Guide #2: Buy Altcoins With Bitcoin, And Making Transfers

Buying altcoins with bitcoin:

Step one. Find an exchange that the altcoin you want to buy is on. Bittrex is by far the best exchange to use, it has a straightforward and quite simple interface. However, not all altcoins are on one exchange. For example, IOTA right now is only available on the exchange Bitfinex so you'll have to create an account on there as well if you want to purchase some IOTA. This is most likely going to change in the future as IOTA is still a new coin and most markets haven't picked it up yet, but you get the jist of it.

Step two. Now you want to buy the altcoin, but how? First, you have to transfer your bitcoin that you bought on coinbase, to the exchange that your altcoin is on. Yeah, it sounds confusing, but once you make your first transfer you'll realize it's actually extremely easy. First, make sure you created an account on whatever exchange you are using (for this guide, I'll be using Bittrex as the example going forward). Depending on the exchange, you may have to verify your personal information before being allowed to trade. I know Bittrex requires a basic verification of your personal info + SSN, but Bitfinex does not.

Step three. You need to find your unique BTC wallet deposit address on Bittrex. This is quite simple. When logged in, click on 'Wallets' at the top of the page and you will see all of the available wallets on the exchange. At the top, you should see BTC. This is the bitcoin wallet. Press the plus sign button on the BTC slot and it'll bring up a small window. If this is your first time doing this, you will see an option to generate your wallet deposit address. Obviously, generate it. This process doesn't take too long, so just be patient. Next, before we move on to step four, I will explain a little bit of what a wallet address exactly is for future reference.

LECTURE: A wallet address is, of course, an address that you can send funds to from other exchanges to receive money on that particular wallet/exchange. For example, on Coinbase I can send $20 worth of bitcoin to my bitcoin wallet address on Bittrex, and I will receive those funds on Bittrex after a short amount of time (usually 30 minutes to an hour, as your transaction has to be processed through the blockchain first). When you are sending funds to a wallet, PLEASE double check (maybe even triple check) to confirm that you are sending funds to the wallet that corresponds with the funds you are sending. This means if you are sending bitcoin funds, make sure they're being sent to a BITCOIN wallet address. If you send your bitcoin funds to an ETHEREUM wallet address, YOU WILL LOSE YOUR MONEY AND YOU WILL NOT GET IT BACK. The same thing goes for about anything else. Are you sending Litecoin? Send it to your Litecoin wallet address. Sending Ethereum? Send it to your Ethereum wallet address. By now you should understand this whole process of wallets and sending funds.

Step four. OK, so now you should have your bitcoin deposit address that you just generated on Bittrex. Keep this tab open for now, we are going back to coinbase so we can send our funds over to Bittrex. When logged into coinbase, press the 'Accounts' tab at the top of the page. Here, you can see your currencies, as well as the option to send them. Verify that you have the Bitcoin funds you previously purchased, and press the 'send' button. This brings up a window that is going to ask us for an address. If you haven't already figured it out by now- yes, you are going to copy and paste the bitcoin deposit address you generated on Bittrex in this field. There will be another field where you are asked how much of your bitcoin you want to send to the address. If you want to send all of it, simply press the "USE MAX" button and it will automatically input all the bitcoin you have on coinbase. Verify that everything is accurate one last time, and hit the send button. Confirm the transaction, and now you have just made your first transfer to another exchange!

Step five. At this point, you don't really need to do anything else besides be patient. First, your withdrawal has to be confirmed on Coinbase- which usually takes around 20-30 minutes. Once this is done, it will show up on Bittrex where it will once again be confirmed for another 20-30 minutes. Eventually, on the wallets page on Bittrex you should see the amount you sent over pop up in your 'estimated wallet value' at the top of the page. If it's a bit lower than what you sent, don't worry- this is most likely just transaction fees being deducted or the price of bitcoin fluctuating which caused your bitcoin to lose some of its value (which is natural).

Step six. Once your bitcoin has deposited into Bittrex, you can now buy altcoins! Simply head over to https://bittrex.com/home/markets and you can scroll through all of the coins or search for one that you already know. MAKE SURE YOU'RE LOOKING AT THE BITCOIN MARKETS SECTION AND NOT ANY OF THE OTHERS. Next, I will be doing a small example to show you how to spend your bitcoin on an altcoin.

(TRADING EXAMPLE):

For this example I will be attempting to buy NEO on Bittrex. DO NOT BUY NEO JUST BECAUSE I AM, THIS IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN EXAMPLE TO SHOW YOU HOW TRADING IS DONE ON AN EXCHANGE.

So, on this page: https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-NEO We see a graph right smack in the middle of the screen which shows the past and present price fluctuations of the coin. On the far right, we see the coin's last sold price, the bitcoin volume, what buyers are bidding on it, and what sellers are asking for it. We also see the 24hour high price of the coin, as well as the 24hour low price.

Obviously, we want to buy this coin. Right under the graph on the left, we see a section that says "TRADING" and there is an even smaller section that allows us to buy NEO. So, I want to buy some NEO, what am I going to do?

First, I'm going to click on the 'Price' tab in the slot that asks for my bid. This drops down a menu of three options- 'Last', 'Bid', 'Ask'. But what do these mean? 'Last' means the price the coin was last sold at. Most of the time, you want to go with this option as it is the most efficient way for your buy order to be filled, but depending on how hard the coin is fluctuating you may have to select some of the other choices. Next, 'Bid' means the price will automatically be set to what the highest bidder is bidding on the coin. This usually translates to the lowest possible price to buy in at, which means your order may not get filled for a while. Finally, we have 'Ask' which is the fastest way to process your buy order. In-fact, it's instant. Hitting this button will put your price at what sellers are asking for, which will result in an immediate but slightly more expensive purchase. So, you'll need to figure out what price you want to buy in at before proceeding.

Above the 'Bid' slot we have the 'Units' slot. This will tell us how much of the coin we can get based on how much bitcoin we want to spend on it- but first we need to tell the system how much bitcoin we want to spend. If you want to spend all of your bitcoin on this coin, all you need to do is hit the 'MAX' button. This will automatically calculate the amount you can get of the coin with the price you inputted, as well as the amount of bitcoin you have to spend. If you only want to put a little bit of your bitcoin, you'll have to manually input the amount in the very last slot where it says 'Total' and has a Bitcoin symbol. Once everything looks good, hit the 'Buy' button and your buy order will be listed! If you want to cancel any future orders you make, visit https://bittrex.com/History or simply press the 'Orders' tab at the top of the page which will take you to your current open orders- as well as your previous orders.

That's pretty much everything. I understand there may be some things I might have overlooked or explained poorly, so if you have any questions, please ask them! It's better to be safe than sorry. Thank you for taking the time to read my guide and I wish you success on your journey in crypto.