welcome to this complete beginners crash course on cryptocurrency in this video I will cover all the basics you need to know about crypto and how to start investing and using it we will cover what crypto is how it works the difference between Bitcoin ethereum salana and different altcoins where can you buy crypto how to store your crypto and how to find the best strategy for you to start investing this course is targeted at complete beginners so if this is your first time getting into crypto you're in the right Place welcome back to the virtual bacon Channel my name is Dennis I'm a crypto Android investor for the past 6 years and I have invested in over 100 crypto startups on this channel I share viws on market trends and investing strategy to build wealth in crypto let's get started with some basics of cryptocurrency first what is cryptocurrency cryptocurrency leverage cryptography and a distributed Network to transfer money digitally without a central entity all the transactions happen on something called a blockchain which is a decentralized public Ledger that is distributed across many computers across the globe when transactions happen using a cryptocurrency all the computers on the network have to come together and reach consensus this is when everyone agrees on which transactions are correct and nobody is spending money that they do not have to achieve this consensus different blockchains use different mechanisms such as proof of work mining in the case of Bitcoin or proof of stake staking in ethereum and salana what can you use crypto for today there are three main use cases number one cryptos were initially started as a replacement for fiat currency to be used in day-to-day transactions this was the original outline in the Bitcoin white paper secondly crypto is growing much bigger as an alternative investment asset many people consider Bitcoin today as a digital gold as it exists digitally but has similar Supply mechanics and uh store value mechanics as traditional gold and third there are emerging use cases of crypto which come from the power of blockchains like ethereum and Solana unlike the Bitcoin blockchain which can only handle transfers of money across the network the ethereum and salana and similar blockchains can handle arbitrary execution of software code on the blockchain this is why ethereum and salana are often considered World computers any developer can create a piece of application put it on the blockchain and anyone else across the globe can use that same application they can even have the application deal with cryptocurrency directly this has enabled many use cases emerging like gaming Ai and decentralized finance what are the pros and cons of cryptocurrency versus traditional Investments the main benefits of crypto are number one you have full self-control of your funds number two they are globally accepted and cannot be censored number three crypto is a relatively new asset class so it has higher investment potential and number four cryptos have a transparent Supply schedule where all the coins can be viewable and which wallets control how many coins can easily be identified this also means new coins coming into the supply or any inflation can be clearly found on the other hand these are the same pitfalls of traditional Investments they have to rely on a central Authority like a bank or institution to issue the shares and thus traditional Investments can be censored or controlled whether you're dealing with Fiat currencies uh shares of stocks Etc traditional Investments also have relatively lower in M potential although they are also lower risk depending on what you're looking at and lastly traditional Investments do not have a clear Supply and inflation schedule for example a central bank can print new money and put it into the supply and we are really not sure where that new money is going to this leads to big problems like inflation now the downsides of cryptocurrency are also very clear number one they are relatively complex to use you have to not only deal with exchanges and Brokers but also your own wallets number two they have higher volatility than traditional Investments because they are a new asset class and number three transactions using crypto are irreversible so you really have to know what you are doing and make sure you have full control of your funds because any mistakes you make is potentially forever and permanent on the flip side these are the benefits of traditional investments in traditional Finance you do have a safety net if your account is lost typically it can be reversed and Claw back traditional Investments also have lower volatility relatively speaking and traditional Investments are much easier to access and use you just need to sign up for an account with a broker and they can handle everything for you next you might ask why should we pay attention to crypto now the growing acceptance of crypto suggest that the future of money is one where they coexist with the traditional Financial system we're seeing significant institutional adoption with the introduction of Bitcoin and ethereum ETFs which have made it easier for institutions to invest in cryptocurrency thereby enhancing their trustworthiness this also means they have cemented the El as a new asset class instead of something that is usually shunned away cryptocurrencies are also becoming a decorrelated asset class when you look at the price of Bitcoin it is somewhat correlated with the stock market and equities but also sometimes correlated with gold and commodities this means you can have very Diversified Risk by adding crypto in any Investment Portfolio crypto also offers a flexible and independent way to store and move wealth unlike real gold which you have to carry gold bars everywhere it's not very portable crypto natively lives digitally which means you can bring anywhere across the globe and as long as you have internet you can access your funds it's also very difficult to limit the transportation of Bitcoin all you need is your seed phras and the wallet software and you're good to go the altcoin market also has outside investment potential for experienced crypto investors they can really get deep down the rabbit hole and have exponential returns and lastly Bitcoin is quickly becoming a reserve holding across many countries and large institutions and companies across the world the US China UK Germany Ukraine Etc many countries are already holding Bitcoin one way or another and we have already seen a few countries adopt Bitcoin as a reserve currency like Al Salvador even the US has started to propose this as a potential to follow the latest adoption news across the world of Bitcoin and crypto make sure to subscribe to the channel because I live stream weekly with the latest updates okay moving on we have to talk about a very important subject that is the decentralization this is the heart of cryptocurrency what is decentralization decentralization in cryptocurrency means spreading control from a central point such as a government or bank or a company to a network run by peers this shift leads to a more secure and transparent system and is fundamental to the way cryptocurrencies operate like we mentioned in the beginning this network of peers usually each half their computers operate on the network as a node and they come together to validate transactions on the blockchain securing the Integrity of the exchange value and uh computation the benefits of decentralization include number one they have transparency and accessibility decentralized systems are open for anyone to join and is very inclusive as long as you have internet access number two they are resistant to control and censorship as the networks grow larger across the globe they become harder to control by any single entity even if a country wants to ban Bitcoin they can only ban Bitcoin with within their borders but other countries can still operate it and it will still live on number three benefit of decentralization it makes any asset flexible and portable unlike gold crypto is stored independently and can be transported and used easily across the globe and number four on platforms like ethereum and salana because you can make arbitrary software applications for anyone else to try out and they can directly deal with cryptocurrency or in this case the transfer of value this allows decentralized Finance to flourish and Innovations on ethereum and salana can offer