there are apparently two different companies that handle the digital transfer
i’m really not familiar with the coins, the algorithms used or the mining difficulty, coins like bitcoin you need mining hardware (ASICs) to have a chance anymore i think thats SHA 256 PoW. coins like monero use the cryptonote algorithm so aren’t compatible with ASIC mining hardware so your best bet is using GPUs / CPUs for mining but the difficulty is still pretty hard you are a lot better off mining in part of a pool and even then unless you have a strong rig you probably won’t earn much, definitely less than your electricity costs.
pot coin and most other altcoins i know very little about so can’t really answer that., but it’s usually only feasible to mine as an individual with a basic rig during a coins infancy. if you have access to lots of cloud computing power for cheap or free it’s a lot more feasible. once the difficulty and network hash power gets too high your probably better off just buying the coin on an exchange to sell for profit.
what country are you in? you should look for a crypto exchange within your country and see what coins they have listed for trade and follow the market or one you are interested in for a little while before making a buy.
i’m really new to crypto trading. i mined bitcoins like 5+ years ago but they were worth nothing then and i don’t have that wallet anymore 
@Herbie and @LemonadeJoe are both much more knowledgeable than myself
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yeah bitcoin, and now monero and ethereum have long been the currencies of the darknet markets. monero is more anonymous than bitcoin but if you are careful you can obfuscate bitcoin transactions too. it’s how people buy drugs and all other nefarious stuff over the internet from strangers, usually using an escrow system or multisig transactions to ensure you aren’t ripped off.
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wow You shared a vast wealth of information in a short couple of sentences thank you !
yes i think most altcoins are usually traded for bitcoin so you’d have to buy bitcoin first then trade it for whatever altcoin. btc seems to be the safer bet lately tho. i expect the bubble will pop soon. other people believe its currently extremely undervalued.
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I think it is very late to invest into mining now… This was lucrative business back in 2011 with GPUs to maybe 2012. Since 2013 only with ASICs.
Yes there are coins that you can still mine with GPU (e.g. Ethereum), but still there is strong competition. Just look at youtube how current mines in China look. This industry is now very very technically advanced and professional (e.g. they used oil cooling, using extracted heat, have subsidy on electricity, …).
China - 2/2015
Iceland - 1/2017
Paragon Coin… Just avoid it… It is actually not new coin but just token created on top of Ethereum network (uses Ethereum infrastructure).
• 100,000,000 tokens for sale valued at $1.00 USD each at stage 1
• 50,000,000 tokens for sale at stage 2 - no sooner than 2021, at market
price (not the initial $1 of the first crowdsale )
• 40,000,000 tokens allotted for Paragon controlled reserve to maintain
price support of the PRG tokens. Tokens can be bought or sold to keep
the tokens circulation stable
• 10,000,000 tokens community-controlled reserve to be used for the
best startup ideas as voted on by the community
Notice how coins are distributed (not in fair way through mining). They are basically selling tokens they created out of thin air. This is not how actual free and decentralized currency looks like (this is practically opposite - central emission) . The issuer is the only one that will make money on this offer. Issuer has spent some dollars on advertisement but that is all. There is no edge against any other established currencies (like Bitcoin or Ethereum). They spent maybe few millions USD to advertisement and operating costs, but expect to obtain 100M in initial funding. That screams scam to me. And a model as CEO doesn’t fix that for me.
Why don’t buy Ethereum that allows ICOs (initial coin offering) like this… That is much better idea.
PotCoin
I’d stay away from potcoin. It is PoS (proof of stake) coin, that means that who holds it can collect fees. The only one who gets rich on this is the original creator who has a lot of these coins already. If the author in some time decides to sell the coins and abandon the idea you will end up with nothing. And the same argument applies for both Paragon and Potcoin. Why the hell would dispensaries choose this coin instead of established coins. Just see most seedbanks. They have chosen bitcoin for payment. Because it is widespread and software tools are highly developed.
