Everyone has a different reason to join the crypto world. The most common one is to get rich fast, but also to buy NFTs, earn passive income with stablecoins, or just to be a part of the decentralized financial world mission aka Web3.There are many guides around, yet many of them are sponsored, trying to get you on THEIR platform, which might set you for a suboptimal and less profitable start. However, this guide is for everyone who wants a fair and simple way to start the crypto journey.I divided the guide into 7 levels that increase in complexity, teaching you the must-to-know crypto terms and slogans with the app suggestions on the way.Level 1. Swap your national money for crypto.Level 2. Upgrade to a professional exchange. Buy an altcoinLevel 3. Start earning interest on your crypto.Level 4. Get a blockchain wallet.Level 5. Buy an NFT.Level 6. Explore the world of DeFi.Level 7 and beyond. Do your own research.💵Level 1 — Get rid of your national currency for cryptoIf your goal is to invest a few hundred dollars per month in crypto to potentially earn some money or just boast to your friends that you finally own some crypto, the easiest start is to create an account on a centralized exchange that fits your needs.At this level you don’t even need to know what is a difference between a centralized exchange and a decentralized one. You don’t even know what blockchain is and how it works, if you just want o be ‘in.’Gotcha, but what are my needs?There are at least 3 👇You need to get your normie ‘fiat’ money (USD, EUR, KRW etc.) from a bank account to a crypto exchange.Need a reliable & secure exchange with a long track record which you can trust. Trust is a key word here for the reasons we will discuss at higher levels.You need an exchange where you can buy the most popular tokens your friends talk about.Remember: crypto is global, but fiat onramps to exchanges is not.You need an exchange that accepts your national currency deposits and trading. This is probably the most frustrating step and unfortunately where you will have to spend some lonely time researching for yourself as every country/region has its dominant exchange.Using a bank deposit via a wire transfer is my preferred method. This is cheaper than buying crypto with a debit/credit card (card deposits cost 5% and more) and will make your life easier when you want to cash out some of your gains.I also recommend using ONE exchange for fiat onramp as it will simplify KYC (know your customer), your tax declaration, proof of funds declaration, etc.My recommendation based on your home country:SEPA (Europe). Bitstamp and perhaps Kraken. Wire deposits deposits in Bitstamp, for example, are free, and withdrawals cost 3 EUR. Yet card purchases cost 5% of the purchased amount. Yuck…The United States. Coinbase. Just go with Coinbase. Not the cheapest, but has the most developed crypto ecosystem (apps, wallets, CS etc.), which you will appreciate in your long crypto journey.Korea. Upbit or Bithumb.For your specific country, you will have to do some research alone. Don’t rush it. Spend a few hours checking all the fees, supported tokens, and requirements for withdrawing your crypto, and talk to your friends and colleagues around.When you decide on one, sleep it over and if you still like it in the morning, create an account and pass all the cumbersome document submissions for KYC (get a national ID and prepare for a selfie).At this level, I recommend investing in either Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) for 3 simple reasons:All exchanges support these tokens, and you will learn how to use the exchange.These are the most established blockchains with the lowest chance to lose it all :)Remember that when you eventually start googling “which cryptocurrencies to invest in 2022”, 99% of the authors are paid to promote specific crypto assets. And you don’t want to be the last ‘bag holder.’ Do you?👍Level 2 — Upgrade your exchangeWait, another one? UghhhYes, because most of the onramp exchanges support a decent amount of major tokens, but fees are generally higher than in crypto-to-crypto exchanges. I do not recommend active trading on them, as fees per trade can reach 0.5% (Bitstamp), while crypto-to-crypto exchanges are way cheaper (0.1% or lower trading fees).Your national exchange might be less established than the major crypto-to-crypto exchanges, or you might be worried about exchange suddenly shutting down. Seriously, that happened in Turkey. Twice.Ok, so by now, you have BTC and/or ETH. You start to feel curious and greedy to earn more (or lose money faster), so you decide to invest in other crypto assets beyond what your major exchange offers. You also want to save on those exorbitant trading fees. Perhaps you even want to finally understand