some lucrative investment potential however there are also large drawbacks of a decentralized system number one they can have high operational costs such as the high gas fees that you incur on bitcoin and ethereum any Bitcoin transfer can cost at least $10 and any ethereum transaction a few dollars at a time the more complex transaction you want to do the higher the cost this is because all the computers on the decentralized network have to come together and check to make sure this transaction is correct next decentralized systems can be slow improving the decision-making process can really slow down the process if you want to make any upgrades to the Bitcoin protocol it can take sometimes a couple years before they are completed similar thing happens on ethereum because these networks are so distributed across the world it's very hard for everyone to agree and update all their software at the same time and number three decentralized systems are prone to disruptions transactions May face disputes and if there is a even even split between the networks they could cause some disruptions okay that's all the background about blockchains and decentralization if you have any questions comment down below and I'll try my best to give more clarification next let's get into the different types of cryptocurrencies and some basic terminology what's the difference between Bitcoin versus altcoins what about the difference between ethereum and salana the two main altcoins people hear of what about other altcoins how do they classify themselves and should you invest in any of them Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency created in 2009 it started as a decentralized alternative to traditional currencies Bitcoin has a limited supply of 21 million coins and all the inflation schedule and all the supply can be transparently tracked on the blockchain although it started first as a replacement currency nowadays Bitcoin is mostly used as a store of value and a reserve rather than a form of payment when comparing Bitcoin versus other altcoins the biggest difference is that Bitcoin really doesn't do much more on other than transferring money and storing money on the other hand altcoins are all other cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin like ethereum salana xrp cardano Etc almost all other altcoins out there are technically more powerful than Bitcoin because most of them have other different functionalities such as smart contracts or arbitrary software code that you can run on the blockchain or they may be cheaper and faster to use in Bitcoin although other altcoins offer different features and Technologies compared to bitcoin they do lack one thing that only Bitcoin has which is the store of value capabilities Bitcoin has the longest running history and the clearest Supply schedule that has lasted well over the last 13 years and it is because Bitcoin is so simple and nobody is able to change the code very easily or add arbitrary functionality on top of it it is the reason why Bitcoin is often seen as the digital gold all people use Bitcoin 4 is really to store their money just like how people store their money with gold gold really isn't used much elsewhere when you introduce new functionality like other altcoins this introduces other attack vectors or different mechanics that the Bitcoin Community might not be happy with with the store of value you wouldn't want your gold bars to be doing day-to-day transactions or some fancy features that only increases the risk you just wanted to sit there and store value and you want to track the supply transparently and that is what Bitcoin does best better than every single altcoin if you want to know how high I think Bitcoin can go by 2025 watch my Bitcoin price prediction video linked down below next let's talk about the two most well-known altcoins out there ethereum versus salana ethereum is the pioneering smart contract platform born in 2015 with a large and established ecosystem of developers it is the first cryptocurrency to enable Advanced transactions like icos tokens decentralized exchange and nfts ethereum is also the second most adopted crypto by institutions after Bitcoin it is the only other crypto with a ETF live trading in the US trafy markets even though ethereum's technology is not the best in the ecosystem right now it is still considered a major Innovation Hub in the cryptocurrency space because all the early developers and researchers started on ethereum way back in 2015 and came up with this idea together of smart contracts and explore the use cases together this is why the ethereum community still have the most Innovations they are the first to come up with icos Defi and nfts and they still push the boundaries forward today salana on the other hand is a relatively newcomer to the market it is a high performance blockchain focused on scalability and low transaction costs some of the biggest problems that plagues etherum today it is much faster and cheaper than ethereum but it still caters to the same use cases like Defi nfts and onchain trading a transaction on ethereum can cost up to $10 right now whereas a transaction on salana can cost less than 1 cent it's basically neglegible ethereum transactions can take 10 to 15 seconds to finalize whereas a Solano transaction happens instantly within 1 second this makes the user experience on salana much more smooth and it is why it is heavily used by retail investors to trade small amount of tokens and do day-to-day transactions when it comes to institutional adoption we haven't seen that just yet at the time of recording although there are some pushes uh going for Solana to have a ETF listing in the US as well even though the Solana blockchain has much cheaper and faster technology than that of ethereums its price history and the adoption of the Solana asset it's still a bit weaker than that of ethereum but this can really change in the upcoming cycle if Solana gets a similar ETF listing and if it can be classified as a commodity instead of a security just like ether both ethereum and salana make up a large portion in my crypto portfolio I don't think you need to pick can choose one or the other just have both this is a much more Surefire way to gain exposure to both communities if you want to see deep Dives on these two leading altcoins check out my price prediction videos for both which are linked in the description lastly what about other altcoins are they worth investing in and what are they useful for altcoins vary widely in terms of their use case one of the most important things to understand in Al coins is how they fit into individual categories when investing in Al coins you typically want to pick categories and pick the winners of each category instead of comparing altcoins across different sectors and try to find the best ones here are some of the most popular alquin sectors and the example projects in there to get you started first we have alternative blockchains these are blockchains that are seen as competitors to ethereum the obvious one is salana we have already covered other examples are Avalanche cardano xrp Etc these are designed to be a faster and cheaper alternative to ethereum and handle much more transactions then we have Layer Two Solutions these are solutions that sit on top of ethereum aiming to improve the scalability of ethereum without going to a separate blockchain altogether the industry leaders here are arbitrum optimism and ZK sync next we have coins in the defi category or decentralized Finance these are integral to the decentralized finance ecosystem when you want to make an onchain swap you must have heard of Unis swap when you want to lend and borrow money you use a or maker Dow and all of these cannot live without chain link which is a price Oracle that can take real life price feeds and put them onto the blockchain a sub sector of defi is rwa or real world assets these platforms bring real world assets onto the blockchain like uh stocks Commodities real estate and put them on the blockchains as tokens for trading and other decentralized Finance functionality like lending the leading projects in this category are Ono Finance mantra D and Lumia the next category is gaming asset coins these are platforms used to create assets and transact within games using blockchains think of gaming assets like skins in-game items or in-game currency these are some of the clearest use cases of a