How to Buy AltCoins

Feeling like you’ve missed the boat with Bitcoin?

Don’t fear, there are thousands of alternative cryptocurrencies to purchase and top cryptocurrency lists such as on coinmarketcap.com or nomics.com. Some of the most popular ones are shown below.

This article will teach you where and how to buy altcoins, often by first purchasing Bitcoin so first let’s address this common question.

Is it too late to buy Bitcoin?

Even in 2020 it is not too late to benefit from the upside from an exponential asset such as Bitcoin.

However if you like to beat yourself up see how much you would have made investing in Bitcoin at any point in history you can do that on whatifbitcoin.com

There is still the potential for very large gains from Bitcoin (BTC). Max Kaiser believes that Bitcoin will go to $100k a coin and beyond and a Paypal director believes that Bitcoin can reach $1 Million a coin within 5-10 years! And both John McAfee and James Altucher are predicting Bitcoin to reach $1MM by 2020.

Think that’s far fetched? In 2017 BTC achieved a growth rate of 1547% (before it corrected and entered the bear market in 2018).

And it’s annual average yearly growth rate from 2010-2017 was 167%:

Bitcoin average DAILY value change:
2010: +0.82%
2011: +0.76%
2012: +0.26%
2013: +1.11%
2014: -0.25%
2015: +0.09%
2016: +0.22%
2017: +0.66%

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) June 5, 2017

What is an altcoin and why should I invest in them?

The biggest upside gains will likely come from investing in one of the alternatives to Bitcoin (termed altcoins) such as NEO that can have much larger % yearly gains. In 2017, NEO went from a price of less than $1 a coin to $50 within 3 months as shown below.

And it’s not just NEO (with its 31620% gain from the start of 2017 to August), below are the returns of the top altcoins (from Crypto Daily youtube channel on cryptocurrencies):

Q: Which is the Best Crypto Currency to Invest

A: All of the top ones. When you’re investing in cryptocurrency (rather than trading in and out) I think the best strategy is to put a small amount into the top 100 listed on coinmarketcap.com. You will come across some scam coins which are Ponzi schemes but most are legitimate so do your research. Spreading ownership across a large number of coins means that you are more likely to have one of your coins pop. And that is exactly what this guy has done with his crypto investing $10 into the top 100 at the start of 2017 and was up 26k or 2700%!

Where To Buy Altcoins (like NEO)

Below is a step by step guide for how to buy altcoins with USD and how to buy crypto with a credit card.

STEP 1 – Buy Bitcoins with credit card

In order to purchase altcoins you first you need to go from fiat money to digital coin. Right now there are not many altcoins you can purchase directly from USD. As of 2019, below were the ones listed on coinbase.com (the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange) which I use:

For every other altcoin you will need to first purchase Bitcoin and exchange it. With Coinbase you can buy bitcoin with a credit card instantly. I personally think it’s the best place and easiest way for trading cryptocurrencies.

STEP 2 – Find the Best Altcoin Exchanges

The majority of altcoins are paired with Bitcoin (BTC). Now that you have purchased BTC, what are the best altcoins to buy with your bitcoin and what altcoin exchange should you use?

The best site to find the right altcoin exchange that your chosen altcoin (such as NEO) is traded on is coingecko.com (you will see this if you google something such as “NEO exchange gecko”). The altcoin exchanges I have used are Binance, hitbtc.com and bittrex.com. For a full list of cryptocurrency exchanges check out Coin Market.

Once you sign up with the exchange you will need to transfer some bitcoin (BTC) in order to then purchase altcoins with it. Typically you hit deposit on the Bitcoin wallet and a QR code will appear which you can scan or simply copy and paste the wallet address given and send from your own wallet.

Type in the address from the exchange and transfer the amount you choose. It can take a few minutes up to a few hours for the transfer to go through due to the current speed of the network so you may need to be patient. It’s best just to test with a small amount first such as $10 too, then transfer a larger amount once you’re familiar.

STEP 3 – Make the trade

Inside the exchange, click on the market for the coin you want to purchase. If you purchased BTC and want to buy NEO cryptocurrency then that’s the BTC-NEO one (below)

The most simplest and quickest way of making a trade (although also coming with the most commission) is to make a ‘Market’ trade. Type in the number of coins you want to buy (trading your BTC for) and hit ‘Buy Market’ to place your trade, in this case buying 40 NEO for 0.1 BTC:

Once the trade is exectued the coins will show up in the corresponding wallet for the coin in the Account tab.

Siam Kidd from the Realistic Trader who has a great Crypto webinar is in the video below where he shows how he placed a trade for NEO cryptocurrency on the Bittrex exchange (a little more complicated than Hit BTC above):

STEP 4 – Get your coins off the exchange and set up a crypto wallet

Now you need to get your altcoins off the exchange and into an crypto wallet that you control. Each coin website recommends wallets to use, below are the wallets for NEO.

STEP 5 – Get your coins into cold storage

Trezor has a great interface for storing the main coins such as Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and connects with My Ether Wallet to be able to hold Ethereum and all ERC20 tokens.

What was the best altcoin to invest in 2017?

We looked at the top 10 coins now and where they were a year ago based on the historical snapshot of coinmarketcap on Jan 1st 2017 . From what I can see, below are the top five altcoin gains of  2017:

• NEO (NEO) – $0.144 > $73 = 506x!
• Ripple (XRP) – $0.0065 > $2.21 = 340x
• Dash (DASH) – $11.26 > $1017 = 90x
• Ethereum (ETH) – $8.26 > $723= 87x
• Litecoin (LTC) – $4.37 > $217.19 = 50x
• Monero (XMR) – $13.58 > $348.65 = 25x
• [Bitcoin (BTC) $936 > $13,121 = 14x]

Holding a basket of these top altcoins as well as Bitcoin would have netted you 39x!