what blockchain is and how it works. You should at least try.For that check the following sources:Blockchain Definition: What You Need to Know — InvestopediaVideo: How does a blockchain work — Simply ExplainedMore entertaining one. Cryptocurrencies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yubzJw0uiE4Don’t worry if you don’t understand blockchain yet. Most people who invest in crypto don’t understand it, and it’s ok at the beginning. It takes time.To make matters worse, there is more than just one ‘blockchain’. There are tens of them (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, Terra …), which is why you might want to diversify and invest in the next ‘bitcoin’. Anyway, time to upgrade your exchange.For Americans who started out on Coinbase, I recommend trading on Coinbase Pro. It has advanced charting features and crypto-to-crypto trading pairs, lower fees, and more crypto assets (107 vs 250+ on PRO). Check the comparison here.For the rest of the world, I recommend using Binance. I’d recommend it to Americans as well, but they cannot use it due to legal reasons.Notable mentions include OKx, FTX, KuCoin, Huobi Global, Gate.io or Kraken. They all differ in supported crypto assets, fee structure, UI and UX. You can check the full exchange list on Coingecko or CoinMarketCap (CMC) on what tokens each exchange supports.🎰Level 2 .5— Buy an altcoin.After upgrading your exchange, you will see that they offer hundreds of tokens. Most of them you will have never heard of, so if some logo catches your eye, you can check more about the token on Coingecko and CMC before you invest.Coingecko and CMC are going to be your best-to-go tools to find basic information on the thousands of tokens/coins in the crypto universe. They are sorted by market cap, which allows you to understand the relative size of one project versus another.Top 15 tokens on CoinGecko on a bloody dayAfter checking and researching these projects, you will DEFINITELY have many questions in your head. Don’t keep those questions there. Get it out and ask it in the project’s official Discord or Telegram community.The community is what makes the crypto world awesome. There you will find hundreds of like-minded people: some are newbies, and some are experts, but together they share the insights and help each other out.But please beware of scammers/spammers who will want to steal your crypto or make you buy THEIR scam crypto tokens. Never respond to a direct message from admins (because they never send you a direct message first), and do not reply to anyone pretending to be customer support.Oh, you will encounter weird crypto slogans in those communities. In order not to get lost, check the most popular crypto worlds, like FOMO, ICO/IDO, or GM.If, after initial research you like any project, try out investing a few cents just to learn how the exchange works and test out your research skills.🤑Level 3 — Do more with your cryptoBesides lower fees and more tokens to lose money on, you will definitely want to do more with your crypto than just trading and holding. Or HODL in crypto lingo. Try out staking your crypto to earn double-digit interest while you are holding your assets. You can learn more about staking here.Simply speaking, staking allows to lock assets to earn percentage-rate rewards, similar to interest-bearing savings accounts.You can also stake dollar-pegged stablecoins (USDT, USDC, BUSD, etc.) in Binance or other centralized staking providers like Nexo, Celsius, or KuCoin exchange, but please DYOR (do your own research) and check all the fees. You can get up to 12% interest rate on it, which is muuuuuuuuuuuch more than your local bank gives you.The thing is, that these centralized providers I mentioned above are easy to use, but I do not personally use them, because I want to use the benefits of blockchain-enabled decentralization and the ability to control my own assets.At this stage it is time to learn what ‘private key’ is.‘Not your keys, not your coins’ is a popular crypto slogan which refers to holding your own ‘private keys’ that allows the holder to access the funds which are stored directly on the blockchain. If you lose access to the private keys (which quite often are written on a sheet of paper), you lose access to your funds.All the centralized crypto service providers store your private keys for you, so you do not need to worry about self-custody. Hacks are less common now than a few years ago, but you never know. I mean, Turkish users of Vebitcoin and Thodex exchanges know. In this case you have to trust your exchange to store your assets safely for you.Check out a few sources like this one or this one on what private keys is, how it works, and how different it is from a public key. When you feel you understand it, let’s go to the level 4. This is where the real fun starts.