blockchain because once you make these assets using a blockchain as tokens you can bring them in an interoperable system instead of relying on a central company operating the games this makes the assets live on forever even even outside of the games and can have Perpetual value that can be exchanged for real money the market leaders in this sector are immutable X superverse and Ronin now we can't talk about altcoins without talking about meme coins of course everyone already knows mem coins are often only driven by Community Support rather than utility we'll just leave it as that there's not much more to talk about them the most well-known meme coins today are Dogecoin paye whiff and MOG these are listed in some of the most reputable exchanges which means they are definitely not scams but they are still much higher risk than most other altcoins lastly we have a fast growing sector of AI and Computing networks these decentralized networks aim to harness computing power and data to form marketplaces and in order to power AI model training and applications the most notable projects in this category are bit tensor fetch render aash and aor the last sector of altcoins is one that you don't really invest in but it is crucial to understand and that is stable coins stable coins are designed to minimize price volatility by being pegged to stable assets like the US dollar or Euro when you are trading on a crypto exchange or especially in decentralized Finance on a blockchain you don't deal with the dollar directly because there is no Bank behind those assets instead you have to deal with a stable coin like usdc usdt or die these three Market leaders have existed for five plus years and their prices are usually very stable and packed to one us this is a way for users to quickly get in and out of their crypto positions without having to always deposit money into their bank and withdraw money outside of the bank in order to put them back into crypto instead you can quickly exchange your crypto into a stable coin and their values will be pegged to the US dollar and when you are ready to go back into the market you can quickly exchange them back by selling a a stable coin for the crypto you want stable coins are obviously not as secure as real dollars and real money however you DC usdt and D they are very heavily regulated already so these are a good middle ground when it comes to trading and hedging against volatility before we get into some real examples to buy your first crypto I want to give you three important tips when investing in altcoins number one all altcoins move with the markets they tend to rise and fall in price in tandem with the overall cryptocurrency market so when Bitcoin or ethereum Rises a lot all altcoins will rise a lot as well number two you want to focus on proven narratives instead of having too many things to juggle at once the most recognized crypto sectors today are gaming AI meme coins and rwa While others are still questionable and the mainstream audience do not understand them yet number three you want to avoid the information overload there are really way too many different types of altcoins out there we haven't even covered them all do not get overwhelmed with 10 plus different sectors pick a couple that you understand and stick to them now let's begin begin your crypto journey by learning where to buy your first crypto the easiest way to buy your first coins is to use a beginner-friendly app I recommend platforms like coinbase crypto.com or swissborg these are designed with userfriendly interfaces that cater to beginners all of these platforms exist as mobile apps and give you a very simple interface that shows you all the top cryptocurrencies that you can buy and gives you very easy ways to get money in and out of the app just like a traditional finance app like cash app if this is your first time in crypto you should opt to use one of these mobile apps instead of an advanced exchange for people who want to access a larger selection of cryptocurrencies or have demands for advanced trading tools they will want to use an advanced crypto exchange the top exchanges in the market right now are binance bybit okx and Kraken all of these will offer a larger selection of cryptocurrencies with lower trading fees and advanced trading tools such as limit orders Market orders stop- loss and then can give you the best prices by matching with the order book but these interfaces are a little bit more advanced to use so we won't get deep into this in this video make sure to subscribe to the channel as I have a beginner trading course coming up now what if you can't access one of these top exchanges if you live in a region with strict crypto regulations you might not be able to access top exchanges like binance or buybit the most common restrict Ive places are the US Canada UK Italy Australia India Etc most of these are English-speaking countries there are also low kyc exchanges that I have used before as alternative options blof fin bonix Bing X and pionex are all good options that I have used before although these exchanges are safe to use as I have tried them I do recommend people to have multiple exchanges at the same time and not to keep large amounts of money on any single exchange at a time this is a practical way to control your risk in case any rare event happens like what we've seen with FTX I'm about to release a video on the best crypto exchanges and comparing them side by side so make sure to subscribe if you haven't already so you don't miss it now I want to show you a stepbystep guide on how to set up an account using the coinbase app we'll go over how to sign up uh navigating the interface how to fund your coinbase account buying your first crypto and swapping and trading between cryptos within the app you can find the coinbase app on all the major app stores download it and go to the application and go ahead and sign up make sure to use your real information because you need to go through a kyc or know your customer verification in order to use the platform then after confirming your email and your text message you will be asked a series of personal questions first of all what is your citizenship make sure to answer this correctly because you would need to go through a kyc know your customer most crypto exchanges will need your identity confirmation in order to combat against money laundering but we're all regular users so this doesn't really matter just go ahead and do it honestly so a couple steps here number one you will need one of your photo ID you will have a choice depending on which country you're at usually it's driver license ID card or passport you can go ahead and scan your ID and then you'll be asked to take a selfie in order to see that this is the real person that's in the ID then there are some basic questionnaire like how much money you're planning to trade with and which industry you work in and then your identity will be verified within a couple hours you get a notification okay now we are in our account is ready and let's go through the coinbase interface on the main dashboard here you can see your total balance of coins you have you see some basic watch lists on the market such as what price of Bitcoin is and the top movers on the market and down here you can scroll down to learn some more about different crypto Concepts on the bottom here you have your assets tab which can show you all of your balances including not only cash but also all the crypto you have a trading tab this is where you see all your transaction history and you can buy and sell coins on the explore tab this is where you can find different cryptocurrencies so typing in whatever name you hear of here you should be able to find it and the earn tab is where you can earn a little bit of Interest through stuff like staking okay let's get started with our crypto journey and first of all we need to fund our account so click on the transfer button and click on deposit cash this is how you can deposit cash from your bank account into coinbase depending on the country you will have different forms of payment to deposit money usually they are credit card uh debit card Bank transfer PayPal wire transfer Etc once you finish your deposit you can go to your assets Tab and in your balances you see that you have some cash in this case I have $50 of Canadian dollars next let's buy our first bit of Bitcoin so go to the trade Tab and click on buy you