The year of 2017 is definitely the year of crypto, especially that the market capital of cryptocurrencies has reached its all time high during the past week, recording around $28.7 billion according to data from coinmarketcap.com. Many cryptocurrency traders, or more precisely “altcoin flippers”, as myself have made some good profits during the past few weeks. I managed to double my cryptocurrency trading capital during March.
I have been flipping altcoins (We will define altcoin flipping later on during this tutorial) since 2013. I traded across many cryptocurrency exchanges including Poloniex, Hitbtc, Bittrex and Cryptsy which ended by an exit scam by its owner Paul Vernon. Throughout this tutorial, I will present you with a simple-to-follow guide that will help you start “altcoin flipping” which can help you make some money online.
Important disclaimer: Trading cryptocurrencies is highly risky due to high volatility of prices of most coins. Constantly profitable trading is not impossible, yet it requires continuous studying of candlestick charts, oscillators and indicators; researching through the technologies behind various cryptos to determine the most promising ones; and following up news related to adoption, protocol updates and mainstream mentions. Always try to trade only what you can afford to lose, until you develop the necessary skills and knowledge to risk a larger capital.
What is Altcoin Flipping?
Altcoin flipping refers to day trading of various altcoins. If you are flipping altcoins, then you are buying and selling them for bitcoin, rather than fiat currencies. Note that most altcoins can only be bought via bitcoin, not via fiat currencies. Only a handful of altcoins can be bought via fiat currencies including ethereum, monero, ripple, ethereum classic, dash and a few more.
Altcoin flipping is a form of cryptocurrency trading approach followed by many cryptocurrency traders and speculators. When you trade altcoins for bitcoin, you can use cryptocurrency exchanges such as Poloniex.com, Hitbtc.com and Bittrex.com without having to pass through any verification processes to deposit or withdraw your bitcoin capital.
So, now as we know what altcoin flipping is, let us start our tutorial:
- Acquiring Bitcoin To Start Trading and Flipping Altcoins:
The great thing about altcoin flipping, and cryptocurrency trading in general, is that you can start trading with a small amount; even with $10-20 worth of bitcoin. So, you can either buy some bitcoin using a service like Paxful.com, which enables you to buy small amounts of bitcoin using credit cards, paypal money, western union, amazon gift cards and other payment methods, or earn some bitcoin through many ways that can help you acquire a small amount of bitcoin ($10-20) to start your altcoin flipping adventure. Here are a few examples of ways to earn some free bitcoin: - Mining Bytecoin using Minergate With Your PC:
Minergate is a cryptocurrency mining service that offers a simple software that can enable you to mine some altcoins using your PC. Go to Minergate’s website, create an account, download and install the software. After installing the software, launch it. On the main interface of Minergate’s client, click on the “Miner” button, where you will be prompted with a group of coins to choose which one you want to mine as shown on the below screenshot:
The best option, according to current market prices, is to mine Bytecoin (BCN) as its price has rose from 4 satoshis to 14 satoshis. My laptop is an HP iIntel Core i5-5200U with Intel HD Graphics 5500 (2.2 GHz, 3 MB cache, 2 cores) and 16GB of DDR3 Ram. I can mine around 2,500 Bytecoins a day with this laptop, which is worth around 40 cents. With a newer PC, you can make up to 70 cents per day mining Bytecoin.
We have presented before a detailed article about altcoin mining using a PC or a laptop, please refer to it for more details.
- Bitcoin and Altcoin Faucets:
Faucets are websites that reward their visitors with small amounts of bitcoins or altcoins at regular intervals. Faucet owners profit from this business model via advertising, especially that faucets attract a large number of visitors who come for some free money! You can find hundreds, if not thousands, of cryptocurrency faucets by just using Google, but pay attention to two important things: - Always use faucets that have good reviews that prove they really pay their visitors.
- Some faucets can contain malware and some annoying pop-up adds. I would not recommend using such faucets.
I will only present you with two reliable faucets that really pay their visitors to start with: Moonbitcoin and Moondogecoin , but do your research, you will surely find many others. If you spend 3-4 hours browsing faucets, you can accumulate around $1 worth of crypto. - Bitcoin Paid-to-Click (PTC) Sites:
PTC sites are a group of sites that reward their users for viewing ads. There are currently many websites that offer bitcoin PTC ads, but as we mentioned in faucets, always do your research before using any PTC service to make sure you will actually be paid for your time and effort.
BTCClicks is a reliable PTC service that pays you for viewing ads in bitcoin. You can find many other similar sites by searching through bitcointalk.org and talkgold.com - Creating Accounts on Cryptocurrency Exchanges:
It is advised to use more than one cryptocurrency exchange. For the purpose of this tutorial, we will use three exchanges; Poloniex, Hitbtc and Bittrex. Note the following: - Create an account on each one of the aforementioned exchanges. Create a strong password for each account. Don’t use words or phrases, instead use a randomly generated password. I recommend using an online password generator like passwordsgenerator.net to create a random password of a minimum of 16 characters.
