Beginners Guide to Pancake Swap

Pancake Swap is a Binance Smart Chain based DEX launched by anonymous developers with a penchant for breakfast foods. It's similar to Ethereum's SushiSwap but incorporates many other features which allow you to earn rewards. While pretty much all Defi Exchanges are run by anonymous developers this one is promoted by Binance themselves which seems to lend credibility, and for all we know Binance actually is running it.

While Pancake Swap has a lot of features such as a Lottery, Battles, and other features, most users will primarily be using Pools where you essentially stake one coin, however more advanced users or those seeking higher interest rates may decide to jump into the Farms where you provide liquidity in currency pairs. This is not only slightly more complicated to do but also comes with the risk of losing your money, so before diving into this research the concept of "Impermanent Loss" and understand it before you dive in.

For me personally the interest rates are good enough in the Pools so I stick with those and would suggest that be what people get started with.

CAKE Coin, the native coin to the Pancake Swap has been surging as has Binance Coin and with Ethereum pushing back their solutions to fix Gas Fees, it continues to get other projects building on it and will likely continue growing.

If you're looking to grow your crypto or earn passive income this can be a great way of doing so. In today's post we'll be doing a complete beginners walkthrough of how to get started with Pancake Swap.

Getting Some Binance Coin (BNB)

To get started on the Binance Smar Chain and with Pancake Swap you'll need some BNB Coin. If you already have some or are already on Binance and can easily buy some you're ready to get started. If not you'll need to buy some. If you setup a Binance.US account you'll be able to buy some with fiat, if you don't have a Binance.US account you can setup a Binance.Com account and send over some Litecoin, trade that Litecoin into BNB, and then withdraw to your Trust Wallet. In the next step we'll be talking about setting up your Trust Wallet. Now in this guide I'm not going to be going step by step with how to deposit money to an exchange like Binance or how to withdraw to Trust Wallet. This is pretty basic stuff you should know before hopping onto an exchange like Pancake Swap, however if you have questions drop a comment or ask me and I'll be happy to provide a little more clarification.

Downloading Trust Wallet

You can access the Binance Smart Chain via the MetaMask Wallet however this method is a little more complicated as it requires you adding the Binance Smart Chain info where as it's already built into Trust Wallet so were going to stick with Trust Wallet. Visit TrustWallet.Com or download from the Android or IOS Stores. Again, I'm not going to walk through how to setup a wallet, it's pretty self explainatory, just make sure you securely store your Seed.

Getting BNB to Trust Wallet and Converting to Smart Chain BNB

So at this point you have Trust Wallet and you have BNB Coin. You'll need to move your BNB Coin over to your Trust Wallet from Binance. You'll do a withdrawl on Binance and send it to your BNB Wallet. You'll then need to turn your BNB Coin into BNB Smart Chain Coin. From the image above the BNB Coin at the top is your standard BNB Coin, the one below it with the black logo is the Smart Chain.

Converting BNB Coin to BNB Smart Chain

This is going to be easy peezy lemon squeezy. Simply click the BNB coin wallet and enter the wallet. It will look like the image above. Simply click the three dots where you see the arrow pointing. One of the options will be convert to BNB Smart Chain. Click that, it will then ask you how much you want to convert, choose the amount and that coin is now on the Binance Smart Chain. At this point you can use it in Pancake Swap, Cub Finance, or other exchanges to buy coins and stake or pool them to earn passive income.

Open Up Pancake Swap on the DAPPS Browser

Okay, now it's time to access the DAPPS browser and go over to Pancake Swap, Cub Finance or whatever site you want to use. In this example were going to use Pancake Swap. Now if you're using iPhone, they suck throw it in the garbage and get an Android, okay kidding, kind of. Apple made them get rid of the DAPPS browser to go on the iOS store so you'll need to do a workaround in your Safari Browser. I don't mess with iPhones so my Android peeps you need to do nothing special. Click the DAPPS where you see the arrow pointing and it will open up what looks like a web browser in Pancake Swap. You can browse the different apps they have and you'll likely see pancake swap but you can also just go to PancakeSwap.Finance. Once you do that you're now in Pancake Swap.

Trading Your BNB Smart Chain Coin for CAKE

Okay so for this guide I'm going to show you how to acquire CAKE and how to stake your CAKE in the Pools. You can also do this with other coins as well. Click the hamburger at the top left to the left of the bunny, this will pull up a menu. Click "Trade" and then click "Exchange". I'm going to assume you've been on an exchange before. You're going to select BNB as the coin your trading and CAKE as the coin your trading for. Figure out how much you want to trade of BNB into CAKE and complete your trade. FYI leave yourself some BNB as you'll need this, kind of like gas, to pay fees. Fees are typically $0.20 cents to $0.80 cents. I think the highest fee I've ever paid was $2 to get into a lottery but fees will typically be $0.40 to $0.60 cents.

Bring Your Cake to the Pool

Okay so you have Pools and Farms. Pools your taking a single coin. Now obviously if a coin has huge interest but loses value you're probably going to lose money. CAKE IMHO is only going to continue to grow so I stick with CAKE but there's plenty of other coins you can stake. There's also pools, I'm not, going to teach this, it's slightly more tricky for a noob as you need to have two coin pairs so for example CAKE/BNB and you'll need to provide liquidity in equal amounts. You also face the risk of impermanent loss ie the coins get too far apart in value and you lose your money unless they come back. I don't fully understand this concept and 100% plus APR is more than good enough in my book so on Pancake Swap I stick to the Pools and on CUB Finance I stick to the Dens.

Now you're screen may look slightly different than mine but you'll likely see something about approve stake or approve pool. You'll click this and pay about $0.20 cents to open the contract or begin. At this point you'll click the plus button, decide how much you want to stake, and finalize it. You're now staking. As you earn you can choose to either compound ie roll that money back in, or harvest which is take it out and trade it back into BNB or another coin. My strategy as I'm in both Pancake Swap and Cub Finance is when one is up I'll harvest and put my earnings into the other.

Wrapping Up

Keep in mind these type of Dex's or Defi sites are risky, typically it's an anonymous team behind them ie like trading on the Silk Road or Agora, there will be rug pulls and people will run off with money. I like Pancake Swap because Binance promotes them and honestly I think it may be Binance running it. I like Cub Finance because the team behind Leo Finance runs it, they have a track record of success and haven't stolen money. I'm also bullish on both these coins ie CAKE and CUB. There's a lot of sites like this that popup but most are wham bam thank you mam kinda sites where the native coins tank and everyone just rushes in to get 16,000% APR and pull out real quick so for now I'm basically sticking with these two.

To acquire BNB Coin you can get it from Binance.Com, Binance.US or Kucoin. Binance.US will allow you to buy in Fiat, Binance.Com or Kucoin you'll need to have another crypto to buy it with. Kucoin will allow USA users, Binance.Com will not so you'll need to use a VPN to access the site and set the location for HongKong.

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