can choose which coins you want to buy Bitcoin is going to be the top option here choose BTC and choose buy and here you can choose to buy Bitcoin pay with Canadian dollar uh your existing amount I'm just going to buy my maximum review order click buy now and the order is submitted you can view the order you can click done and in the view order tab here you see that I have a pending buy order of 0.0061 Bitcoin for $50 this should execute right away and there you go and now it's done so go to my assets Tab and scroll down again you see my Canadian dollar is not zero and in my portfolio I have $47 worth of bitcoin very easy this is the best way to get started in buying and selling crypto apps like coinbase like you see here is very simple you get what you pay for right away you don't have to deal with anything else just click buy similarly if you want to sell very simple you can either uh just go through your portfolio here click on bitcoin and click sell or you can go to this interface similarly like before go to trade Tab and click sell sell your Bitcoin and the same thing pops up and here let me sell all of my Bitcoin again into Canadian dollar click sell now and and now going back to my asset tab you see again I have no Bitcoin left and I have $45 worth of Canadian dollars here now you might notice we incurred a little bit of a fee about $2 this is a flat fee that you will incur using a retail app like coinbase but it is not a percentage uh fee so you don't have to worry about it too much if you're buying $1,000 you're still going to only have a few dollars worth of fees only because we're buying $50 here it seems like a significant amount if you want to avoid all of the fees and go for the lowest amount of fees you will need a advanced crypto exchange and this is especially beneficial if you are trading a larger amount and buying and selling very often you can see the actual fees that you incurred as well so go to your assets Tab and click on activity and you see here when I bought Bitcoin I incurred a $1.99 flat fee similarly when I sold Bitcoin for Canadian dollars I incurred another $1.99 flat fee this is why you don't want to trade all the time on a consumer app like coinbase this is really meant for ease of use and you buy ones and you hold it for a while kind of scenario if you're looking to trade a lot you need to use an advance exchange what if you want to get multiple crypto altcoins in the coinbase app you don't have to always take money out of Bitcoin convert it into cash and put it into other altcoins instead you can directly swap and trade between cryptos and let's take a look at how to do it let's go to the trade tab again and instead of buy and sell we want to go to convert the convert option here is a really good word because it means we're converting different coins between each other here we are converting from Bitcoin to ethereum and let's convert $20 confirm the order convert now and done you see we have a conversion to ethereum and then you go to your assets now we have $50 worth of bitcoin and $20 worth of ethereum if you want to get any other altcoin just go to the explore Tab and go to the top assets and let's say we want some salana click on salana click convert again and now we can convert some Bitcoin to salana or we can even convert our ethereum to salana so let me convert another $20 of Bitcoin to salana convert now the order is done and now we refresh and we have $30 of Bitcoin $20 ethereum $20 salana very simple last two things I want to leave you with on the coinbase app and this applies to all other crypto trading apps as well first of all you need to have good Security on here so make sure you go to your profile settings and turn on all the security features the most important step is to have two Factor authentication turned on so in the settings I recommend you to use Pass key or authenticator app these two are much more secure than text message security because uh texting can usually be spoofed make sure you have Pass Key and authenticator set up so that every time you withdraw money you have to verify and second Pro tip for the coinbase app they do have an advanced portion of their app in the settings you can toggle for coinbase advents for professional Traders now this is an interface that will be very similar to a advanced crypto exchange but as a mobile app and you can trade derivatives you can look at uh various different trading markets with different tools buy and sell and Market limit orders Etc we're not going to get into this uh right now you should go and subscribe to the channel for a beginner's trading course coming up but if you want a advanced crypto exchange to try out right now you can go ahead and choose coinbase advance and check out the interface the next major tool you need to understand in your crypto journey is a crypto wallet it's very different from a crypto exchange from a security standpoint and from a control standpoint do you actually need a crypto wallet and how does it compare with an exchange crypto wallets give you full control and ownership of your cryptocurrency by managing your private Keys the private key is really what's important here it controls all your funds in contrast to a crypto wallet if you store crypto on an exchange platform or an app like coinbase it means that the exchange controls your private keys and thus controls all your money the key difference here is who controls the funds with a crypto wallet your assets are under your control unlike on an exchange you depend on their security and Trust in the platform for them to control your money but if they decide to run away with the money like what we've seen with FTX then you have no recourse obviously this is a very rare occurrence most of these companies are heavily regulated especially a company like coinbase they are even registered uh in the US as a money transmitter so your money is safe there however when you're using a crypto wallet you don't have to depend on trust in order to manage your money you depend on the blockchain and cryptography to function to manage your money for all crypto users even beginners I do recommend everyone to get your own crypto wallet it is a must only with the convenience of a crypto exchange and the security of a crypto wallet you have the best of both worlds you need them both how do you choose a crypto wallet based on your use case When selecting a wallet consider what is most important to you the most important factors for me that I consider are number one safety and control over your assets this is always top number two what are the number of coins supported they have to support the coin I want to own in order for me to store in them number three the ease of use can the wallet be easily accessed number four any advanced features that I might demand for the wallet most beginner users should start with a Mobile Wallet app for the ease of use and for the best choices right now you should go check out my video on YouTube called top five mobile crypto wallets safest options this video is still completely up to date and this gives you the best options here and comparison the best crypto wallet I use on my phone right now is trust wallet this is a wallet developed by binance it is open source and it has been around for more than 7 years at this point it is very secure it also offers a large coin selection like Bitcoin ethereum Solana Cosmos polka dot cardano Etc basically most of the coins uh that's out there popular you can store them in this wallet before I walk you through how to set up your first crypto wallet one more question we need to answer is do you need a hardware wallet like a treasure or a ledger you might have heard of cod wallets or Hardware wallets like these devices now there are two main types of wallets available there are hot wallets which are wallets that are connected to the internet usually existing as a mobile app or a desktop app or a browser extension like trust wallet or like metamask you might have heard of these are very easy to use and can uh allow you to transact at any time however they don't have absolute security cold Wallets on the other hand are devices that are completely separate from the internet as you can tell they are not connected to the internet with a cable they provide extra security through offline storage the most common types of cold wallets are these Hardware devices like treasure and Ledger I find it beneficial to