- Use two-factor authentication to maximize the security of your accounts.
- Some coins are only available for trading on an exchange, but not the other, so you will need to use them all in special conditions, but I recommend using Poloniex for most of your altcoin flipping trades.
3- Depositing Your Bitcoin To Your Exchange’s Wallet:
To start trading, you will have to deposit your bitcoin to the exchange’s wallet. I am going to show you how to deposit your bitcoin to your wallet on Poloniex: - On your Poloniex account page, press Balances -> Deposits and Withdrawals, on the top right part of your main account page.
- You will be prompted with a page that includes a list of all coins available on the exchange’s platform. Beside “bitcoin”, click on the “Deposit” link, your wallet’s deposit address will appear as shown on the below screenshot.
- Use this address to send your bitcoins to. Note that your coins will not be added to your wallet on Poloniex, except after the transaction has received three confirmations. Sometimes, the deposit takes a long time to appear on your account, around 6-8 hours in some cases, so don’t worry if this happens to you; the coins you will eventually be added to your account.
- Placing Buying Orders:
To start trading crypto on Poloniex, after your bitcoin deposit has been added successfully to your account, click on the “Exchange” button on the top left corner of your account’s home page. Your will be prompted with a list of all available coins for trading. Note that on Poloniex, there are 4 markets; the bitcoin, ethereum, monero and USD markets. For altcoin flipping, you will only use the bitcoin trading market.
Now, let me show you how to buy your first altcoins: - For the purpose of this tutorial, I will show you how to buy some synero (AMP). So, on the list of coins available on the right side of the page, click on the synero (AMP) market as shown on the below screenshot:
Note: there are 2 buy order types: ordinary buy order and stop-limit buy order. We will buy synero using an ordinary buy order.
- Use the box on the left hand-side which is titled “Buy AMP”. You have to fill 2 box fields and the third field will be filled automatically for you. You have first to specify the price at which you want to buy your coins and then you can choose whether to specify the amount of synero you want to buy, or the amount of bitcoin you wish to spend buying synero.
As shown on the below screenshot, I selected to buy 500 synero coins at a price of 0.00006767 BTC. The system automatically calculated the full price of this trade (0.033835 BTC).
- Setting Sell Orders for Your Bought Coins:
After buying your coins, I recommend including them in a sell order as soon as possible, to make sure that your coins will be sold for profit, once your target price has been reached. Now, let me include the synero coins we have just bought into a sell order. - Determine your target price for selling your coins. For doing so, we will have to examine the AMPBTC chart. So, click on the 15 minutes candlesticks and then click on the 1 week button to look through synero’s price during the past week, as shown on the below chart:
By examining the charts, we can notice that synero’s price has been following a pattern characterized by bullish bursts followed by downwards price correction attempts. The 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level, which corresponds to 0.0000830 BTC, is a good price target to aim at, especially that this level has been reached 3 times during the past week.
- Setting up your sell order: Now, let’s set up the sell order. We will use the box on the right hand-side marked “Sell AMP”. I entered the target price (0.00008300 BTC) and the full amount of coins bought, after subtracting the amount of commission charged by the exchange for the trade. As shown on the below screenshot, the total amount of bitcoin is automatically calculated and added in the “Total” box. After setting the amount and price, you will have to press “Sell” to submit your sell order.
- After successfully putting your “Sell order”, you will be able to see it under “My open orders”, as shown on the below screenshot:
Whenever the target price is reached, your coins will be sold automatically, provided that there is enough sell orders.
- Important Trading Tips:
As you will be flipping altcoins, try to enter trades that would last for a few days, better less than one week. The following are some important tips that would help you make some good profits: - Follow the golden rule of “Buy low, sell high”. Look for coins that have repeated patterns, or coins that repeatedly swing between certain price levels. There are a lot of coins that behave this way. For example, as shown on the below screenshot, I have made some good profits during the past 2 weeks trading Gridcoin (GRC), as it has been swinging between around 600 and 900 satoshis during this period.
- Follow the charts to detect bullish waves and try to scalp them, i.e. find good entry points to buy and sell repeatedly as price goes up. For example, synero has been following a bullish wave during the past 6-8 weeks and I have been finding good entry points to buy, then sell repeatedly which helped me make some good profits as shown on the below screenshot.
- Coins with high trading volumes, especially on Poloniex, can be very profitable. Usually, the first 2-3 days following the opening of a new altcoin market on an exchange will usually witness great price increases, so some good amount of money can be made.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I recommend dividing your capital, regardless how big it is, into 3-5 parts and use each part to buy one altcoin.
- Look for price variations of the same coin on Poloniex, Hitbtc and Bittrex. Sometimes, you can buy it low on one exchange to sell it high on an other.
This was a concise tutorial to help you start trading cryptocurrencies, or flip altcoins, for profit. In the near future, we will present you with another tutorial that includes some smart trading strategies to help you generate a steady income via flipping altcoins.