😎Level 4 — Own your crypto and join the Web3Now you know what private keys are. They give access to your crypto holdings. If you decide to hold your private keys yourself, the only security threat will be you yourself.The big upside besides security and ownership, is that you can now explore the ocean of DeFi, NFTs, Metaverse and more. For that you need a non-custodial wallet.A non-custodial wallet allows you to hold and own your private key while having full control of the funds. Keys are held in an encrypted storage. Learn more here.There are at least 3 types of non-custodial wallets:Desktop wallets. Installed on your computer.Web wallets & mobile wallets. Such as Metamask.Hardware wallets. Look similar to a USB drive.The hardware wallet is the safest choice as it is not connected to the internet. It is a ‘cold’ wallet.A hot wallet is connected to the internet and could be vulnerable to online attacks — which could lead to stolen funds — but it’s faster and makes it easier to trade or spend crypto. A cold wallet is typically not connected to the internet, so while it may be more secure, it’s less convenient — Gemini explanationMy personal recommendation is to start by installing Metamask extension on your browser. Metamask supports Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Polygon, Fantom, and many more blockchains. Enough to start your web3 journey in DeFi and buying NFTs.As you have already learned, Metamask is a ‘hot’ wallet which is a less secure option than a hardware wallet, therefore, try it out by sending a small amount of money to your newly created Metamask wallet.BUT! Ohhhh BUT!Sending ETH and interacting with Ethereum blockchain is expensive. You see, the beauty of blockchains is that you NEED to pay what is called a ‘gas fee’ to transfer value on a blockchain. For example, withdrawing ETH from Binance costs 0.005 ETH ($17USD as of writing) and buying an NFT will cost $50–$200 USD.Gas fees are payments made by users to compensate for the computing energy required to process and validate transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. It secures the blockchain, but is costly if blockchain is congested.That’s why I recommend starting with a different Metamask-supported blockchain such as Polygon. It is probably the cheapest to use at the moment, and you will learn how to buy NFTs, trade on decentralized exchanges, and more!To add Polygon to Metamask, follow this guide and deposit a few dollars worth of MATIC token (which is used to pay the ‘gas fees’ on Polygon network) from an exchange that supports MATIC blockchain withdrawals to your Metamask public address.When you get MATIC in your Metamask wallet, try out sending some MATIC to your friends or to your different Metamask wallet addresses, so you will know how it works.Don’t put too much money into the Metamask wallet for now. It is possible you will lose access to it as you just took a screenshot of your ‘seed phrase,’ and it somehow leaked to someone else :) No, seriously, keep your seed phrase safe.🔒Level 4 .5 —Get a hardware walletI do not recommend holding a large sum of money in your hot wallet. Get a hardware wallet to maximize your funds’ security for peace of mind.Hardware wallets are the safest option, and I personally recommend Ledger S or X or Trezor T. They cost around USD 150 but are definitely worth it if you are serious about leveling up in crypto.Hardware wallets also support more assets than Metamask. You will be able to hold Bitcoin, Luna, Solana or any other major coins/tokens. The cool thing about hardware wallets is their integration with Metamask. Thus you can enjoy all the functionalities of Metamask with the security of a cold wallet.Great. So what do I do know with my non-custodial wallet? Lets level up.🎨Level 5 — Buy an NFT!Purchasing and owning NFTs is one of the most fun ways to interact with the Web3.If you don’t already know, NFTs are Non-Fungible Tokens that are used to represent ownership of unique items. The most popular use case of NFTs are Profile picture NFTs or digital land items that have been sold for hundred of thousands of dollars. To understand why some NFTs are so expensive, I recommend reading my blog post about the economics and NFTs.Economics of NFTs: Why We Pay Millions for a JPEG online?The goal here is not to earn money from NFT trading but to learn how buying and selling NFTs works and just finally own your first digital property. In fact, earning money by trading NFTs is a lot harder than it looks.According to Chainalysis NFT market report, only a very small group of highly sophisticated investors rake in most of the profits from NFT collecting.Most traders who purchase newly minted NFTs and then sell them lose