on Coinbase with that bank account or card.
Save yourself that headache of a cancelled transaction.

Buying Cryptocurrency on Coinbase

• To buy, click the Buy/Sell button at the top of your menu.
• Second, select which cryptocurrency you want to buy.
• Third, select your payment method.
• Fourth, you can type in the amount in USD you’d like to purchase, or you can type in the amount of the cryptocurrency you’d want to purchase.

Note: You can buy in fractions, and DO NOT need to purchase a whole Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin.
As you see in my example enough, you can buy 1.3216 of a Litecoin if you’d like. You can buy 0.005 of a Bitcoin as well.

Finally, you click that blue button at the bottom.
A popup will ask you if you’re sure. If you’ve got 2 factor authentication on, you will need to verify before you can purchase it.

It’s as simple as that!

Exchanges

The exchanges allow you to get into different alternative cryptocurrencies that are not listed on Coinbase.

Coinbase Pro

Coinbase Pro and Coinbase are from the same people. So if you have a Coinbase account (you have one right? If not, click here to get your Coinbase account setup), then you’ll be able to use Coinbase Pro to trade, send, and receive the coins that Coinbase supports with fewer fees.

Binance

Binance is one of the largest exchanges out there with one of the greatest selections of markets.
It’s one of the more simple exchanges to use, in addition to offering the lowest transaction fees on the market (exceptions may apply)
When trading on the Binance Exchange, each trade will incur in a standard fee of 0.1% (trading fees are determined by your monthly trading volume and BNB holdings).  You can either pay the trading fees using the assets you are trading or you can pay for them with BNB. If you choose to pay in BNB, you will get a special discount on your trading fees.

Sending And Receiving Your Cryptocurrency

Every wallet and exchange has a different setup, so it would be extremely time consuming for me to get into all of them.
If you need step by steps on each wallet or exchange, they should have an FAQ section.
I’ll show how to send and receive in both Coinbase and Binance.

Sending and Receiving in Coinbase

Click the “Accounts” button in your Coinbase Dashboard.

To send, click send and make sure you have the correct address, then input the amount you want to send in USD or the amount you want to send in the respective cryptocurrency in the next box over. To get the address someone can send you some cryptocurrency at, click the receive button. You can get the address, as well as a QR code, that you can receive cryptocurrency at. Make sure you’re only sending Bitcoin to a Bitcoin address, Ethereum to an Ethereum address, etc. If you make a misstep on that, your money could be gone forever.

Depositing and Withdrawing in Binance

As I mentioned, every wallet and exchange is different, so I wanted to show another exchange.
When logged into Binance, look to the upper right and you’ll see the “Wallet” button.

Scroll over it to get to the “Fiat and Spot – Deposits & Withdrawals” link, and click that.

You’ll find their listed cryptocurrencies here, and once you found the cryptocurrency you want to send or receive, click the respective button based on what you’re looking to do.

If you want to withdraw from this account and put it into another account, put the other wallet’s public address in the address key, and the amount of the respective cryptocurrency you want to send over.
Then click submit.

To receive, click the “Deposit” button. Copy and paste that address wherever you’re looking to transfer from.
(say for example you want to send some Bitcoin from Coinbase to Binance to buy some altcoins.)

Note: Copy and paste the address you’re sending to. Double check after you’ve pasted it to make sure it’s correct.
Triple check, slowly. If one thing’s wrong, your money could be gone forever.

Another note: Sometimes, sending and receiving can take a while. In some cases, Bitcoin has been known to take a day to transfer. Ethereum tends to be quicker, but with its rise of popularity, it’s seen some network congestion. Don’t freak out if it takes a while. You’ll get notifications from both Coinbase and some exchanges like Binance when it’s been received and sent successfully.

Congratulations, you now have the cryptocurrency of your choice on an exchange.

You can now use this cryptocurrency to exchange for the cryptocurrency of your choosing using one of the following options.
The easiest, and less intimidating option to use it the ‘convert’ tool.
From here you can convert the currency you own, into the currency you want to own. Some restrictions apply, not all coins are paired with everything.

Selling Your Cryptocurrency in Coinbase

With your bank account or Paypal account linked, you can sell as much cryptocurrency as your weekly withdrawal limit allows.

In “Buy/Sell”, click the “Sell Tab”. Choose which wallet you want to sell from, and where you want to deposit to.
The fourth step is inputting either the amount in USD that you want to sell, or the amount of cryptocurrency you want to sell.
Finally, click that blue button, and sell!

Security

2 Factor Authentication

2 factor authentication, in a nutshell, provides an extra layer of security on your accounts by means of you manually verifying that you’re actually the one logging in.

There are two ways you can apply 2 factor authentication on your accounts (of course, depending on what option the site allows):

1. Via SMS. You’ll receive text messages to your phone number when you try logging in or making a transaction.
2. Via an authenticator application. Some exchanges and applications allow Authy, but the vast majority use Google Authenticator. They are both apps that you can download on your phone. Keep the information handy that they give you upfront to being able to disable 2 factor authentication, because you’re out of luck if you lose or break your phone. Your old phone’s authentication will not work on your new phone unless you set up 2 factor authentication again.

2 factor authentication is a must, and an authenticator app like Google Authenticator is the most secure.

CoinMarketCap

CoinMarketCap will be your cryptocurrency go-to for just about everything.
Here, you can see the market capitalization, the current price, the circulating supply, total supply, and historical charts with prices relative to USD, BTC (Bitcoin), and ETH (Ethereum).