Cryptocurrency is a big topic, and it gets confusing fast once you start digging into the details. These guides exist to explain the major concepts in plain language and cut through the terminology.
They are grouped by where you are right now: still deciding, about to make your first purchase, or already holding crypto and wondering what to do with it. If you want to know what a blockchain actually is, how to set up a wallet, what the fees really cost you or how staking works, start below.
Please note that some links on CryptoVantage.com are affiliate links. We may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you click through our links and make a purchase from one of our partners.
Where to Get Started with Crypto
Before getting started with your first Bitcoin wallet or cryptocurrency exchange account, it makes sense to learn about crypto from the ground up. This is a completely different way to view online payments and money itself, so it’s important to understand the key differences between cryptocurrency and something like PayPal or your traditional bank account before you start playing around with real money.
The guides outlined on this page will help you understand every facet of the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry, and you’ll be ready to hold some Bitcoin or spend it at an online store in no time. You’ll also learn about some of the more futuristic use cases for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, such as decentralized applications and smart contracts.
Why Getting a Wallet is a Good First Step
Anyone who is getting started in the Bitcoin space for the first time will want to read a guide to cryptocurrency before they get started. Buying crypto has become about as easy as opening a brokerage account. Holding it safely has not: the part where you are responsible for your own keys still asks more of you than any app you already use, and that is the part that costs people money.
To get started with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, you’ll first want to understand the concept of a crypto wallet. This wallet stores the private keys that are associated with your cryptocurrency holdings. You can think of it as the password for your cryptocurrency account. However, a key difference in the way cryptocurrency works is that you must take full responsibility over the security and access to your cryptocurrency private keys. If you lose your private keys, then you lose access to your money. Another way to think of it is as cash. If you lose your wallet and it had $100 in it, then it’s not like you can call up your bank or credit card provider to get your money back.
Of course, you’ll need to interact with someone else who has some cryptocurrency to send to you before you can have any in your wallet. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies work like any other form of money, which means you can simply exchange them for goods or services if you’d like. In practice, though, almost everyone starts the same way: they connect a bank account to a centralized exchange and buy their first crypto asset there.
There is a ton of mystery around Satoshi Nakamoto, who was the inventor of Bitcoin, but it’s important to remember that the real world identity of this person or group of people doesn’t actually matter. Bitcoin is a completely open-source, permissionless, and decentralized system. Nobody has to trust Satoshi in order for the system to operate properly and provide value to millions or billions of people around the world.
Here’s a little crash course to get you started with cryptocurrency:
- Five tips for getting started in Cryptocurrency
- What is Blockchain?
- How to Set up a Basic Cryptocurrency Wallet
- How to Set up a Cryptocurrency Exchange for Beginners
- How to Buy Bitcoin with a Prepaid Card
- How to Buy Bitcoin with American Express
- How to Get Cryptocurrency for Free
- What Are Maker and Taker Fees?
- Every Fee You Will Actually Pay
- Is Bitcoin Legal in my State?
- What is Proof-of-Stake? What Coins Can I Stake?
- What’s the Best Crypto Wallet for Me? Three Great Options
History of Cryptocurrency
Although many people view the beginning of cryptocurrency as the launch of the Bitcoin network in January 2009, the reality is that the underlying technology was decades in the making. There were various proposals for electronic cash systems in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, and Bitcoin became the first one that worked at scale. Many of the digital currency systems created before Bitcoin failed due to their reliance on centralized services. Bitcoin creator, an anonymous individual or group of individuals called Satoshi Nakamoto, solved this issue by enabling a network of pseudo-anonymous miners to handle the transactions. Satoshi’s ability to solve the double-spending problem in a decentralized manner allowed Bitcoin to resist the many pitfalls of centralization in digital cash systems, namely being influenced or completely shut down by regulators.
Once Bitcoin had been operating for a few years, it began to gain value among internet users. Perhaps it was nothing more than a collectible at first. Eventually, people started trading Bitcoin for goods and services, such as the infamous order of two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin in May 2010 — a quantity worth hundreds of millions of dollars at today’s price.
Here are some of the important things you should know about the history of crypto:
Ask CryptoVantage Series
The Ask CryptoVantage series answers the questions readers actually send us — the practical ones that come up once you have money on the line and the official documentation is not helping. Each answer is short and specific rather than a general overview.
When in doubt, just Ask CryptoVantage:
- Why Do I Need a Crypto Wallet?
- Is There a Way to Buy Bitcoin with Zero Fees?
- Why is Buying Bitcoin So Hard?
- What’s the Best Basic Strategy for Bitcoin Investing?
- How Long Does it Take to Send Bitcoin?
- When is the Best Time to Buy Bitcoin?
- Do I Have to Buy a Whole Bitcoin?
- What Are Recovery Seed Phrases? Are They Universal?
- How Much Bitcoin is Too Much?
- What Are All the Fees I’ll Encounter When Using Bitcoin?
- How Can I Incorporate Bitcoin into My Daily Life?
- Why is Bitcoin Important for Society?
- I Bought Bitcoin, Now What?
- What is Etherscan?
Already Own Crypto, Now What?
If you already own some cryptocurrency, then you may be interested in learning what you can actually do with your newly-acquired crypto assets. Whether you plan on simply holding your crypto assets as speculative investments, interacting with decentralized applications, or doing some online shopping, we have plenty of guides to help you along the way in your cryptocurrency journey.
