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Why not?

Because multiple exchanges have folded and taken/lost people's money.

after buying transfer to separate wallet? and where? what wallet would ya recommend?

Buy a hardware wallet. I would recommend the Ledger Nano S. I have no affiliation with them.

Agreed, though I haven't used gemini. I would put Kraken on that list. CEX.IO is easy, but super expensive to get money in via.

Expect it to take around a week to get $1K in to play with, and plan to get real cozy with the security folks at your credit card company. Plan to spend a few hours just futzing around with everything involved. Easiest path is likely a credit card on coinbase, they have a $500/week limit on credit card. You can do a bank transfer, with a higher limit, but you will buy Ether/Bitcoin and then not be able to trade it for anything else for a week until it clears. Great if you want to get Ether, bad if you want to turn your $1K into Ripple. Unless Ether doubles the week you are sitting on it.