Posted by Chester Morton / Friday 14 April 2017 / No comments
The problems of funding tertiary education - Bitcoin to the Rescue?
By Divine Sewornu Dzokoto
When Bernard Turkson received his admission letter in early
August, 2016, it was as if he did not know the admission was going to come. Coming
from a poor background, putting the money together to pay the admission fee was
a problem. Even if he had managed to pay, it would still have been hectic to
get to the University of his Dream. By the time this writer had met Bernard,
the universities had long since resumed and he was teaching at a private school
in the city. With careful guidance and him being a student ready to listen,
Bernard is more than ready to enter the university this academic year.
There are other people like Bernard who have faced similar a
situation or are going to face one when the academic year resumes again. If
you, dear reader, fall into this category and you have read to this stage, then
there is a way out. The way out is to enter into cryptocurrency.
It is being bandied about that the bitcoin opportunity has
passed folks by and therefore, instead of crying over spilled milk, they must
look out for other cryptocurrencies and invest in them, the reason being that those
coins would become like bitcoin in the future, very expensive. This may be true
but this writer wishes to argue that one can still take advantage of the
bitcoin revolution today by trading in all kinds of cryptocurrencies online and
enjoy the windfall thereof.
In this article, you would receive instructions on how to
gather bitcoins on the internet and convert to cash anywhere in the world. This
fund can then be used to fund your tertiary education. This is especially so
for workers who want to upgrade to the masters level or even to register for
professional courses but find the fees too exorbitant. Profits from trading in
cryptocurrencies can make life a little more comfortable for a lot of students
all over the world, especially in Africa.
First step
The first step is to create a bitcoin wallet on a cryptocurrency
trading platform if you do not have any yet. This writer recommends that you
have a bitcoin wallet on a cryptocurrency exchange, in addition to any others
that you might have or might want to have, such as desktop wallet and online
wallets. I recommend a wallet on yobit.
Open a wallet on yobit
Go to yobit and create an account. Click on “Sign up”
and complete the form after that click “sign up”. You would have to confirm a
link that would be sent to your email to complete registration. Once you have
signed up, login with your registration details and explore the platform. One
of the things to do is to copy your bitcoin wallet address on the exchange. The
process is the same for every exchange but this writer chose yobit because it
is one of the most active altcoin exchanges available.
How to copy your bitcoin wallet address on yobit
Login to your account at yobit and look at the very top. You would
see, among other things, “wallets”. Click on “wallets”. Now look for BTC and
move the cursor on the line, horizontally till you get to a check box. Click
the check box and you will see “deposit” and “withdrawal”. Click “deposit” and
your bitcoin address would pop up. Now copy this address. It is the address you
will use in receiving bitcoins to your yobit account. This address is peculiar
to you. For all the coins that are displayed on the platform, you have it
address, all you need to do is copy using the same process as we just used
above.
How to fund your wallet
If you want to start trading in altcoins, you need to fund
your account on yobit. There are different ways to fund your wallet.
Faucets
The cheapest is to collect “satoshi” from faucets on the
internet. In exchange for a few actions, you are rewarded with little bits of bitcoins
called satoshi. First go to world of bitcoin, then to get your bitcoins, and finally to ads for bitcoins, and you will receive rewards in bitcoins every
hour, five hours or sometimes after twenty four hours. Payment is made instantly every week,
depending on the faucet in question, to the bitcoin address you provided at the
time of registration. Once payment is made, you can transfer to your address on
yobit and start trading with it. You can use this method if you do not want to
spend your own money.
High Yielding Investment Programme (Hyip)
Another method is to use the high yielding investment
programme. This is a high risk area and therefore caution is advised when
investing large sums of bitcoins. Go to coinfactory and sign up. After
that, login and copy your bitcoin address there. All you need to do is click on
deposit, then copy your deposit address. You send bitcoins to this address and
receive 7% interest every 24 hours. Minimum deposit is 0.00100000 bitcoins or
100k satoshi so make sure they receive exactly 100000 satoshi, making allowance for transaction fees. This may be equivalent to $12 or $13. You can then invest your
profits on the yobit exchange.
