# Crypto trading for beginners: the five decisions behind every trade

> Crypto trading for beginners, as five decisions: which coin, the risk check, your size, your price and your exit, each shown where you make it on ripr.

- URL: https://ripr.trade/blog/crypto-trading-for-beginners-guide
- Publisher: ripr (https://ripr.trade)
- Author: ripr Editorial Team
- Published: 2026-11-12
- Category: Guides

Crypto trading for beginners comes down to five decisions: which coin to buy, whether it is worth the risk, how much to put in, what price you will accept, and when to sell. On ripr each of the five is a screen you work through yourself. Here they are in the order you meet them.

## Crypto trading for beginners: what you need to start

Crypto trading is buying a coin at one price with the intention of selling it at another, and to start on ripr you need three things: an account, a little SOL, and one coin you have a reason to be curious about. The action that does the trade is a swap, and ripr's help centre explains [what a swap is](https://ripr.trade/support/what-is-a-swap) and what can change before the final fill.

ripr is a Solana-only app, so trading, launching and market data all run on [Solana](https://solana.com/) — one network to learn instead of several. SOL is Solana's own coin: you spend it to buy other coins, and it pays the small network fee every trade costs.

Signing up creates a Solana wallet automatically: no second app to install, and no recovery phrase to write down before your first trade. The wallet belongs to the account, not to a phrase, so you sign back in the way you signed up and it is there on any device. On iOS and Android, add the backup login the app asks for on day one.

## Decision 1: which coin to buy, and where to look on ripr

Coins reach you on ripr through [Explore](https://ripr.trade/explore), which lists Trending, New and Coming-soon coins and holds your watchlists. Trending ranks coins on how fast trades, volume and distinct buyers are growing, and lowers coins whose activity looks manipulated. Read it as a list of what is busy, not what is good. Coins carrying risk warnings stay in it until you turn on the Hide warnings filter, which takes out the ones the app has flagged.

ripr groups coins into categories such as memes, DeFi, gaming, AI and stablecoins, so you can browse a theme rather than a feed. The screener filters and sorts the whole market, with ranges for market cap, liquidity and age; a market-cap sort drops coins under $5,000 of liquidity or with fewer than 100 holders unless you set those limits yourself.

The case that catches most beginners is a coin someone sends you. A contract address is the long string that identifies exactly one token on Solana, and unlike a name or a logo, no two tokens share one. Search in ripr takes a name, a ticker or a full contract address, so paste the address in full when a coin arrives from outside the app.

## Decision 2: check the coin before you buy it

On ripr the checks live on the coin's page, above the trade button. Before you buy, the app shows warnings for known rug patterns: a creator who holds unlocked liquidity, liquidity that has already been pulled, a launch that looks coordinated. It is equally plain about the other half: not seeing a warning never means a coin is safe.

Two numbers do most of the work for a beginner. The first is concentration: ripr shows how much of a coin's supply the top 10 and top 50 holders own, and how much the creator holds, leaving pools and vaults out of the sum. One brand-new coin in the app showed roughly 140 holder wallets, with the top 10 sitting on about 40% of that supply. A handful of wallets that size can move a price on their own.

The second is the creator: ripr lists the other coins the same creator has launched, so their history is something you read rather than something you are told. Coin pages on iOS and Android also flag a coin that has low liquidity, is under review, has paused prices, or is still being checked. [How to spot a risky coin before you buy](https://ripr.trade/blog/how-to-spot-a-risky-meme-coin) covers the rest of the checklist.

## Decision 3: how much money do you need to start trading crypto?

Enough for one small trade plus a little SOL for fees. The right size for that first trade is an amount you would be relaxed about losing completely. That is the whole rule, and it has nothing to do with how good the coin looks. Treat the first few trades as tuition.

Money gets into ripr by card, Apple Pay or, in India, UPI and bank transfer, through payment providers that set their own fees and show them at checkout. The methods on offer depend on where you are, and the help centre lists [the minimum deposit for each one](https://ripr.trade/support/what-is-the-minimum-amount-i-should-deposit).

