The Easy Guide to using Ethereum

Ethereum has been heralded as the Web 3.0, a world of opportunity where people can trust strangers and work together with them. It achieves this through smart contracts, pieces of code that can be verified by anyone who wishes to read them and that must run as written. These smart contracts allow anyone to create stores, exchanges, banks, insurance companies and even laws that respond to people who choose to interact with them. All without anyone needing to trust the creator, only the code.

The space is early and many parts are very technical, but anyone can get started quickly without having to take long course.

1. Get Free Bitcoin (to convert to Ether)

Get free Bitcoin by answering simple questions
(Need a Linkedin account with at least 10 connections to withdraw)
- Create a 21 account at https://21.co/tasks and do the tasks
- Create a Coinbase account at https://www.coinbase.com (You can also buy Ether directly from Coinbase)
- Cash out of 21 by linking your Coinbase account

2. Convert Bitcoin to Ether (skip this if you want to do high volume trading)

- Install the MetaMask extension on Google Chrome here
- Create an Ether account and copy the Ether Address
- Use ShapeShift to convert Bitcoin to Ether at https://www.shapeshift.io
- Click to transfer Bitcoin to Ether (Your Ether Address is from the MetaMask extension, your Bitcoin address is the address with Bitcoin in CoinBase and the amount is whatever amount you have in your CoinBase wallet)
- Go back to Coinbase and send the Bitcoin from your CoinBase wallet to the account that ShapeShift gave you.
- Wait for the transaction to process.

SUCCESS, YOU NOW HAVE ETHER :)

3. Do stuff with Ether (via your MetaMask extension)

- Trade Ether at http://mkr.market
- Play a space game (pay to play, highest score wins the pot) at http://etherplay.io
- Play a roulette game (gambling) at https://www.rouleth.com