What you need to know about Cryptocurrencies and How to Start Investing in M'sia

What you need to know about Cryptocurrencies and How to Start Investing in M’sia

If you have been following the global financial news, you might have heart the cryptocurrencies since last year as within two months of time, the price of Bitcoin has leaped about 120% and Bitcoin reached its all-time high at USD41,973, or a 157% spike. In the same time, the price of Ethereum the second largest market capitalisation is also increased by 101% and Ethereum hit its all-time high at USD2,042, before dipping 18% to USD1,567 yesterday, 3 March.

Here is how you can learn more about these Cryptocurrency:

Cryptocurrency is the next big thing

Just like the internet and social media were the future for people in the 1990s and 2000s, the currencies which do not rely on central financial intermediaries has increased from 906% from USD149 billion to USD1.5 trillion since the Movement Control Order (MCO) started on 18 March 2020.

Mass Cryptocurrency adoption Soon

While PayPal’s 360 million user might be fuelling the current bull run and other hedge fund manager has reversed their position on Bitcoin and started to equate to digital gold too Where investing in Cryptocurrency is a hedge against inflation as US dollar and other flat currencies are being printed more to aid the countries economies admist the pandemic. On 8 February, Tesla announced that they will be investing USD1.5 billion worth of its company cash into Bitcoin, surging the cryptocurrency to a new high at about USD47,400 then a 20% increase within half a day.

What is Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency which was invented in 2009 and it was created out of the frustration after the global financial crisis in the late 200s and it serves as an online currency which is not controlled by any organisation or government and it only takes a few minutes for the transaction to go through which usually it takes few days for money to go across border. Every transaction comes in a form of a digital block. After it is filled up with transaction information, it will be clamped onto the previous block, which makes the data chain together in chronological order.Each Bitcoin is created by ‘miners’ who use their computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles while verifying transactions and maintaining the public ledger. Only 21 million Bitcoins will ever be created.

Different cryptocurrencies have different functions. While Bitcoin is seen as a deflationary currency, Ethereum — on the other hand — is prone to inflation. There is no fixed amount of Ethereum in circulation. Ethereum’s specialty is its ability to offer smart contracts, a function that can be seen as a disruption to trillion-dollar industries, such as banks and insurance.

Risk of Cryptocurrency

The risk in investing here are the trades 24 hours and you could potentially wake up from sleep and see yourself losing a big chunk of your investment and the stock market is traded based on performance of a company which can be analysed and understood and for example on 11 January, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority put out a stark statement warning investors to be prepared to lose their money in cryptocurrency. The statement alone wiped out USD200 billion from the total value of all cryptocurrencies combined. Bitcoin’s price plunged over 20% following the news.

How to Invest by different exchanges available

There are only three cryptocurrency exhanges recognised by the Securities Commission (SC) Malaysia.

They are:
– SINEGY
– Tokenize Technology
– Luno

And it allow user to trade other than Bitcoin and Ethereum and Luno is the most popular exchange in malaysia which has about six million users from 40 different countries and they have offices in the UK, South Africa, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and more. As for international exchanges, you can try Binance and eToro, among others. Different platforms have different trading fees, but the ones I have mentioned here have relatively lower fees compared to other platforms.

How You Can start Trading

You can start trading on Luno which it accepts deposits from local banks easily and it is also a great cryptocurrency wallet where it can be a bridge for you to trade on other international exchanges by transferring coins from Luno wallet and you can simply sign up an account on Luno where you will have to authenticate your identity by submitting photos of your identification card and a selfie. After that the account will take one to two days before you can finally start trading.

Only invest the money you are willing to lose

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a terrifying enemy to a beginner trader, especially to those who immediately make money from cryptocurrency investments. The euphoria of making 20% of their capital gain within a short amount of time could be detrimental to the soundness of a new trader’s mindset. They might think this trend will continue indefinitely, causing them to take little precautionary measures.

Tools You will require

TradingView is an excellent free programme, where you can set up complicated charts as well as simplify them to show only metrics you can comprehend. While for starters, you should get familiar with the price range of measure tools which help you to calculate and visualise how much profit or loss you have made.

There are hundreds of tutorials online on how to use TradingView. It is a good idea to get familiarised with it. CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko, CoinDesk, and messari.io are cryptocurrency sites that house all data pertinent to the coins, such as their market capitalisations, trading volumes and transaction counts within the last 24 hours, and more.

Follow Trusted Cryptocurrency trader on Youtube, Twitter or blogs

If you are a beginner, YouTube is a great place to start as the visual cues and simpler language can help accelerate your understanding of cryptocurrency investment.

Have a support System

As a beginner trader, you are bound to make mistakes and if you follow what is mentioned your losses would not be severe and it is good idea to have a support system while investing in cryptocurrency.