combine both a hot wallet in the form of a mobile application on a browser extension and a cold horror wallet like a device this combination gives you the best of both worlds because you can transact very quickly with your mobile app uh wallet and for long-term storage you can use a hardware device I have an upcoming video on the best hardare wallets in the market today I'll leave that in the description make sure to watch that for the purpose of this course for absolute beginners you don't need a hardware device however if you're serious about crypto security especially if you plan to hold coins for longterm over a year I do recommend everyone to get a harbor wallet after you get out of that beginner stage okay now let me show you a step-by-step guide to set up your crypto wallet and we're going to use the trust Wallet app let's go ahead and get started here and because this is our first time we will want to create a new wallet type in a passcode that you want make sure you remember this passcode because it acts as an encryption on your wallet instead of a password that you can recover with your email on a crypto exchange or any other account this crypto wallet exists only on your device nobody else has the backup of it so you need to make sure you remember everything next when creating the wallet we have two ways to set it up we can either use a secret recovery phrase which is the typical way for all wallets to be created the universal way or we can use a swift way which lets the app handle the creation process for you and stores it using your face ID now we're going to go with the traditional way of a secret phrase because this will uh show you the entire process and what's most important about keeping your wallet safe so let's click on create here when creating a new crypto wallet it will always tell you this concept of a seed phrase or secret phrase you need to make sure that you back this up properly and safely and let me show you how to do that we're going to click on backup manually and there are are some notices here the secret phrase is the master key to your wallet you need to check all these boxes to understand what this is number one trust wallet does not keep a copy of your secret phrase this is very different from how a crypto exchange Works uh remember earlier we said the exchange knows all your secret phrase and your private key they can control your funds while here in the trust Wallet app you are the only person that knows your secret phrase and thus have access to your funds number two saving this digitally in plain text is not recommended examples include screenshots text files or emailing yourself this is because whoever controls your secret phrase can unlock your wallet on any other device and they can access your coins at any time so this is why it is never recommended to store your secret phrase in a digital format instead you want to write it down on a piece of paper which we'll go over in a bit and number three of course write down your secret phrase and store it in a secure offline location when you write it down on a piece of paper nobody can take it away unless they come to your house and take it from you okay we understood click continue and this is what's important this is the secret phrase the trust wet app is really cool because as I'm sharing screen here it's even hiding the secret phrase from the broadcast so let me show you what that looks like on my phone you see there are some wordss on there you will see this exact same screen on your phone now do not do what I'm doing here and show the secret phrase to everyone instead these 12 words should only be known to your s and you should never take a screenshot of it you should never copy paste it uh and send it to anyone digitally because in that process someone can steal all your money okay what do we do with the 12 words on this page we want to take a piece of paper and a pen and actually write them down and make sure you write them down in this exact order and number them from 1 to 12 okay I have written down the 12 words on a piece of paper and once this is done we can go ahead and continue on the app now the app will tell you to confirm the secret phrase to make sure that you have written them down and in the right order so confirm these word in the app and now it's all set we are in the wallet interface you might notice that this interface is very similar to the coinbase interface you have your assets tab you can swap coins between each other you have a earn tab discover tab for new coins and you can even buy coins directly using the buy function and deposit money here with credit cards however the key distinction here is that that this app is a wallet app not an exchange app which means you don't log in with email and password remember throughout this setup process we never had an email password account system instead the only thing that governs this app is these 12 words that we have written down on the piece of paper and this actual application whoever controls either your application app or these 12 words can have entire access to whatever money you put into this app this is the most important concept to understand that's different from the crypto exchange okay now let's understand how to use the trust wallet application of course you can just buy crypto directly in here but when you use a crypto wallet the most important use case is to store funds in here by withdrawing them from a crypto exchange and put them into your own hands into the crypto wallet so to do this we will go back to our coinbase app and withdraw the cryptocurrency from The coinbase Exchange app into our trust wallet app in the coinbase app let's again go to my assets and go to for example ethereum and click on send select the network you're using to transfer the assets for most people that's just beginning you only want to select the default which is the ethereum network now you will need an address to send to how do we find this address exit the app and go to your trust Wallet app and click on receive you can type in whichever coin you are receiving and ethereum is already at the top here click on ethereum and here you have a couple things you have a QR code which is a code that you can use to scan in the coinbase app to get the receiving address or you have this address that you can directly click on and copy and notice this format 0x d7a 0 c22 blah blah blah these random characters are always going to be in this similar format starting from 0x for all ethereum addresses every single crypto transaction needs to have one of these crypto address in order to work these addresses are completely unique for each individual wallet think of this address like a distinct account number for yourself to receive money on the blockchain so let's go ahead and copy this and then we go back to our coinbase app and we paste it into this receiving Tab and now you see we are sending ethereum to this address in the format of 0x D7 a0 uh ignoring the middle parts uh because it's too long and then ending with B 29636 just to double check let's go back to our trust Wallet app and check our receiving address 0xd7 a0c ending with b29 636 so the two match and this is good so we're sending to the right address and here let's send maximum amount I'm going to send from my Exchange again another confirmation we're sending this amount of ethereum to this address that represents my trust wallet and click Send now here it lets me confirm using Pass Key this is again the security feature of two Factor authentication either Pass key or authenticator app is required when you're withdrawing from the coinbase app very important and good safety feature and now it says it's sent you can go ahead and view the details here but one different thing to know here is when you're withdrawing money from a crypto exchange app app like coinbase to your wallet or sending from the wallet to The Exchange the process is not instant on the ethereum blockchain it takes at least 30 seconds to a couple minutes on something like salana it might be faster within 1 minute if you're sending bigcoin for example it might take uh something like 10 minutes do not fear as uh this transaction will have a pending status for a while until it is completed so stay on this page and you you see it says it is completed so now we can go back to our trust Wallet app and refresh a bit and you see our ethereum shows up here we have 0.0056 e all good we