Cryptocurrency Primer

“Every single industry will be disrupted by everything going digital, becoming mobile, becoming virtual, becoming personal — music, books, movies, groceries, you name it, it’s happening. And it’s going to happen; it is happening to the banking industry. They don’t want to deal with it because it’s competition. Regulators don’t want to deal with it because they don’t understand it, but it is happening and it will continue to happen…”

— Former Hewlett Packard CEO and GOP Presidential Candidate Carly Fiorina

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“What people are realizing about Blockchain is that you can take out about 90 percent of the back office costs of all kinds of mechanisms and banks and stock markets and such… You cannot only take out the cost, but you can also create a version of Wall Street where no one can cheat.”

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne

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“The most valuable and best known of the roughly 1,300 cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin topped $8,000 Monday, extending its year-to-date gain to more than 750%. By comparison, this year’s top-performing U.S. stock index, the Nasdaq composite, home to high-octane tech stocks like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet, is up just 26%…”

Source

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“Mr. Falkvinge states ‘bitcoin right now is a huge wealth transfer to those who understand its implications early on. The last wealth transfer of this magnitude was around 1850, and it was about those who’d found oil.’ Mr. Falkvinge describes said ‘wealth transfer’ as having broad implications for capitalism and technological innovation. He states ‘those who used to be poor, nerdy, geeky… are suddenly the new millionaires. And that… is going to have a profound effect on what the future of our society looks like. Because for the last 200 years or so, it were the people who found oil that decided where money went, what research was made. And when the geeks and nerds are sitting on that money and deciding what research gets made — it’s not going to be a better diesel engine. It’s going to be a better solar panel.’ “

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“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

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In this talk, Andreas Antonopoulos recounts the history of Bitcoin and what it represents, building upon all the stories we’ve been told over the centuries about what “money” is, how we perceive its value, and why the old answers have changed as we adjust to this new world of digital peer-to-peer currencies. He also discusses global threats to economic stability and trust in the financial system, including demonetisation and wealth destruction through inflation.

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Five Transformations For A Prosperous World

1. Protecting rights through immutable records

2. Creating a true sharing economy

3. Ending the remittance rip-off

4. Enabling citizens to own and monetize their data (and protect privacy)

5. Ensuring compensation for the creators of value

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What Is Cryptocurrency & How Does It Work?

• Bitcoin Basics (bitcoin.com)
Bitcoin FAQ (bitcoin.org)
What Is Bitcoin? (CNN)
• Bitcoin: Its Mysterious Origins, And The Many Alleged Identities Of Its Creator (Business Insider)
• How To Talk To Your Parents About Bitcoin (Mashable)

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Why Purchase & Support Cryptocurrency?

1. Investing in cryptocurrency gives you control of your money. Instead of leaving your money in the hands of banks to invest in activities, people, organizations, and governments that you may not support, you decide how your money is used, by whom, and when.

2. Investing in cryptocurrency helps create a new system that costs less, moves money (and other resources) more quickly, and allows peer-to-peer transactions without third-party institutions monitoring, approving, and charging for all transactions.

3. For many people, investing in cryptocurrency is also a concrete way to say that they don’t support today’s greedy, privileged, excessively corrupt central banking system, nor do they appreciate the fact that corrupt banking officials have been able to engage in all kinds of destructive behaviors without consequence.

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How To Make Money Investing In Cryptocurrency

1. Buy reputable currencies and save them.

2. Buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Since 90 to 95 percent of people who engage in trading loose money, this is not an advisable way to generate income for most people. If you decide to trade, Binance, KucoinGDAX and Coinigy are recommended trading platforms.

3. Invest in cryptocurrency mining. Genesis Mining is recommended. Mining is a long-term investment that usually requires large investments to generate significant returns. Other Bitcoin mining companies are listed here.

4. Generate income by investing Bitcoins in making solar energy available to people in South Africa, The Sun Exchange (Sunex) allows investors to purchase solar cells, before distributing returns on power generation in the form of Bitcoin or South African Rand.

Since cryptocurrency is a radically new system, keep in mind that all cryptocurrency investments are “high risk investments.” Do your homework before investing. Be prepared to loose time and money.

Another tried and true way to generate money is through long-term investing in traditional stocks. To learn more, go here.

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Getting Started With Cryptocurrency

1. Download a cryptocurrency wallet (Exodus is recommended).

2. Purchase cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and/or Ethereum are recommended). Use The Cash App or Coinbase to purchase your currency.

3. Due to hacking and other potential issues, it’s best to move your currency from the exchange where you purchase it to your wallet. Be extremely careful about keeping track of your passwords. If you lose your passwords, you will lose access to your money. Forever. There is no one who can access your wallet if you lose your passwords. To be doubly safe, you may want to use a cold storage system to store your money offline completely. To understand more about the hacking dangers associated with cryptocurrencies, along with what you can do to protect your digital assets, read this fabulously informative article. See also “Fake ICOs, Common Crypto Scams and How to Avoid Them” and “How Do I Protect Myself And My Money In Trading Cryptocurrencies.”

