The goal of the Art of DeFi is to on-board people who are new Crypto. If this is the future of finance, let's make sure we get as many people on board as possible.
Most of the action in Crypto is happening in DeFi which is not happening on centralized exchanges, but you have to get your money into crypto somehow.
Centralized exchanges in order of how much I trust them
Coinbase (Referral Link) $10
Coinbase Pro (you can use the same account as your Coinbase account)
Newbie Route
Set a limit order on a token you want to buy (either with a USD pair or USDC pair)
You’ll pay a fee, (Cheaper than a market buy though) you could do the same thing on any of the other exchanges. I prefer Coinbase because they haven’t been hacked yet and have insurance.
Preferred Route- Buy USDC Send to wallet, do defi stuff
Gemini (Referral Link) $10
Kraken
Dharma (Backed by Coinbase, but uses Uniswap as the exchange) $50 referral
Voyager (They are painfully slow to get dollars to buy, but if you leave crypto there they will give a percentage return on what’s there) $50 referral
Bittrex
Binance
You can keep your funds here (and a lot of people do, but a lot of people say that if you don’t own the keys you don’t own the crypto, these are all called non-custodial) Keeping funds on the exchange is like keeping money at the bank, if you forget your password you can reset it, if you have a problem you can call someone (Sometimes, Most of these exchanges have notoriously bad customer service)
If you want to get into DeFi, you’ll need a wallet, and you’ll need to send the coins you bought to the wallet. (Make sure your wallet supports the coins you’re trying to send, otherwise they’re gone)
Bitcoin- Original blockchain currency meme is digital gold
Ethereum – Original Smart Contract blockchain – meme Triple Point asset (Capital Asset when staked (meaning you get a yield), Currency in the Ethereum Ecosystem (if you want to do something on Ethereum you have to pay in ETH), Collateral almost all of DeFI (Decentralized finance) allows you to use ETH as collateral
ERC20- An Ethereum based token (YFI, SUSHI, UNI)
AMM – Aggregated Market Maker (An exchange without an order book)
Wallet – Place to store your crypto
Smart Contract – A piece of code on Ethereum (or other smart contract capable chain) that allows transactions to happen
NFT – Non Fungible Token – Think Baseball cards, collectible things on the blockchain (Crypto Kitties, NBA TopShots Etc)
DAO – Decentralized Autonomous Organization – A group of people who are working together to accomplish something, most of the DeFi protocols are operating under one of these or trying to. Decisions have to be voted on by people who hold governance tokens
DYOR – Do your own Research
Exploit/Rug Pull/Hack - Bank Robbery
FUD - Bad News
FOMO - Fear of missing out
HODL - Hold on for Dear Life
Dapp- Decentralized application
Yield Farming – Loaning your crypto to a dapp so that they can get people to use their dapp, in return you get some tokens of the dapp
Liquidity provider – See above, minus the free tokens
Stable Coin Coins that try to stay to $1 (USDC , DAI, Tusd, Gusd)
Fork – A split of a token (Bitcoin has a lot of forks, none of them are worth your time, Neither is Ethereum classic)
Staking – Using your crypto to secure the network (On Proof of Stake Chains) Ethereum is migrating to proof of stake
Market Cap – Price Per Token * Amount of tokens outstanding. A coin may just be $0.05, but if there are a trillion of them out there that may not be a good deal because it will take way more money to move the price, verse a token that costs $30k and only has 30K tokens outstanding
I’m not a connoisseur of these, as I’ve only used 4, there are a lot out there, and if you chose another one just make sure it works with wallet connect as most good dapps work with wallet connect
MetaMask, browser plugin, and mobile app for them most part what everyone uses (not 100% safe, but neither is driving)
You will get a private key here, and you have to write it down and save it some where safe!
Argent – Smart Contract app that lets you pick people to sign off on password resets, and large transactions - Mobile app (Because this is a smart contract wallet using it can be more expensive sometimes because it has to use extra gas)
Coinbase Wallet
This is a multi-currency wallet that can be used like any other wallet and will allow you to connect to a number of Dapps
This is a smart contract wallet that is plugged directly into Uniswap. You can’t use it (yet) in other areas of Defi, but it’s not a bad place to onboard USDC into the Ethereum Ecosystem
There is no tech support here, you can get help in discord channels of these apps, but it can be hit or miss.
These are all on Ethereum (And they’re expensive to use right now)
Uniswap.io Trade any Ethereum asset
Sushiswap.fi Trade any Ethereum asset
https://loopring.org/#/ (on Layer 2 so you need a wallet on this L2, and setting it up can be expensive, but after that it’s nearly free)
https://matcha.xyz Dex aggregator – looks across lots of exchanges for the best price
1inch Another DEX
Zapper.fi Portfolio tool, but also allows you to track all your wallets and trades
Zerion.com Portfolio tool, but also allows you to track all your wallets and trades
There are a lot more exchanges than this but these are the main ones
https://messari.io (Anything on here is good)
https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/-guide-1-starting-with-bankless (Ethereum only basically)
https://www.rekt.news (good stories about hacks, I don’t understand most of it, but it lets you know about what’s blowing up)
https://thedefiant.substack.com
https://thedailygwei.substack.com (Ethereum only basically)
https://www.theblockcrypto.com
XRP
Bitcoin forks
Dogecoin
EOS
Tron
NEO
There are a lot more on the not buy list than the buy list, but I think that you’ll be happier buying at things that you don’t have to worry about.
Satoshi Nakamoto
Creator of Bitcoin no one knows who it is
Vitalik Buterin
Creator of Ethereum
Roger Ver
Says he created Bitcoin… Total tool
CZ
Owns Major crypto exchange Binance (I don’t trust him)
Nothing on this site is financial advice. Don't invest anything you're not ok with losing.
I’m convinced this is the future of finance, and likely a ton of other things. It’s frothy now (02/20/2021) but not as frothy as it was at the top of the last peak. I wouldn’t put money you’d be devastated to lose in the market, and we could have a pretty big pull back in the next month-ish, but I’m not sure how high we go before that pullback happens… Worst case scenario you buy a lot now, and sell it into something else and use that loss as a writeoff on taxes next year.
Ethereum
SUSHI or UNI to get exchange exposure
ALPHA, YFI, or RGT to get Yield Farming exposure
AAVE or MKR for lending exposure
DOT, or Atom if you think ETH isn’t going to be the most dominant chain in crypto
MATIC or STAKE if you want to be on Layer 2 being successful
If you want to have BTC or Ethereum you can go to Tokensets.com and buy the ETH/BTC RSI or EMA token, that will automatically rebalance based on the RSI or EMA of BTC to ETH
If you want to get broad access to DeFi, in an index you can buy DPI it has the top 10 Defi tokens and rebalances each month
Some of the more flexible DeFi apps on Ethereum may be able to have their foot in Eth and another chain so I kind of view investing in those tokens as a hedge against ETH not being the most dominate chain over the next 5 years.