have received it next up I want to show you how to send your crypto from trust Willet back onto coinbase Exchange in order to trade it for other coins this process is usually called a deposit because you are depositing money from a wallet app that you control to a exchange account that the company controls the process is very similar to what we just did but just in Reverse so on the coinbase app we go to transfer and click on receive crypto and click on ethereum again for most beginners we want to pick the default Network that is the ethereum network and very similar to the trust Wallet app you have a QR code that represents your wallet address that can be used for a QR code scanner or you can copy this address by clicking on the copy button and now we go back to the trust Wallet app and click on send select ethereum and now we can paste in the crypto address that we got from our coinbase app again we want to double check so what does our address start in and end in it starts in 0xdf 4A and ends in 743 go back to our coinbase app and you see 0xdf 4A 743 so the two match perfect we're sending to the right address another important concept here is the concept of gas fees so when you are sending money out of the trust Wallet app you will be paying gas fees by yourself instead of the exchange paying transaction fees for you this is why if I'm trying to send ethereum and try to send my entire balance from the trust Wallet app I click on next and you see that uh it will require 0.15 Network fee so even though I'm trying to send $13.97 only $13.82 cents will arrive the 15 cents I will be paying in transaction fees this transaction fee is most important when moving funds using Bitcoin or ethereum most other blockchains are very cheap the fees will be less than 1 cent you so you'll barely notice them click on confirm and the transaction is now processing you can follow the transaction details by going uh to this page here and again you see it will take a little while it will say it's completed but it won't show up in the coinbase site just yet so let's take a look at this let's go back to the coinbase app and go to my assets page and here I'm on the ethereum page and I should be able to find it in the receive tab view history you see here I do have a transaction of receiving ethereum 0.0055 however when I click into it it says that the status is still pending this is because when you are sending money to an exchange as a deposit it will take a while before the money is confirmed so the coinbase exchange detex that the deposit is coming in but they will wait a while until that money is finalized on the blockchain before crediting it so do not fear as long as you see that it's pending it will go through uh within less than 10 minutes okay after about 3 minutes of waiting the status is completed and now I have my ethereum balance back in the coinbase account let's go back to the trust Wallet app and I just want to show you a few more Pro tips to keep you safe number one when possible you should always try to back up the SE phas using a secure cloud storage encryption now this doesn't mean you should take a picture of the seat phrase and upload it to Google Drive no no instead you need to use the built-in feature in the trust Wallet app so go to the settings Cog on the top left click on wallets and under your main wallet click on backup to iCloud verify the passcode and then name your backup and click continue now you will need to type in a password to encrypt your secret phrase on iCloud this is very different from uploading your secret phrase as a text file to iCloud drive because with this passcode essentially what it's doing is it's doing a software encryption on top of the seed phrase file so without this password nobody's able to read it or crack your C phase file this makes it actually secure to store this online again trust wallet warns you that they cannot recover your seed phrase without your encryption password so all of this relies on you make sure sure you write down this encryption password as well in case you want uh you need to back up after click confirm now you have two backups to your wallet you can use your wallet like regular but if you lose your phone or you delete your wallet app what you can do is you take the seed phrase that you have written down on the piece of paper and restore the wallet by typing it into the trust Wallet app in the setup process alternatively you can also choose to take the backup from iCloud as as long as you remember your encryption password that is also possible now in case you also lose your seed phrase paper number two very important security measure for any crypto wallet on your phone is you need to make sure you have a passcode and face ID turned on this isn't like some other app like social media app that's just a convenience feature if you do not have a passcode on your app it means anyone that has your phone can just open up the app and start sending your money money away not only that but because the passcode on the wallet app is not only uh gated access to the app but also an encryption on the wallet itself this means even if someone connects to your phone and hacks your phone injecting some software malware in it if they do not know your passcode and they cannot copy your face ID they still cannot steal your seat phas from your phone this is why it's super super important to have passcode and face ID turn on for your crypto Wallet app the most important security tip when using a crypto wallet again is to never share your seed phrase or your private key we have already talked about the seed phrase which you wrote down on the piece of paper that controls your entire wallet it is also sometimes known as the pneumonic phrase whenever you hear recovery phrase secret phrase seed phrase those are the same thing do not ever share them with anyone there is something more nuanced called the private key which is often overlooked this also cannot be shared because essentially it acts the same way as a seed phrase with full control to your wallet here is what you can and cannot share so on the left side here with a public address this is okay to share because this is like the public account number they usually have this type of a format for ethereum but for other blockchains like Bitcoin or salana they will have a different format and usually they will come with a QR code now what is not okay to share is on the right side here you have your secret seed recovery phrase never ever share this they usually come in this format with either 12 18 or 24 words random words in this format with a uh number system in front of them never share this with anyone the second thing you should never share is the private key now this is usually even hard to access within the wallet software I don't think you can even get access to the private key in the trust Wallet app but if anyone tells you okay uh go into your wallet app and click on this and this Advance setting and you will see this private key just send it to me I can you know send money to you that is a lie if you go into your wallet software and on any page it says with a warning that this is a private key that means the same thing as a seed phrase it has full control to all your money never share it with anyone private keys will come with a randomized text format as well similar to to the public address however all wallet applications will have a very clear notice showing you that this is a very dangerous thing you're doing to access the private key so whenever you see that whenever you see the words private key remember that is completely different from the public address so do not share the private key Either okay I want to also leave you with some important tips when sending crypto so you don't make mistakes and accidentally lose your money number one you want to make sure that you always have the correct deposit address this not only comes from double-checking the address to be exact but also you should always use the copy paste function never type in your address manually also another Pro tip is that different blockchains will use different address formats so ethereum Bitcoin salana xrp cardano all use different address formats if you send ethereum to a Bitcoin address that money is also lost they are not shared between accounts let me show you what this looks like in the app let's go back to the trust Wallet app and let me go to receive some etherum in this