4. As much as possible, don’t spend the currency you have purchased. Until it grows and matures, view it as an investment. Assuming you have invested in a solid currency, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, your currencies will probably grow over time, possibly spectacularly. It is normal for markets to rise and fall; for your money to gain value, lose it, and gain it again. An effective strategy for most people is to invest long term and not be overly concerned about market highs and lows. Read these two fantastic articles to learn about the life-changing power of long-term investing: What Foolish Investing Is All About (pdf) and I Built an Artificial-Intelligence System For Investing — And It Showed How Smart Warren Buffett Is (pdf).

5. If you need to turn your cryptocurrencies into dollars, use Coinbase to convert your cryptocurrencies back to U.S. dollars and then deposit them in your bank account. You can also use the Shift Visa Card to withdraw cash and to spend your Coinbase Bitcoins anywhere Visa cards are accepted.

6. Finally, if you run into snags here and there, be patient. The cryptocurrency revolution is just beginning to pick up steam and be accepted by existing financial institutions as a valid (and exciting) form of financial exchange. It’s going to take time for it to be integrated into current systems and for new, easier and more user-friendly systems to develop.

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Best Bitcoin Wallets

Exodus (for desktops)

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Other Bitcoin Wallets

Best Bitcoin Exchanges

Coinbase
• Coinbase Blog
Coinbase Support Phone Number: (888) 908–7930
Binance
Kucoin
Other Exchanges
Still More Exchanges

Bitcoin Visa Cards

The Shift Card
BitPay
WageCan
Xapo
More Bitcoin Debit Cards

Pay Bills With Cryptocurrency

Welto

Bitcoin / Cryptocurrency News

Cointelegraph
The Ledger
Bitcoin.com

Best Bitcoin Charts

Coinbase Dashboard
Bitcoin.com Chart
CAMCrypto30
• CryptoCurrency Market Capitalizations

Best Bitcoin Calculators

• CryptoCurrency Converter Calculator
Bitcoin Calculator
Currency Converter

Best Bitcoin Introductions

The Rise & Fall of Bitcoin (Wired)
• Bitcoin Basics (bitcoin.com)
Bitcoin FAQ (bitcoin.org)
What Is Bitcoin? (CNN)
• Banking on Bitcoin (movie) – Watch it on NetflixWatch it on Amazon
• What is Blockchain Technology? A Step-by-Step Guide For Beginners (blockgeeks)
• What Affects the Bitcoin Price?

Best Bitcoin Tutorials

Bitcoin Resources (bitcoin.org)
How To Choose The Best Bitcoin Wallet? (bitcoin.com)
• How to Setup Bitcoin Cold Storage (bitcoin.com)
Essential Bitcoin Guides (bitcoin.com)
• How to Buy Bitcoins – Your Guide to Digital Profits

Bitcoin Mining

Genesis Mining
Hive Blockchain Technologies
Bitcoin.com Pool Cloud
Bitcoin Mining

Other Bitcoin Links

• The Best Way To Track Your Crypto-Portfolio
Bitcoin IRA
• Bitcoin Rich List
Chainalysis (Anti-Money Laundering software for Bitcoin)
• Six Unique Cryptocurrency Visualization Websites
Bitcoin Forum

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• The Quiet Master of Cryptocurrency — Nick Szabo

Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) is a polymath. The breadth and depth of his interests and knowledge are truly astounding. He’s a computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer best known for his pioneering research in digital contracts and cryptocurrency. The phrase and concept of “smart contracts” were developed by Nick with the goal of bringing what he calls the “highly evolved” practices of contract law and practice for the design of electronic commerce protocols between strangers on the Internet. Nick also designed Bit Gold, which many consider the precursor to Bitcoin. This wide-ranging conversation is co-hosted by Naval Ravikant, a mutual friend and one of the most successful investors in Silicon Valley, who also happens to be one of Nick’s biggest admirers.

We cover a lot, including:

– What is Bitcoin, what are cryptocurrencies, and what problem do they solve?

– What is “social scalability?”

– What is Ethereum and what makes it unique? Strengths and weaknesses?

– How will smart contracts actually get adopted or go mainstream?

– What are ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings)?

– Blockchain governance — is there any existential risk?

– “Wet” versus “dry” code

– Pascal’s scams

– Quantum thought

– What fields will you be working on in the future?

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Three Disruptive, Paradigm-Shifting Technologies

• Solar Energy
• Biotech (Crispr technology, in particular)
• Blockchain Technology

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Banking on Bitcoin

Watch it on NetflixWatch it on Amazon

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Bitcoin: The End Of Money As We Know It

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The Bitcoin Phenomenon 

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Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain

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