Getting Started with Cryptocurrencies, AMPL, Harvest and MetaMask


Having looked at numerous writings here on how to get started with Publish0x and $FARM, I have found a lot of unhelpful and poorly written content. So, in the hopes of saving someone else the wade, here are a few links worthy of attention (and tips) from other authors.

Please note that I am not affiliated with these authors, merely appreciative of their efforts to explain in clear and simple language (which they have done).

Cryptocurrency is about financial freedom from banksters, fiat and consumer Capitalism (not about getting rich quick), by In Bitcoin We Trust

If you're looking at Bitcoin and Altcoins as a means of making a lot of fiat (Dollars, Euros, Pounds) within a year or three, you're missing the point. The purpose of most shitcoins is for their creators to profit off other people's misguided greed, not solve a social problem. No white paper or mission statement detailing what the currency is about and what purpose it serves/for what reason it exists? No trabajo, no Monero, ¡señor!

Anarchy is not the absence of rules, but of regulation

"Anarchy does not make evil disappear. No anarchist is stupid or naive. An anarchist society is full of individual responsibility. The “good” is one of the sides of the coin. The other is “evil”. One does not exist without the other. The struggle between the two forces justifies the existence of each one. All systems, whether created by man or nature, balance good and evil. When there is a very strong imbalance created by some system, the universe, the continent of systems, seeks a return to stability, without notifying anyone, without asking anyone's permission. Anarchy is nothing other than a system of social coordination. It is not, nor does it pretend to be, a system that eliminates evil, because by pretending to be, it would be acting against the universe and setting itself up as a god in which it does not believe."

Sir Gerard the 1st writes a very salient and pertinent piece on "those angry teenage hooligans" who're actually anything but (and how we've got the banksters by the short and curlies). Anarchy is for all HODlers. Check, please.

Getting Started with Cryptocurrency for Noobs, by Crypto Plankton

If you're smart about it and willing to invest a lot up front, you can (potentially) earn a living off the interest and drop the 08:00-17:00 life. Alternately, you can put some of your 401K into it and ensure you'll retire not just comfortably, but well-off. If you think a 16% increase on a savings/investment account for thirty years looks good, try 20% to 200% in five to ten years. (If COVID-19 continues to wreck the global fiat economy, you could very well see that happen.)

Caveat emptor: Not for the faint of heart. Balls of steel required. Get in fast, go hard and HODL 'til the world ends (or DanHeld on Twitter doesn't hold). Never buy on the peak of a spike. Never sell at the bottom of a dip. Never sell for less than you bought. Look at yearly trends, not daily or weekly ones. Do your research (including reading white papers) before putting money into an alt coin. Always start with BTC, ETH, LTC, a stablecoin like TUSD/USDC and XMR. XRP is probably a good one, too. Make and keep a secure (encrypted), off-site backup of your wallet and secret passphrase. (A VeraCrypt [hidden] container will be ideal.) Do not provide these to anyone. But most of all, do not panic! Almost everything trends up (except Doge; Doge is a shitcoin that spikes and falls without growth). Patience, young grasshopper!

How to install and use the MetaMask Wallet browser extension, by DeFi Box

You'll probably/possibly need to use MetaMask to get an address for your $FARM tokens, (which Publish0x uses for rewards) unless you don't mind incurring conversion costs when you supply an ETH-based address.

Pro tip: To use one of the options on the Harvest.Finance page, click on the applicable box. (This is not obvious.)

The Best Guide to Harvest.Finance ($FARM) for Beginners, by DeFi Box

The author's not kidding. This is the best guide on this site (and there are no shortage of poorly-written and opaque ones).

Getting Started with Ampleforth (AMPL)

If you're looking for a wallet to store your Ampleforth (AMPL), I recommend Atomic. It works with a truly massive number of coins and tokens. It also allows adding ERC-20 tokens by contract address. (However, I couldn't get it to add Harvest.Finance until I figured out that I couldn't add more than one ERC-20 token without first clicking on the "wallet" section/tab after adding AMPL.) To add AMPL to Atomic:

  • Open the wallet app, click on "Wallet", then type "AMPL" in the "Search..." box. There should be no results. Instead, the wallet will offer you the option to add a token by contract address.
  • Enter "0xD46bA6D942050d489DBd938a2C909A5d5039A161" (without quotes) in the "Contract Address" field (or find it on etherscan) and press the <Tab> key on your keyboard. The wallet should then retrieve information and fill in the rest of the fields. If it shows "AMPL" for the token, you're good to go.
  • Click the "Add Token" button.
  • Go to "AMPL" in your wallet view.
  • Click on "Receive" to see your wallet address.
  • Copy the address from your wallet.
  • Go to "Settings" -> "On-Chain Wallets" for your Publish0x account.
  • Paste the address into the "AMPL" field and click the "Save" button.
  • You might also want to supply your ETH address for the "ETH" field and "UNI/SWAP" address for "$iFARM" (although, if you go back to your "wallet" view first, you should be able repeat the steps for "$iFARM", having found the contract address on etherscan. (Having closely scrutinised the addresses for all my ETH-based tokens, they appear to be identical. Until told otherwise, I'm assuming it's OK to use them interchangeably.)
  • Check your email to confirm the changes.

Cool; now go get reading and writing (and staking)!

 

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Great White Snark
Great White Snark

I'm currently seeking fixed employment as a S/W & Web developer (C# & ASP .NET MVC, PHP 8+, Python 3), hoping to stash the farmed fiat and go full Crypto, quit the 07:30-18:00 grind. Unsigned music producer; snarky; white; balding; smashes Patriarchy.


Cryptographic Anarchy: (Mis)Adventures in Crypto
Cryptographic Anarchy: (Mis)Adventures in Crypto

The content of this blog is exclusively to do with online privacy/security, cryptography and cryptocurrency: Understanding it, investing in it, mining it (in groups/crowds), developing/programming it, the social problems it aims to solve and the various ways to make more of it (or not, as various losses and failures happen). Let's get away from banksters, Capitalists and fiat, to an unbanked anarcho-syndicalist commune. || Banner image: Blogger's own.

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