wallet so click on ethereum click on receive and you see this is our wallet address format it starts always with 0x blah blah blah and it ends in with some letters and some numbers let's say if we want to receive instead some Bitcoin in the wallet we click on bitcoin click on receive and notice how this format is different it doesn't start from from 0x instead it starts with bc1 and notice how some of the letters are also different this format has more letter possible like x uh k z Etc whereas in the eum address it doesn't have this many letters it only has few choices of letters this is because the two address types are different if you send Bitcoin to the ethereum address starting from 0x the Bitcoin is lost if you send ethereum to to the Bitcoin address starting from bc1 your ethereum is also lost always make sure that you are sending to the right address format this applies to all other blockchains out there when you're dealing with ethereum versus Solana the two are different ethereum versus xrp they're different as well make sure you double check the next Pro tip I have when sending crypto is to beware of potential delays and fees there is an inverse correlation between the amount of fees you spend and how fast the transac ction goes through this is especially true when you deal with a crypto wallet so in trust wallet when you're trying to transfer some funds there is a bit of a setting here so notice how you have a network fee of 29 cents now people might tweak around with this page and realize that okay I can actually change this fee and uh tweak my fee to be lower for example if I want to use like only two way but it says here lowering the price might cause transaction to get delayed or cancelled this is absolutely true so if I save this you see I only spent 10 cents for Network fee this is not a good idea if you don't go with the default fees what happens is nobody will pick up your transaction on the network which means instead of your ethereum transfer going through within 5 minutes it might delay for another hour or two hours and by that point it might even get cancelled so you don't want to be stuck in that situation because once you submit this transaction your funds are locked and if it becomes delayed you have no way of even getting those funds back until it's either cancelled returned or completed so do not cheap out on the gas fees at least go for the default settings uh and do not tweak around with it just to save 10 cents and potentially lose a lot more money in the process okay lastly you should familiarize yourself with a blockchain Explorer on the crypto Wallet app you see on the transfer page we click on any of these and it will show view on block Explorer you click on that and it will open up this interface called ether scan this is the most popular blockchain Explorer to track your transaction progress the few most important things here is the status if it's successful it means the transfer has completed on the blockchain and you can go to your wallet or exchange and it should say that it's just waiting to be credited if it says pending or waiting for confirmations it will tell you how long you have to wait and as long as you spend the default amount of gas fee it will be okay won't be that slow but if you cheap out on the gas fees or if it's getting delayed because the network is congested then the block Explorer will also tell you that information so learn to use the block Explorer this will help you a lot and save you from anxiety for more mistakes to avoid as a crypto beginner make sure to check out this video on my channel called six crypto investing mistakes to avoid this covers a lot more in-depth tips when you're just getting started okay finally now we have all the tools ready how do we find coins to buy how do we figure out which alt coins to buy and how do we figure out where to buy them this is the last tool you will need in your tool set as a absolute beginner and that is a platform for coin tracking like coin gecko or coin market cap so let's go through a quick demo here coin geco and coin market cap are the two most reputable uh coin listing platforms out there you can find all the information for all altcoins out there including the market cap the price uh all the exchanges that offer them for trade Etc the most important concept here is to search for your favorite coin so let's go to coin gecko here and if you're dealing with an altcoin that's much smaller than ethereum or Solana for example you want to buy some meme coin like whiff where is whiff listed and you see you have to know the name of the coin dog wh hat tier name whiff and you go into this page and this is what it shows you so on the left side here you have the market cap of this coin you have the price it's trading at you have some tring volume the supply Etc we'll go over this in a bit but first of all the most important is if you want to buy this coin where do you access it well on coin gecko or coin market cap they will both have this tab called markets click on that and it will bring you to this tab so this is the list of exchanges that has the with coin available you have bit to me I don't know what this is you have gate.io exchange PEX exchange binance Bing X Mexi kin Etc so in order to buy this coin you can sign up to any any of these exchanges and buy it and it will function very similar to the coinbase app demo that we have just gone through this process is super important because this is essentially the flow of you discovering a coin and then how do you actually get your hands on the coin in crypto the most important concept when it comes to accessing coins is that not all coins are listed on the same broker like in the equities markets because there are many different exchanges out there many different coins always coming up and going out of fashion Etc so you don't have the same case like in equities where you pick one broker and you have access to all the uh publicly traded stocks available instead for the specific altcoin you're looking for you have to actually search it up uh on coin gecko or coin market cap and then figure out which exchange has it available here's another coin that's a bit smaller called MOG you go to the markets Tab and you see it's actually not on binance not on Mexi not on coinbase and you have to get it either through gate buybit or uh smaller exchanges like C coin or Bing ax this is a feature that's truly unique to crypto and make sure you understand how this works and try it out uh find some coins that you have heard of before and figure out which exchanges offer them number two very important Concept in crypto is the concept of market capitalization and there's a big difference between how crypto is valued versus how equities and stocks are valued cryptocurrencies are not valued by their unit price you cannot judge how expensive or cheap a coin is based on their unit price unlike in stocks where the stocks cannot be split and usually they are all within the range you wouldn't have a stock being worth 1 cent and another being worth 10,000 in crypto however this is possible so even though Bitcoin is worth $56,000 per coin right now whereas ethereum is worth 2,500 and then you have salana being worth 150 it doesn't mean that Bitcoin is 20 times more expensive than ethereum because all cryptocurrency are valued based on their difference in Supply Bitcoin currently has a total market cap of 21 million and that is all the Bitcoin that will be ever available so the actual value of the Bitcoin Market is calculated by taking this total Supply number 21 million times it by 56,000 and that gives you the market cap of 1.17 trillion if you do the same calculation for ethereum notice how the market supply of ethereum is different so the total supply of ethereum is 120 million it's much larger than that of Bitcoins so there's bigger supply available doing that same calculation we take 120 million times it by $2,400 of unit price that gives us the fully diluted valuation or the total market cap of ethereum at $295 billion these two numbers are the actual comparison that's uh feasible between cryptocurrencies when you compare how expensive Bitcoin is versus ethereum you have to take the fully diluted valuation and compare that between Bitcoin and ethereum so comparing 1.1 trillion versus 295 billion that is actually the price difference between the two not the unit price let's take another example here of