Getting Started In DeFi — A Resource Guide To Trading On Pancake Swap (Without Using Binance)

When I first started trading, I was using the Ethereum network. I applied to trade on Binance but never received notice of account approval, and thus my migration to Binance Smart Chain was delayed about a month until I realized I could buy BNB on Kucoin. BSC is everyone’s favorite chain to hate, but it’s the best chain for yield farming and it’s faster and cheaper than Ethereum.

By the time most coins get listed on an exchange, they’ve often already experienced a significant price increase. Shiba Inu ($SHIB) is a perfect example of this.

The price of SHIB soared from as low as $0.000000000056 in November of 2020 to an all time high of $0.0000379 on May 10th, 2021 after being listed on the Binance exchange — a total price increase of 67,678,471% within only 8 months. Quite impressive. However, “only” 2,000% of those gains occured after the listing on Binance — the people who made out best bought months prior, from a DEX.

Since hitting all time highs in May, SHIB has been listed on fourteen additional exchanges and as you can see from the price history, those listings have had a much smaller effect on the price, leaving many people holding the bag. The goal is to get in early — find the good projects and buy before everyone else notices.

Short of getting into an IDO, your next best option is to buy directly from the DEX, but the process of learning how to do this while also understanding the risks can be overwhelming for some. This is intended to be a resource guide to get you through the process of setting up your Metamask wallet, with the help of James @ MoneyZG, so you can trade on PancakeSwap.

Part One: The Technical Side

1. Create a Kraken Account online.

• You’re going to use this account for bank withdrawals, and later, deposits, as it facilitates deposits/withdrawals to/from your bank account.

2. Download and Install Metamask.

• Metamask is your wallet. This is where your crypto is stored. For the sake of efficiency, James @ MoneyZG is going to walk you through the setup with these stellar tutorials he made.

3. Setup Metamask — MetaMask Tutorial 2021: How to Use & Safely Setup MetaMask

• With great gains comes great responsibility. Write your seed phrase down on a piece of paper and put it somewhere safe. Outside of setting up your wallet on a new device or recovering your account, you’ll never need these words. This is the key to your wallet and anyone/any app asking for it is trying to rob you. If they’re successful, your funds are gone forever.

4. Add Binance Smart Chain to Metamask — How to Connect MetaMask to Binance Smart Chain (Send BNB to MetaMask)

• In this video, around the 4:20 mark, James will walk you through purchasing BNB on Binance, however, I would caution against this. While I’ve not used them personally, there are enough horror stories of locked funds and not being able to make withdrawals, it’s best to just altogether avoid them and purchase your BNB from Kucoin.

5. Setting up Kucoin and buying BNB — KuCoin Tutorial for Beginners — Trade Crypto on KuCoin Exchange

• At 4:45, instead of using Binance to fund your Kucoin account, you’re going to use Coinbase.
• While you can technically buy any coin and send it, it’s imperative that you send it on the correct network. When you go to select the receiving Kucoin address, there are several options (ERC20, TRC20, KCC, Algorland, EOS). These are each their own blockchain and allows you the option of using any of the above. However, Coinbase defaults to ER20 (Ethereum’s network). So if you send USDT over the TRC20 network accidently, you won’t be able to retrieve those funds until they support the Tron blockchain. To avoid this mess, you can buy ADA on Coinbase and send it to your ADA specific Kucoin address. ADA doesn’t take long to transfer, once you’ve received it, you’re going to sell it for USDT, and buy BNB, then send BNB to your Metamask Wallet.

6. PancakeSwap Tutorial (How to Use Pancake Swap DeX and Yield Farming)

• This video will walk you through accessing the PancakeSwap DEX. Once you’re familiar with the technical side of things, the rest should be relatively easy.

Part Two: Rules For Picking The Winners And How to Find Them — to be continued…

Rugpulls, bad tokenomics, and trash coins in general can all be avoided with a bit of due dilligence.

1. I’ve found my favorite projects checking through the recently added listings on CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. A coin recently listed on either one of these websites typically means it’s not listed on any exchanges yet, usually they’re just getting ready to start marketing or at least in the later phases of development.
2. Don’t buy anything that hasn’t been audited. This information is usually readily available, either it’ll be on the website somewhere or you can usually ask a moderator. Rug pulls are programed into smart contracts, and can be avoided by only buying coins that have been audited.
3. Read the Whitepaper. Even the least reputable teams have a whitepaper these days, hence why it’s important to read it. I can typically tell within 5 minutes of opening a Whitepaper if it’s a project I’m interested in.

Posted early for those trying to buy $MONSTA right now. I’ll finish part 2 later today.

Note: The Cake Monster contract is: 0x8a5d7fcd4c90421d21d30fcc4435948ac3618b2f