Two of the most common questions I get are "which exchange should I use" and "where do I keep it." So here is the honest answer: the short list of things I use myself, what each one is actually for, and why the right tool depends entirely on what you are doing.
These are the two steps almost everyone needs first, in the order you need them.
Your first real decision in crypto is not which coin. It is where you buy it. Most of the horror stories I hear start with someone sending money to an app they found in a comment section, or to a person who offered to buy it for them. Use a large, regulated exchange that has been around, has real support, and that lets you withdraw to your own wallet.
I use Crypto.com for buying and for the card. It is the one I point my family at, which is the only recommendation standard I trust.
An exchange is where you buy. It is not where you keep anything you care about. If the exchange freezes, fails, or gets hacked, you are a creditor in someone else's problem. The fix is a hardware wallet, which keeps your keys on a device that never touches the internet.
You do not need one on day one with fifty dollars. You need one before you are holding an amount that would genuinely hurt to lose, and you should buy it new and direct, never secondhand and never from a marketplace listing. Tampered devices are a real and common scam.
This section is for people who already trade, or who have decided they want to learn. If you are still on step one above, you do not need anything here yet, and leverage will cost you money faster than it teaches you anything.
I trade altcoin perpetuals, and I do it on BYDFi. That is where my own positions are, every day. I care about three things in a venue: that the pairs I want actually have volume, that the fees do not quietly eat a system that works on paper, and that I can get out as easily as I got in.
One honest warning, because it matters more than the platform you pick: perps are leveraged, and leverage turns ordinary volatility into liquidation. The rules are what make it survivable. Nobody gets hurt by choosing the wrong exchange. They get hurt by position sizing.
These are referral links for things I personally use. I never recommend anything I do not use myself, and I do not take placement money to put something on this page. If I stop using one of these, it comes off the list.
The free Safety Check takes about two minutes and tells you which of these steps you have actually covered, and which gap a scammer would walk straight through.