ethereum versus Solana so ethereum trades at 24 $400 whereas salana is at 140 this doesn't mean ethereum is 15 times larger than salana instead how much larger is it well looking at the salana total Supply it's even larger Supply it has 580 million total possible Supply right now so taking this number times it by $145 that gives us the total market cap of Solana at $85 billion so comparing 85 billion of total market cap versus ethereum's total market cap of 295 billion that means ethereum is about [Music] 3.3 times larger than Solana it is not 15 times larger that is a big difference that gets people throws people off guard especially for beginners when they look at a crypto's price if the unit price is very cheap they naturally just think that coin is very cheap when in reality this total Supply number matters just as much you guys probably remember the Dogecoin Cates when people said Dogecoin is so cheap it's under 10 cents it's much cheaper than everything well that might look like it from the unit price but notice how Dogecoin has a total supply of 145 billion so taking this number times it by the unit price that gives us a total market cap of already $4 billion for Dogecoin when you compare Dogecoin versus Solana you see the big big difference so even even though Solana's unit price is 140 and Dogecoin unit price is only 10 cents it doesn't mean salana is 1,400 times larger than Dogecoin instead Solana's total market cap is 84 billion Dogecoin total market cap is 14 billion so the two are actually not that far apart it's about five times the difference it's such an important concept when you first get started investing in altcoins make sure you understand this before you get yourselves wrecked and uh get wrecked by the unit price bias this is very unique to crypto uh of a market Dynamic okay lastly knowing all of these tool sets how do you choose which cryptos to buy and win and how do you make money this part is beyond the scope of this beginner course but let me just give you some general directions to get you started uh doing research in the specific Styles after so typically there are three approaches to crypto investing you have the long-term fundamentals investors which look look at uh business metrics tokenomics Revenue Etc to determine which coins that they want to hold for longterm then you have a medium-term fundamentals Trader this is uh person that looks at medium-term narratives and events happening and picks out coins that they want to hold for a few weeks to a few months at a time and lastly you have the short-term chart analysis and these are traders that use technical analysis and look at support and resistance levels and look at Price charts in order to determine if the price is overbought oversold and is it likely to Trend in a direction or not in order for you to find the best approach for yourself you need to ask yourself some deep questions first number one how long are you likely to hold on to a altcoin position do you usually like to hold positions for over a year in this case you're probably a long-term investor or are you very short-tempered and you want to get into a position and see movements right away then in that case you're probably a Trader number two how much are you willing to lose before panicking if you are uh able to only sustain like a 10% loss on your portfolio then you're probably looking at a long-term investing approach whereas if you're okay with large swings then in that case you can actually deploy a lot more capital and uh do active trading number three what are you actually good at in terms of skills do you have a good understanding of technology and doing research then you should probably go for a long-term investing approach are you always staying up to date on Twitter and Insider communities in crypto following different Trends and narratives what are people talking about if this is what you're good at you should probably go for medium-term narrative trading and lastly are you able to handle high stress situations without emotion are you able to react very quickly if this is you then you should probably go for day trading using technical analysis so you first have to ask these questions for yourself in order to determine what's best for you and lastly here are the next steps for each approach one to side so for a long-term investor these are the things you want to look at which narratives are popular and sustainable for the longterm you want to understand crypto cycles tokenomics look at exchange listings VC investors and which ones are backing a project which makes them more legit you want to try out the products you want to join the community and figure out if the community is active you want to consider competitors in the same alquin category to see if the project stands out or not you want to compare the market caps with its competitive s to see if your project is undervalued and you want to consider token utility and if there's demand when the product is being used uh do people need to hold the token for a medium-term fundamentals Trader what do you need to look at you need to figure out which narratives are popular for the short term you need to figure out what are the Catalyst Events maybe go on something like coin market cap to look at their calendars uh and figure out what's upcoming for each different project you should also search up different types of catalyst events on Twitter to find out which altcoins are likely to pick up in popularity you also need to consider larger trends like uh explosion in gaming or exposure in AI interest and maybe there are Al coins that you should take a bet on in those narratives most important for a medium-term fundamentals Trader you need to understand that all of crypto functions on narratives when one narrative gets popular all the coins in that narrative do well of course you also need to understand crypto Cycles you don't want to go against the cycle if the cycle is bearish medium-term trading also doesn't work and lastly you want to find Trend shifts and bet on the undervalued altcoins in the same category so if the trend is Shifting towards AI you should be probably looking at AI lastly for the third type of Trader that look at charts using technical analysis here are some things you should get yourself into number one you should become an expert in using trading view this is the number one software for technical analysis you should learn how to use indicators and how to read them such as X initial moving average EMA RSI macd Divergence Fibonacci retracements Etc you should learn to read each candle formation and whether they are bullish or bearish you should also learn to read the other metrics such as volume when it's increasing or decreasing this is also separate from price and gives you a full picture you should learn to identify uptrends and downtrends pick up a book and figure out Trend Theory and look into Dow Theory and how uptrends and downtrends are formed you should also learn how to identify support and resistance level so you can decide where to buy and where to sell and lastly you should learn how to read more advanced exchange funding data like open interest funding rate and liquidation heat map levels once you get all of these down you should have a pretty good grasp of becoming a technical analysis based day trader okay this is everything I have prepared for you guys in this complete beginners crash course if you found it helpful share it with your beginner friends to get them from 0o to one in their C to journey I hope this course can serve as a good tool for you and your friends to get started in crypto from a complete beginner to uh using a crypto exchange and to owning your first crypto in your wallet and doing so safely and also getting you started in your crypto Journey once you decide if you want to become an investor or Trader if you want to get deeper down in the rabbit hole make sure to subscribe to my channel as I will be releasing follow-up courses on uh trading and investing as well and if you want to stay up to dat on the day-to-day of crypto make sure to follow me on Twitter or X at virtual bacon 0x and lastly join our community on Virtual bacon.com we have a full community with mentors uh focusing on trading and investing especially as the crypto Market is picking up joining a community is the best decision you can make that's it for this video thank you for watching and I will see you on the next one