Even if you’re only interested in holding your Bitcoin for a long period of time, you may still want to learn how to take your cryptocurrency off of an exchange and into your own wallet. After all, you aren’t really using cryptocurrency in the way in which it was originally intended if you just leave your coins on Coinbase or some other centralized exchange. If you’re going to be in the cryptocurrency ecosystem for the long haul, then you’ll want to learn how to take control of your own private keys and securely store them in a wallet. This process comes with a large amount of personal responsibility, but our guides can help you learn how to securely store your Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies using multisignature addresses or hardware wallets. We’ll also help anyone interested in spending their Bitcoin with an early introduction to the Lightning Network and other layer-two protocols.
Here are some resources for your next steps in cryptocurrency:
- How to Send Cryptocurrency
- Custodial Wallets vs Non-Custodial Wallets
- Everything You Need to Know About Stablecoins
- What Are Bitcoin ATMs?
- What is the Bitcoin Lightning Network?
- Beginner’s Basics for Trading Cryptocurrency Online
- Public vs Private: Everything you need to know about cryptocurrency keys
- How to Spot Cryptocurrency Scams
- What is a Paper Wallet?
- How to Back Up Your Crypto Wallet
- What Are the Best Alternatives to Coinbase?
- How Long Does Coinbase Verification Take?
- The 10 Safest Cryptocurrencies
Understanding the Market
- What Does Liquidity Mean for Cryptocurrency?
- How to Deal with Cryptocurrency Volatility
- Understanding Cryptocurrency Market Capitalization
- What is Crypto Spot Trading?
- What Are P2P Exchanges?
- Does Questrade Offer Crypto?
- Can You Buy Crypto on eTrade?
- What Are Bitcoin ETFs?
- What Are the Best Stocks to Gain Crypto Exposure?
- What is Binance Spot Grid Trading?
- What is a DeFi Flash Loan?
- Can You Trade Crypto on Robinhood?
- What Are the Best Cryptos to Day Trade?
- How Do I Buy COIN Stock?
Free Crypto, Staking & More
- Crypto Staking Guide
- Is It Possible to Stake Crypto Using a Ledger Wallet?
- How to Pick a Good Staking Validator
- Where to Stake Shiba Inu
- How to Transfer Crypto from Coinbase to Kraken
- What is APY in Crypto?
- How to Earn Interest on Crypto
- How to Stake Cardano ADA
- What Kind of Return Can I Expect From Staking Crypto?
Everything Else
- How to Send and Receive Crypto Using a Ledger Wallet
- What Are Cryptocurrency Bridges?
- How to Send Crypto From Coinbase to MetaMask
- How to Send Crypto From Binance to Kraken
- Everything You Need to Know About Ethereum Gas Fees
- What is a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization)
- What Are the Best ETH Trackers?
- What is Crypto FUD?
- What is a Crypto Airdrop?
- How to Buy Bitcoin Anonymously with Cash
The Best of Crypto
Want to skip the mediocre crypto products?
These pages rank products with our Beacon Score, which measures each one against published criteria and then lets the score decide the order — not the commission:
- Best Crypto Exchanges — ranked on what a $1,000 buy actually costs, not on headline fee percentages
- Best Crypto Wallets — ranked on whether you can recover your funds without the vendor
- Best Crypto Casinos — ranked on whether the licence can be verified, not just claimed
- Best Crypto Sportsbooks — ranked on bonus terms you can measure before you deposit
Also in the Best Of section:
Country Buying Guides
Buying crypto is not the same everywhere. Which exchanges will accept you, how verification works and what you owe at tax time all change depending on where you live. These guides cover the rules country by country:
Frequently Asked Questions
The legality of cryptocurrency varies from country to country and can even change between more local jurisdictions. For most countries, the main points of regulation are identity verification for users on exchanges and tax collected. Most regulators simply want to make sure that exchanges are preventing the ability of their platforms to be used for money laundering, in addition to making sure that everyone is paying their taxes. You can read our full guide on the legality of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies around the world.
Know Your Customer is a way to refer to various regulations around customer identities on exchange platforms. The exchanges must do everything in their power to make sure their platforms are not being used for illicit financial activity, such as money laundering and terrorist financing, by collecting a large amount of personal information about their users. Read our full guide on Know Your Customer regulations.
HODL started as a typo. In December 2013, with the Bitcoin price falling hard, a user named GameKyuubi posted a rambling late-night thread on the BitcoinTalk forum titled “I AM HODLING”. He meant “holding”. The misspelling stuck, and “hold on for dear life” was invented afterwards as a backronym to fit it — it was never the original meaning.
Today HODL is shorthand for refusing to sell through a downturn, whatever the price does in the short term. You can read more about the history of HODL here.
DeFi stands for decentralized finance. The definition is loose, and like “blockchain” and “smart contracts” before it, the word has been stretched by marketing until it covers almost anything. That said, the general idea of DeFi is to replace many functions of the traditional banking system with decentralized applications built on top of blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. You can learn more about DeFi in our full guide on the topic.
Crypto tokens are the types of crypto assets that are built on top of another base blockchain platform. For example, a large number of tokens issued on Ethereum are created via the ERC-20 standard. These tokens usually represent some real-world asset or are necessary to access specific decentralized applications. You can read our full guide on crypto tokens.
Using some of the links on this page would be a good start.
The order that works: read enough to understand what you are buying, buy a small amount on a reputable exchange, then practise the basics — send it to yourself, and move it into a wallet you control. Doing those two things once teaches you more than another week of reading.
Just remember to start with very small amounts of crypto. The practice run is the point, not the position.
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Last Updated Article: March 2, 2025 by