Buying bitcoins
Another method is to buy from those who sell bitcoins. You do
a Google search for sellers. You will find a bitcoin seller in any country in
the world. Buy directly and fund your account to start trading. In Ghana, you
could go to www.cofred.com, which works very in Nigeria too. Localbitcoins.com operates
in almost every country. Once you make a payment and send your wallet address,
the equivalent bitcoin will be credited to your bitcoin address.
How to trade on an exchange
It is assumed that now you have bitcoins in your wallet at
yobit. Now is the time to trade. There are over 780 alternative coins on yobit
and you need to decide which ones you want to invest in. To determine which
coin is a good buy, look at the volume of trade, if it is about 10million
satoshi in the previous 24 hour, it is a good coin to invest in. Apart from
that, find out whether the coin had ever appreciated in the previous days or
months. Look at the highest price at which it sold previously and buy when the
price falls low again. Do not buy a coin when it is very high; wait until the
price comes back low a little close to where it rose from.
Buy an alternative coin
To buy any coin, make sure you have sufficient bitcoins in
your balance. Look for the particular coin on the left of your screen and click
it to be taken to the page. Type the amount you want to buy and click buy. If
you do not want to buy at the current price, you could put up a bid at a lower
price. Lower the price you want to buy (mindful of the prices tha others have offered)
and click “buy”, your bid will be pending till someone buys. If no one buys
after sometime, you might have to come back to put it up at a higher price.
To change your bid price, look at the top of the page and
click “orders”, scroll down till you see the particular order you want to
cancel, then, cancel it. Now go back to the coin and put up a higher price. If
there are too many orders, type the coin in the search box to be taken there
directly.
How to sell a coin
After you have bought a coin, you need to sell. One way to do
that is to closely monitor the exchange so that when the price appreciates, you
sell. This is not advisable because you cannot police the exchange 24/7. There
are times you login to realize that a coin you have bought has appreciated but
has fallen again. You would think to yourself “if I was here earlier, I would
have sold them.” To counteract that, you put the coin for sale at a good price,
anticipating the price to reach there. You can put it up for sale at 200%,
500%, 1000% or even 3000% or 5000% higher than the price you bought it.
Sometimes it could go higher to say, over 9999% but it is better to sell many
times as the price fluctuates so sell a little low. As a beginner, you want to
grow your portfolio so sell low and buy other coins or even the same coin if
the price falls again. (It does fall most of the time, sometimes drastically,
so you just replace what you sold).
Convert bitcoin to cash
After you have traded and gotten enough profit, you may want
to withdraw part of your gain and convert to cash. At this point, there are
lots of places on the internet to sell the bitcoin and receive cash or payment
to your bank account. You could also use it to buy items on the internet. You
might want to withdraw to your dollar account buy sending a request to “support”.
In Ghana and Nigeria, www.cofred.com comes handy. You ask the
support to help you with your bitcoin wallet address. When you get it, go to
yobit again and withdraw part of your coins. It will be converted to cash after
three confirmations on the bitcoin blockchain.
How to withdraw bitcoins from yobit
Login to your account and look at the top for “wallets”.
Click and it takes you to where you can see your bitcoin balance. There is
“Deposit” and “Withdrawal”. Click on withdrawal (the minus sign just below “withdrawal),
a dialogue box would pop up. By now you already have your bitcoin address at
cofred.com so you paste that bitcoin address into the box provided for that
purpose and type the amount you want to withdraw. Add 0.00050000 or
50000satoshi as transaction fees then click withdraw. You will immediately
receive a text message from Cofred if you copied the address right, notifying
you about the receipt of your coins. After three confirmations you will receive
another message notifying you about the equivalent bitcoin in cash. You can
also withdraw to your bank account or to another address other than the one on
cofred.com.
Withdraw to cash
After your account at cofred has been credited, you might want
to withdraw. After your cash has reflected on the cofred platform, you can
withdraw to your bank account or to any mobile money wallet such as MTNmobile,
TogoCash, Airtel money or Vodacash.
Note: Now you have your cash, this is the
opportunity to pay for any programme at the tertiary level once you are
qualified and have received admissions. Also note that this is not a
get-rich-quick scheme. It needs patience and tact.
