Gadgetory

all right so you've watched mining adventures part 1 2 & 3 you've got your dank mining rig and an ASIC or 2 and you are well on your way to becoming crypto rich but how do you keep those sweet bitcoins and alt coins safe and for that matter if you're not necessarily into buying a bunch of hardware how do you just speculate on the coins buying and selling them let's find out but first let's tell you guys about ek water blocks ek SMLC Phoenix lineup is designed around quick disconnect couplings and brings a modular approach to connecting and expanding your loop learn more at the link below so if you've already been mining you're likely withdrawing your rewards to an exchange be it G Dax crackin finance or any of the other few hundred exchanges out there or you might be using a wallet on your PC now most casuals will probably stick with the former because being able to sell without moving your funds from your local wallet to an exchange can actually save both time and money in transfer fees however there are some serious drawbacks to this approach first and most importantly you are not in control of your private keys what's the private key ah I thought you'd never ask ok so I'm gonna use Bitcoin as an example in layman's terms a Bitcoin address that string of numbers and letters is kind of like a see-through donation container at the local McDonald's there's a slot in the top so anyone can see how much is in it and anyone who knows the address can put money in but if somebody wanted to get money out like to transfer funds to a friend or to buy something they would need the private key to open up the box signing the transaction now there are a couple of exceptions to this for example Manero makes use of ring signatures to hide balances and transaction amounts but most crypto currencies are fundamentally similar in this way so then when your funds are in a wallet on your PC the private keys are owned and can be encrypted by you so if there is a fork a duplication of the existing blockchain with whatever new and different features that the duplicator may desire you can export your private keys and then import them into the Forks wallet to get access to the duplicated funds if your funds are on an exchange however support for Forks is completely up to them because they're in control of the private keys so let's look at Bitcoin gold as an example of why this matters many exchanges chose to not support this fork outright so many people missed out on what was essentially free Bitcoin gold because they were not holding their own private keys at the time of the fork huh now either of those approaches though even with those drawbacks is probably fine for casual miners who aren't holding more than a couple hundred dollars worth that is as long as they can afford to lose what they have more on this later for larger scale miners and investors though something called a cold wallet is basically an essential tool now to be cold a wallet cannot have an active network connection this makes it nearly impossible to hack now some people will just use a network gapped computer so it's unplugged with no Wi-Fi with normal software wallets and then a system of either webcams and QR codes or thumb drives to complete their transactions but this method can be kind of a hassle so many people with large crypto holdings are using what's called a hardware wallet these come in the form of little devices with physical security prompts like the ledger NAT OS or treasurer once this device is plugged into a PC you enter a PIN code open up a companion app and then you go about your business now it should be noted that even the methods that we just outlined do carry some risk but if you think about it so does putting money in a bank so you know your your PC's Drive could die you could lose your hardware wallet or in both cases you could forget your password but as long as you backup your wallet and you keep your backup codes somewhere safe a safety deposit box in a bank is a pretty good bet you should be ok alright then so now that your Kryptos are safe let's talk about buying and selling though I really need to preface this with a quick warning we are not endorsing any of the exchanges that I'm about to mention and I personally would know I recommend buying cryptocurrency unless you know what you're doing and you are comfortable losing literally all of the money you spent like literally like this gone all right there is a very public history of exchanges disappearing overnight or being hacked and losing anywhere from a lot to all of their users money so be safe with that out of the way there are a ton of exchanges out there let's look at one of the most mainstream ones coinbase it's fairly limited in features but should work pretty well for casual buyers the process is pretty simple just hook up your bank account debit card or PayPal account and you are free to buy and sell cryptocurrency up to your limit and you can raise your limits by doing additional verification with the exchange but this simplicity comes at the cost of pretty high fees nearly 4% for debit and credit transactions and I should also point out that coin base has a history of freezing trading during high traffic times so take that as you will some of the more Pro oriented exchanges will charge a small fixed fee of a few dollars for bank transfers in and out and then cryptocurrency transfer fees are typically dependent on that currencies specific network fees so Bitcoin will likely have a fee of a few dollars while something like Zee cash will have almost no fee at all these exchanges like finance G Dax bit recs Polonia X crypto Pia and BitFenix also have crypto - crypto trading pairs so you can actually take your Bitcoin and then turn that into litecoin without having to first go to a fiat currency this helps you save some fees and is pretty snazzy now if you're not super concerned with getting the best possible rate a market trade can be a pretty easy way to go you just pick how much you want to buy or sell and then the trade will transact at the current market rate just remember that especially for a very large amounts that rate can actually change literally as your transactions are going through so you might end up paying more or getting less than you initially expected now limit trades these allow you to set the price point that you want your trade to execute at meaning that you may actually be able to get a slightly better rate or if things go the other way you might end up with nothing going through at all some exchanges allow what's called margin trading in this situation you can auto magically borrow money from the exchange to leverage your bet based on a multiplier so let's say you wanted to margin trade a thousand dollars with a leverage of two to one you would essentially be trading a thousand dollars plus another thousand dollars borrowed from the exchange and then you would be charged interest on it in most cases and the benefit is that you could double your profit or the drawback is that you could still lose all that money and still need to pay the stuff that you borrowed back so unless you're a seasoned gather excuse me trader we would recommend staying away from margin trading in conclusion trading can be a fun way to play around with some disposable income but again I think I've said this before but I would caution against using any money that could seriously negatively impact your life if you were to lose it so be safe and probably don't buy any so yeah I fix it then you know those guys really like to take stuff apart and teach people how to fix things they are leading the charge in the electronics repair tools industry with their iconic black and blue Pro tech toolkit and it's only 60 bucks it's got tons of great features the tool roll that makes it compact and easy to store there's 64 bit driver kit their wide variety of plastic opening tools sputters and picks not to mention suction 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