money, only 29% of these trades make money. Of those who do make money, most of those buyers received a discount to the list price on their purchase. Of this minority who make money, over 50% earn more than a 200% return on their investment, whereas 60% of those who lose money on these trades lose over 50% — ForbesThe number one marketplace for NFTs is OpenSea. You can explore different styles of NFTs, compare them by trading volume and price and purchase NFTs with cryptoassets on 4 supported blockchains: Ethereum, Polygon, Klaytn, and Solana.The most expensive, high in demand blue chip NFTs are stored and traded on the Ethereum blockchain, but setting up your account, purchasing and selling an NFT would cost you from $50 to $100 in ETH coin, depending on how congested is the blockchain.Ethereum native currency ETH is used to trade the absolute majority of NFTs. You will need to buy Ethereum in a centralized exchange and withdraw it over the Ethereum network to your Metamask. There are many guides on how to do it, but make sure you withdraw ETH to a correct address that is displayed in your Metamask wallet.Alternatively, you can buy NFTs on the Polygon network, which will cost you less in gas fees, yet you will need to convert ETH from Ethereum blockchain to Polygon. Check the official Opensea guide.Once you have ETH in your wallet, hit the ‘Explore’ button on the Opensea website and check out NFTs you like and are willing to buy.Finding which NFT you should buy as an investment is an art and will require many hours of research. As a general rule, before buying an NFT, I take into account that this NFT’s value might go to 0, so I always buy a JPEG which is at least nice to look at.✈Level 6 — explore the world of Decentralized Finance (DeFi).Decentralized finance built on blockchains eliminates intermediaries by allowing them to interact with financial applications directly.Decentralized Finance (DeFi)It is 0 to 1 innovation in the financial world. In the current centralized finance ecosystem, your money in the bank is not really yours. It is held by a bank in your name, lent out to someone you don’t know, it can be taken from you or even lost if banks declare bankruptcy.What is more, the current centralized finance is full of intermediaries that take their cut on every financial transaction. For example, the average fee for transferring remittances to Africa was 9.4 percent in 2017!Africa loses billions due to high cost of remittances | DW | 24.04.2018DeFi cuts down on all these intermediaries and enables anyone to transfer money and invest without the need of bank account. Two years ago, I wrote about the vision of DeFi:Current traditional financial system is broken. It benefits only the 1%, and it causes financial crisis that we, the tax payers have to pay for.But imagine a world where not your bank but you control your money. Out of the reach of corrupt politicians.A world where sending the money to your loved ones abroad costs cents and takes seconds instead of days. Where you can invest, trade and earn interest anywhere, anytime in a private and transparent way with just your phone and internet access. And if you don’t like the system, you are free to vote and change the rules to your favor.Are you in or out?Choosing in will open new opportunities to earn yield that is much higher than your banks can offer. But it also involves a steep learning curve and higher risks due to the complicated nature of DeFi smart contracts and the nature of self-custody of your assets.LendingTo start with DeFi, you will need the same Metamask wallet.Lending and borrowing crypto currencies on platforms such as Aave and Compound is the safest option to earn yield, but lower risks mean lower APY. In Aave, for example, the current APY for lending stablecoins is between 1.5% to 6.43%.https://app.aave.com/?marketName=proto_mainnetTrading tokensAs you can see above, you will need stable coins to provide in Aave. You can buy them on a centralized exchange and withdraw them to your Metamask wallet, or you can try out a DeFi native decentralized exchange, such as Uniswap.What Is Uniswap? A Complete Beginner's GuideUniswap is a completely different type of exchange that‘s fully decentralized — meaning it isn’t owned and operated by a single entity — and uses a relatively new type of trading model called an automated liquidity protocol.In practice, it means that you will not need to withdraw relinquish control of your crypto assets in Metamask to an exchange in order to trade tokens. The interface is extremely simple to use, but remember you will need up to USD 30 in ETH to pay transaction gas fees.https://app.uniswap.org/#/swap?chain=mainnetProviding liquidity on UniswapBesides trading on Uniswap, you can earn a yield on your crypto assets