[data_mine]

there's plenty of guidelines on line, google will help heaps here.

essentially there's two ways to start.

- mining the coins - using your computer power (and electricity) to generate the coins, there's upfront costs here that will eat your profit. and the chinese have this all sewn up with cheap electricity and entire warehouses filled with computers doing the job - it's difficult requiring hourly (or more) adjustments to keep a mining system profitable. with a small setup and aussie power costs. (if you have excess solar power you can be in front easily)

- buying coins with real cash via an exchange. there's lots of exchanges.

who to trust - no one currently - it's very much in the wild west phase still. lots of scams and hackers trying to make it big at the expense of others. unfortunately the "if it sopunds to good to be true" test is hard to apply because the gains all do sound too good to be true, you have to research anything before you put your money in it - and play knowing you could lose it all - so only play with what you can afford to lose.