Beginner’s Guide To Investing in Crypto

Nick Sokol, PhD
3 min readJun 24, 2021

Getting in has never been easier.

Golden fields await those who play it smart. Photo by Author.

Cryptocurrency investment has been all the rage in 2021. From Bitcoin’s early year rise to historic and record breaking highs, to Dogecoin making millionaires out of $500 investors. It seems like no matter where you go, crypto is the talk of the town. In fact, the craze for crypto is equivalent to that of the California gold rush, in which massive amounts of people migrated to the pacific state with the hopes of striking it big with gold. Allow me to make one thing clear, if you are just starting out you need to know a couple of things before you rush into crypto investment. My main tips are as follows and I will explain each in detail:

  1. Do Your Own Research.
  2. Stay Away from “Shitcoin.”
  3. Do not Day Trade Unless You have Time and Money to Blow.
  4. Never Buy What You Can’t Afford To Lose.
  5. Don’t Listen to Reddit

I’ll begin with point #1. Do your own research. It is critically important that you research each cryptocurrency before you invest. You need to have a good understanding of the technology underlying the blockchain. Most legit cryptocurrencies have a white paper that you can read. The white paper is a guide to how the technology works, along with refined technical explanations of the programming and security of the coin. Before you invest in any coin, you should seek out the white paper.

Second point, stay away from shitcoin. Shitcoin is coin that will naturally have no value in the future. It is essentially a hype coin that is inflated by deluded masses who believe the coin will “moon” overnight and make them ridiculously rich. I’m as much a dreamer as anyone else, but the reality is early investors in bitcoin waited 6–7 years before getting ridiculously rich. I won’t specifically call out any coins but if it is named after a dog (or dog breed, dog sound, etc), food, sexual byproduct (position or act), or slang, it is probably shitcoin.

Point 3, do not day trade. Just… don’t. Seriously. Save yourself the time and money and avoid day trading. Day trading is for people who have lots of cash to throw around. They’re technically already rich but just want to make more money buying dips (periods of reduced crypto prices) and…

Nick Sokol, PhD

I write about Sustainability, ClimateTech, Entrepreneurialism, Technology, and Software Engineering.