If you are just getting started with Crypto-currencies and you haven't read my "Getting Started" blog post, please do so now.  This post will assume you have completed the steps in the first Getting Started guide. In this post we are going to move some BTC from Coinbase to Poloniex and then buy some Golem (GNT) coin with our BTC. First let's move some BTC to Poloniex.  I'll assume you have already funded your Coinbase account with some BTC.  To move the coin to Poloniex you'll need your Poloniex BTC Address.  Let's get that first because you'll need that for Coinbase in a minute. Click on the "Balances" link on the home page, then select "Deposit/Withdrawal" from the drop-down menu. Then, when you are on your Deposit/Withdrawal page, find the line for Bitcoin (BTC) and click on the "Deposit" link.  Because you want to deposit BTC from Coinbase we are clicking on Deposit. That will make a window pop open that sh...

Ethereum, or ETH is the #2 coin, right behind Bitcoin.  It has always been my 2nd favorite coin and it has huge potential.  Those in the know won't be surprised if at some point it comes out the winner over BTC. ETH has a little brother called ETC.  ETC stands for Ethereum Classic.  Last summer ETH went through what is called a "hard fork".  That is when the codes branch off the code in a new direction. They make small tweaks all the time and send out a new build.  But when they make a large change, that requires a fork in the code.  In this case when the forked version came out, a lot of miners were upset with the changes and they refused to run the new version of the code.  So we ended up with 2 versions of Ethereum. Because the major exchanges had all already supported the new version of Ethereum and they stuck with the existing ticker of ETH, Now that there was this old version hanging on, they needed a ticker symbol in order to list it ...

Well, the past 48 hours has been anything but calm in the Crypto Currency world.  BTC shot up to $2700 and then promptly crashed to as low as $1600 on Poloniex.  Almost all Alt coins, including 100% of the coins I track, followed suit. We have been prediction a "correction" for quite some time.  The past 6-8 weeks in Alt coins and BTC for that matter have been crazy.  Almost every day, most coins were up double digit figures.  It was rare to see a down day at all. In my opinion it isn't healthy for the market to see a run-up like that without a retracement.  If you are in BTC for the long run, you want to see it behave like a mature asset, not like a flash-in-the-pan bubble.  Its recent climb from the $800 area to $2700 had the look and feel of a mania rather than investing. That being said, a lot of it could be attributed to new money entering the market.  When you look at it in terms of the volumes that trade on well known markets like the N...

I have mentioned the Bitcoin (BTC) ETF a lot lately in regards to the price of BTC.  Why is it such a big deal?  The answer is because it would bring in so much new money into BTC that the price would likely sky-rocket.  But it wouldn't sky-rocket in a bubble fashion but rather in a very legit supply and demand fashion. First of all, what is an ETF?  "ETF" stands for "Exchange Traded Fund".  ETFs are used to take some target asset, like a stock, or a stock index, or a collection of stocks in a specific industry, and create a fund that mirrors the price of those assets.  Instead of buying the actual assets, you buy and sell the ETF. For example, to trade the S&P 500, you could either buy each of the 500 stocks that make up the S&P 500 (not feasible for most people) or you could buy and sell the "SPY" ETF.  The SPY ETF is set up so the price mirrors that of the S&P 500.  This allows institutional investors an easy way to participat...

This from a very well written article on what will happen if Bitcoin falls substantially,  The link to the full article is at the bottom: "Japan has already legalized it. A major infrastructure change is coming very soon in the world’s third largest economy. We know that Bitflyer has signed a contract that ensures bitcoin is accepted at hundreds of thousands of retail stores across the island nation and that about 20 new bitcoin exchanges will be coming online shortly. India is currently reviewing the option to legalize and regulate digital currency. After the harsh and rapid demonetization, they’re in sore need of an alternative to paper money. They have a panel working on it now and hopefully, we’ll get some good news in the coming weeks. On or before Monday, May 15th, the SEC will deliver a decision to either approve or deny the world’s first bitcoin ETF, which if approved will open the markets to Billions of Dollars in institutional investments. As I’m writing, the total mar...

More growth ahead for Bitcoin.  The recent Japanese ruling making Bitcoin legal tender in Japan has already had a signficant impact on price.  Now Australia is set to do the same thing, making BTC legal tender as of July 1st of this year: See more here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-to-become-just-like-money-in-australia-july-1

Perhaps the biggest problem with Bitcoin (BTC) is the ongoing argument about how to scale it.  The developers have been arguing about various approaches to scaling for a couple years now.  It used to be that BTC transactions were very cheap and would clear in a manner of minutes. Now, although still cheap in comparison with traditional fiat currency fees, the BTC transaction fees have climbed while the transaction speed has decreased.  It is now common for it to take 20 minutes to an hour (sometimes hours) for a BTC transaction to be confirmed. One of the main contenders for a solution to this is called Segregated Witness, or SegWit.  SegWit has been in the BTC code for a while now but BTC has been reluctant to roll it out to full production.  Now another large coin called LTC has rolled out SegWit and it has performed as designed.  With that happening it is much easier for developers to get on board with SegWit for BTC. Should that happen, then likel...

Almost all top tier crypto currencies have been doing really well this year.  BTC is up over 50% and ETH is up over 900%.   Obviously, with these kinds of gains, there should be some sort of retracement in the near future, but both coins have a long way to go in the long run. In fact, if you bought $100 worth of BTC in 2011 and just held on to it, it would be worth almost half a million dollars now.  Here's an article exploring the ups and downs in that time period: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/123015/if-you-had-purchased-100-bitcoins-2011.asp ETH on the other hand has been pretty flat for a while and only recently has broken out.  I believe ETH actually has a better return rate than BTC for the near future.  Here's an article on ETH's performance in 2017: http://www.coindesk.com/5-fast-facts-ether-ethereum-blockchain-token-up-900-percent/ So, if you had $1000 to invest right now, which should you buy?  First of all I think we...

Alt Coins There are hundreds of crypto-coins in addition to Bitcoin (BTC).  There are several that I considered top tier players.  Some of those are solid top tier Alt coins, and others drift in an out of the top tier as their price and volume changes over time. I look at it as you have BTC, which is the "main" coin.  Then you also have Ethereum (ETH) which can be argued to also be on par with BTC, or it can just be the most solid top tier coin.  I would say that right now the other top tier Alt coins, in no particular order are:  Dash (DASH), LiteCoin (LTC), Golem (GNT), Zcash (ZEC), Monero (XMR), Decred (DCR), Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE) and maybe Next (NXT), Augur (REP), MaidSafeCoin (Maid), and Stellar (STR). As a side note, ETH went through a split (which is called a Hard Fork) in 2016.  That left us with 2 versions of Ethereum, ETH and ETC.  ETH is the ticker symbol for Ethereum and ETC is the ticker symbol for Ethereum Classic.  Whe...