I’m missing any competitive advantage in these coins over “traditional” widely accepted currencies (bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin)
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wats a legit one were you can just use a credit card and dont need to hand them copy of d license
there are sites to buy bitcoin without providing identity confirmation but you generally pay increased rates.
localbitcoins is a site to meet people in person to do cash transactions etc or also online i think with prepaid visas, bank transfer etc. and there are also bitcoin ATMs in lots of cities - although these are generally 9%-14% fees
there are also sites where you can buy small amounts of btc without verification (usually just cell phone number) but it is limited to maybe 250$ a day or something similar
i could sell you bitcoins for 5% fee over market exchange rates 
@LemonadeJoe thanks for that explanation, i have seen these ethereum token things before and they seem like complete scam indeed
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10 years ago $100 investment in bitcoin would be worth over a hundred million… Or so my friend said, so don’t shoot me down lol
yes but bitcoin was only known to tech enthusiasts then, by january it was already mainstream and very well known to have made lots of people rich already. so basically invest now because next year it will be even higher 
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Bitcoin and digital currencies may have advantages but these don’t explain their current value.
What does? GREED! There are lots of people getting into the market in order to make money on a virtual currency… Do people make money by simply holding dollars? Not really; it’s a medium of exchange, not an investment vehicle.
I’m absolutely sure the value of Bitcoin will crash, and soon At that point, if it’s allowed to survive at all, it will become the medium of exchange people say it is.
Right now, we’re seeing the final stage of a classic bubble scenario; people who have little idea what Bitcoin is and have no other use for it are piling in, speculating that it will continue to rise in value.
I can’t say when someone will pull the panic lever- but when it happens, millions of accounts will try to liquidate all at once, there will be a Titanic traffic jam as everyone rushes for the exit at the same time- and only those few who got out early will survive unscathed.
Since there is no intrinsic value to the coin- it isn’t backed by banks or governments or even the value of metal it’s stamped from- there is no ‘bottom’. I think it could drop from $20k/Bitcoin to a twentieth of a penny in a matter of hours.
When it does, then and only then will it finally become what its creators and proponents envision; a digital medium of exchange from one investment to another, rather than the asset itself.
We’ll see who’s right; I’m on the side of ‘the end is nigh!’ The only real question I have left is whether Bitcoin will be allowed to survive its fall.
The videos posted here were fascinating, too- there’s about to be an awful lot of excess financially optimised computing power available in the world. I wonder what else one could do with it?
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there are lots of people who make money on forex, buying and selling currencies. i don’t really follow the current events in cryptoland but i think there are governments backing it, or at least regulating exchanges and stuff. japan and china come to mind, maybe india too. not sure. i expect eventually fiat will crash before crypto, the governments are constantly mismanaging money and driving the value of what you do have down even further by printing more and more to cover their mismanagement. crypto tries to solve that in various ways but it is not really decentralized because the developers have complete control. or if someone were to control 51% of the coins or a majority of the hashpower they become the central authority. other coins are attempting to solve that problem by having completely decentralized development which i think is the only logical next step.
Well put brother 
No crypto currency is currently backed by any Government.
I just saw a good use for all the excess computing power that a Bitcoin crash will free up; cracking security keys and coded messages.
well, they’re going to start offering futures trading on bitcoin apparently. i think that’s a bad thing.
That is actually what is driving current price of bitcoin up. CME is one of the biggest derivative markets so it can make bitcoin available to wider public and institutional investors. Those who were limited to certain types of instruments (e.g. funds that have some internal policies) will be able to finally trade bitcoin.
There is speculation behind current upside that once futures are available the demand from wide public will increase.
Futures are next logical step in bitcoin markets. I hope we will see bitcoin ETF in 2018.
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wow potcoin currently has a 29 million market cap. paragon only has 15 million market cap but is worth almost twice as much per than POT $0.13 vs $0.23. if you are looking for an exchange for trading altcoins i’d recommend binance it only requires an e-mail address for a 2 BTC/day withdrawal limit and the fees are only 0.1% - half that of poloniex or bittrex.
i needed to find an exchange for trading my STEEM / SBD in to bitcoins and this was so much more convenient than the exchanges which require a picture of your passport and utility bills etc, although verifying raises your daily limit to 100 BTC. the exchange is based of out hong kong i believe so doesn’t have same requirements as US based exchanges.
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El Salvador made Bitcoin it’s official currency in September. Wether that’s a govt backing it I’m not sure.
I’m thinking about placing some $ into crypto…LTC is one I’m familiar with…not sure what else to look into … . Maybe 90 days see how it goes.
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Probably good timing for buying currently… The whole crypto market is in a retraction, together with tech stocks…
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