Leave a little SOL unspent on top of what you trade with. Every trade costs a small network fee, and your first buy of any coin opens a token account with a refundable deposit that comes back when the account closes; a full sell can close that account and return it for you. On iOS and Android the trade sheet shows the network fee, any ripr fee and the refundable deposit before you confirm.

For the arithmetic behind position sizes, [how much to invest and how to size a position](https://ripr.trade/blog/how-much-to-invest-in-meme-coins-position-sizing) is the companion to this post.

## Decision 4: what price you accept when you buy

The price you accept on ripr is a slippage setting: slippage is the gap you agree to tolerate between the price you saw and the price you get. Set it tight and you get the price you saw or no fill at all; set it loose and a fast-moving coin can fill you at a worse number.

ripr's Auto slippage works that limit out from how much the coin moved over the last five minutes, between 3% and 15%, and you can set your own figure instead. Leave it on auto for your first trades; the help centre's [guide to setting slippage](https://ripr.trade/support/what-is-slippage-and-how-should-i-set-it) covers when changing it helps.

The mechanics after you tap buy are worth understanding once. ripr prepares the transaction on its server, the app then checks it on your device against the amount and slippage you chose and refuses it if anything differs, and your own wallet signs it.

That check is about the transaction, not about whether the coin is any good. And if the price moves while you are confirming, ripr asks you to accept the new price rather than signing you into it.

## Decision 5: when to sell, and how ripr helps you plan it

Decide when to sell before you buy. The decision gets much harder once the number is moving, and on ripr selling is the buy flow in reverse. Open the coin page, switch the trade sheet from buy to sell, enter an amount or use a percentage option, and confirm — the help centre has the [steps for selling a coin](https://ripr.trade/support/how-do-i-sell-a-coin).

You can also fix the exit in advance. Take-profit and stop-loss lines drag onto the chart and sell automatically while the app, or on desktop web the coin page, is open, so treat them as a plan you set rather than a promise. Price and launch alerts arrive as notifications, capped so your phone stays usable.

Then there is the question of whether any of it is working. The iOS and Android apps show your realised and open profit and loss over the last 7 or 30 days. One good trade is noise. A profit-and-loss line across 30 days is information.

## Frequently asked questions

### What does swap mean in crypto?

A swap is the in-app action that exchanges SOL for a token, or a token back into SOL. On ripr you choose the amount, review the estimate and the fees, confirm, and your holdings update in your portfolio and transaction history afterwards. The final fill can differ slightly from the estimate, so check the amount before you confirm.

### What is the difference between crypto trading and investing?

Trading means buying a coin because you expect to sell it fairly soon; investing means holding something for years. The five decisions in this post are trading decisions: they lean on what a market is doing now rather than on forecasts.

### Do you need to understand charts before you start trading crypto?

Not for your first trades. ripr's iOS and Android apps draw a chart with tick, 1-minute, 5-minute, 15-minute, 1-hour and 1-day ranges, a price or market-cap view, your entry line and markers for your own trades. Reading your entry against the current price is enough to begin with.

### Why did my first crypto trade fail?

The two usual reasons are a bare SOL balance and a price that moved further than your slippage allowed. Auto slippage sets that limit from the coin's last five minutes of movement, and keeping a little SOL unspent covers the network fee each trade needs. The help centre's page on [why a swap fails](https://ripr.trade/support/why-did-my-swap-fail) works through the rest.

## Where to start on ripr

Make all five decisions small the first time. Pick one coin you could explain to a friend, read its warnings and holder concentration, put in an amount you would shrug off, leave slippage on auto, and know your exit before you buy.

ripr's help centre keeps a short checklist for [trading more safely](https://ripr.trade/support/how-can-i-trade-more-safely), worth five minutes before your first trade. One line of its guidance is worth carrying: nobody can guarantee what a market will do next, so ignore anyone who claims they can.

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*Last verified 3 November 2026. This article is published by ripr, which builds an app for trading Solana coins. Nothing here is financial advice.*