by becoming a liquidity provider. At its core, Uniswap is a protocol of pooled tokens where users themselves pool their crypto assets into one basket and receive a part of a trading fee.To provide liquidity, you will need to have 2 crypto assets at a 50/50 ratio.It is a significant step up in your crypto journey, and you will need to do more research about impermanent loss, liquidity tokens, and staking.Tip: If you have MATIC on Polygon network, try out Quickswap exchange which is a copy of Uniswap on Polygon network. Functioning is the same, and trading on Quickswap will let you save on gas fees.Let’s go farmingYield farming also referred to as liquidity mining, is a way to generate higher rewards with cryptocurrency holdings. Lending on protocols such as Aave and providing liquidity on Uniswap is also yield farming, but it is time to try our more complex farming strategies for higher yield.https://medium.com/media/ef5a9f57402e8e4a191ac5e5d07ae1c2/hrefThe beauty of DeFi is that protocols can build on top of each other because all the smart contracts in DeFi are open source, interoperable and composable. DeFi thus is built by Lego blocks, where one protocol serves as the backbone of another protocol which brings new features and capabilities that were not possible as a stand-alone protocol.For example, curve.fi is a stablecoin swap protocol similar to Uniswap, but the stablecoins deposited on curve.fi protocol not only generates trading fees but is lent out on Aave to generate lending APY as well.Each of these protocols attracts users and liquidity by offering its own token as an extra reward. These tokens can be sold or accumulated depending on your strategy. In the case of curve.fi, users can get AAVE rewards from Aave lending protocol and CRV token from Curve.fi on top of extra incentives (for example, Avalanche is giving AVAX rewards to stablecoin liquidity providers on Avalanche blockchain). Therefore adding on a protocol on top of each other increases the efficiency and rewards but also increases the risk in case one of these protocols fails.Below is a diagram of a previously popular yield farming strategy. Those strategies can become extremely complicated, therefore, for this stage, I recommend using yield farming aggregators, or simply, yield aggregators.Yield aggregators do all the hard work for you in exchange for a fee that is used to develop the protocol. My favorite yield aggregators are yearn.finance, Beefy.finance, and autofarm.https://app.beefy.com/#/Beefy finance currently offers up to 40% APY on stablecoin strategies! Compare it to your bank’s 0.1% APY, and the attractiveness of DeFi is obvious.There is a lot to learn to become a real DeFi yield farmer, but in case of doubt, always do your research and do not rush into action. Check out the information online (but do not fall for scammers), check the community announcements and guides, and start with a small amount of money until you really know what you do.There is a lot more to do in DeFi: option trading, leverage trading, cross-chain bridging, gaming, NFT lending, etc., but it is beyond the scope of this blog post to cover each of the activities.⛵Level 7 and beyondNew use cases of blockchains, NFTs, and DeFi can appear anytime, and it’s quite overwhelming to be up to date with the current state of the market. Level 7 is the stage where you should start using more advanced research tools to be able to navigate the windy waters of crypto alone.Below are my favorite resources for DYOR.Etherscan (free) — analyze on-chain transactions.What is Etherscan, and how does it work?2. Dune analytics (free)— crypto dashboards for yield farming, DeFi, NFTs and more.What Is Dune Analytics and How Does It Work?3. The Defiant Newsletter (Free & paid) — Crypto news about Web3DeFi, NFT & Web3 Insights - The Defiant4. DeFi Llama (Free) — Data for DeFi and NFT projects.DefiLlama5. Coindix (free) — Best yields in DeFiCoindix - Today's best vaults and APY on the DeFi6. Token Terminal (Free & paid) — Financial data about crypto companiesToken Terminal | Fundamentals for crypto7. Nansen.ai (Paid and expensive) — perhaps the most advanced on chain analytics tool.Nansen - Surface the Signal in Blockchain DataThere are a lot more, but these I use daily and help me to navigate the complex crypto ecosystem.Remember, the crypto journey is more fun when you do it with a community of like-minded people. Don’t be afraid (actually, you should) to join crypto communities to learn more, but always beware of scammers!Check out our new platform 👉 https://thecapital.io/https://twitter.com/thecapital_iohttps://medium.com/media/3b6b127891c5c8711ad105e61d6cc81f/hrefHow to Start and Level Up in Crypto: Your Friendly Guide was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.