TRADING &
INVESTING
How to buy, sell, and manage crypto — from choosing an exchange to understanding taxes.
🏪 Choosing an Exchange
Centralised Exchanges (CEX): Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Gemini. Easy to use, fiat on-ramps, customer support. But they custody your assets.
Decentralised Exchanges (DEX): Uniswap, Jupiter, dYdX. Non-custodial, permissionless. Requires a wallet and crypto to start — no fiat.
What to look for: Regulatory compliance, insurance funds, trading fees, supported coins, liquidity, and withdrawal limits.
📋 Order Types
Market Order: Buy/sell instantly at current price. Fast but may get a worse price in volatile markets.
Limit Order: Set your desired price and wait. Your order only executes when the market reaches that price.
Stop-Loss: Automatically sells if price drops below a threshold. Limits your downside.
Take-Profit: Automatically sells at a target price. Locks in gains without watching the market.
💡 Investment Strategies
Dollar-Cost Averaging
Invest a fixed amount on a regular schedule regardless of price. Reduces the impact of volatility. The simplest and most effective long-term strategy for most people.
HODL Long-Term
Buy fundamentally strong assets and hold through volatility. Ignore short-term noise. Historically, patient BTC/ETH holders have been rewarded.
Diversification
Don't put everything in one coin. A portfolio might include BTC as base, ETH for DeFi exposure, and smaller allocations to other sectors.
🧾 Crypto Taxes
In most countries, crypto is treated as property. This means:
• Selling crypto for fiat = taxable event
• Trading crypto-to-crypto = taxable event
• Earning staking/mining rewards = taxable as income
• Buying crypto with fiat = not taxable