Get started with bitcoin

Geting started with bitcoin

Are you ready to get started with your bitcoin journey but have a bunch of questions? Well, then, you have come to the right place!

Please read this whole page as it answers many questions that people who are new to bitcoin have. If you would like to chat directly with me about bitcoin, please find me on Telegram, or Twitter at: @BitcoinZAR

What is the first step?

  • The first step is to register on a bitcoin exchange, the bitcoin exchange website is where you can buy and sell bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
  • Once you have registered, you can deposit some money into the bank account of the exchange, to fund your Rand wallet. You will use these funds to buy your first bitcoin!
  • When you have done the deposit, it will be showing in your Rand wallet on the bitcoin exchange website. (This can be the same day, or sometimes up to 2 business days if you are a different bank.)
  • When your Rand balance is showing on the exchange website, you can use that to buy bitcoin. When you buy bitcoin your Rand balance will go down, and your bitcoin balance will go up.

You can start with ANY amount you would like to risk. There is no rules as to how much you need to start with in bitcoin. If you would like to start with R100, that is totally fine, its totally up to you.

What Exchange Platforms should you use?

It is good idea to ONLY use exchange platforms that are trusted and have already established themselves in the cryptocurrency space. It is best to use a bitcoin exchange that has a local office in South Africa, so that you can easily deposit and withdraw Rand using your local bank account.

We have created a page where we display some of the exchanges that meet those criteria, and come highly recommended. You can follow our step-by-step guides for the exchanges if you need assistance. If you feel that you need one-on-one assistance, please chat directly with me on Telegram, my username is @BitcoinZAR

View the exchanges that we recommend here: Bitcoin Exchanges to buy Bitcoin in South Africa

Bitcoin Trading

Bitcoin TradingBitcoin is s digital currency, so people trade it like Forex, and the two currencies being traded in South Africa are Rand and bitcoin.

Every day 24/7, South Africa traders buy and sell bitcoin on bitcoin exchanges as it fluctuates in price, to try and make a profit.

To make a profit, you must sell bitcoin for more than you paid for it. Traders will try to buy at low prices, wait for the price to increase significantly, and the sell at the higher price.

There is no way to predict the short term price of bitcoin, so there is no way to know when is the best time to buy or the best time to sell bitcoin.

Trading is very difficult to do it wall as a full time job. It is extremely difficult to make money consistently with trading. It is not advisable to risk a lot of money with trading bitcoin unless you alread have some sort of training in trading and existing financial background already.

Since it is so easy to lose money trading bitcoin, we think its better to rather try and invest in bitcoin instead of trading it every day.

join binance

Investing in bitcoin

Bitcoin is extremely volatile in price, but history has shown that over a long term period, its price is volatile in an upward direction.

Stock to Flow

Investing in bitcoin is similar to investing in something like gold, property or even fine art. To ‘invest’, you buy the asset. There is no income or earnings you get from owning it, but you can sell it after it has appreciated in value and realize a profit.

People who call themselves ‘bitcoin investors‘ are simply buying and holding for long term before they sell. They do this in order to take advantage of long term price appreciation of bitcoin.

Another way people ‘invest’ in bitcoin is to treat it like a long term savings account, which means regular purchases that are put away for a long time period. By treating bitcoin like a long term savings plan you are adding to your bitcoin balance each month, while at the same time, the total value of your balance goes up over the long term.

For more detail on how to invest in bitcoin, read this post: Easy bitcoin investing in South Africa

luno exchange

Why don’t I get a passive income from bitcoin?

Scammers and fraudsters will tell you tall stories about earning a passive income from bitcoin. This is a lie they tell in order for you to send them your bitcoin. Once they have it, they will block you and keep your bitcoin.

There is NO interest, and NO daily, weekly or monthly returns with bitcoin!  Be extremely suspicious of people who say that there is, they could be trying to recruit you to a scam!

The only people who tell you that there is daily, weekly or monthly earnings with bitcoin is because they want to scam you, or about to sign you up to a pyramid scheme.

For more information on bitcoin agent or trader scams, click here

The first thing you need to understand, is that bitcoin is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme. You might get lucky and make some money fast, but this is not how it generally works.

Bitcoin is high risk Although it is possible that you can make a lot of money with bitcoin, it is also possible that you can lose money too. Bitcoin is considered high risk. Please do your own research and decide if you can afford to risk money on bitcoin.

Beware of bitcoin mining websites

bitcoin mining scam south africaAlmost all mining websites on the internet are MLM Pyramid schemes or scams.

You will never earn more bitcoin from a mining website, than you use to join and buy hashing power. You will therefore lose more bitcoin than you earn on these websites.

You will be left with two options. 1) Walk away and take the loss. OR 2) Recruit (scam?) other users into the scheme and earn a commission from them joining. This puts the new people into the exactly same money losing position as you. This is how most pyramid schemes work.

It is best to rather stay away from all bitcoin mining websites, and rather just buy bitcoin instead.

The only reason why anyone would want you to join a mining website, is so that they can profit from you joining. Don’t fall for the trap!

You can read some of our other posts on this here: Cloud Mining and Mining schemes in South Africa, and bitcoin mining in South Africa.You might also like to read about bitcoin scams in South Africa and the sick people who promote them