The Bitcoin price may seem super pricey, but that doesn’t mean you can’t afford it. You don’t need to buy one whole Bitcoin. Instead, you can buy a small fraction of a Bitcoin. I bought my first Bitcoin for $5 – no joke.
No one knows where the heck Bitcoin is going, but for $5, why not join the ride? And if you buy $100, you can get a $10 worth of Bitcoin for free.
So why not jump into the Bitcoin space? You’ll up your techiness and probably learn a thing or two.
The Easiest Start
It’s really just 3 simple steps:
(1) Sign up for a Coinbase account.
(2) Send them $5 ($100 if you want the $10 bonus)
(3) Own Bitcoin.
Coinbase charges fees depending on how you fund your account. If you buy with money which you transfer in from a bank, the fee is 1.49%. If you buy with a credit card, the fee is 3.99%. Below, I’ll show you how to lower that fee to 0.25%, but the only way you can snag the $10 bonus is by buying $100 on Coinbase.
So if you want the $10 ($8.51 after a 1.49% fee), jump on over and get started:
Also NOTE: A Coinbase account is a US bank account insured by the FDIC. As such, you will have to answer bank account-type questions, including providing your social security number. It’s ok though – Coinbase takes security very seriously. I have personal friends who have been denied Coinbase accounts because they provided virtual phone numbers or provided addresses that did not match their public record.
Got that all handled? Here are some expert steps:
(1) Upgrade to GDAX
GDAX is the professional trading arm of Coinbase. It has fancy charts, but mostly importantly, it has lower fees. Just take a look:
Coinbase
1.49% if purchased with money from a bank transfer
3.99% if purchased with a credit card
GDAX
0.25% or less
GDAX can feel less straight forward than Coinbase’s “give us X amount of dollars and get X amount of Bitcoin.” You transfer USD into your GDAX account, then you get to fret over all of the stock charts and decide precisely when you want to buy. Then you decide if you want to issue a Market, Limit, or Stop order and for what amount of Bitcoin, and then you place the order.
But really, don’t be intimidated – to take advantage of GDAX’s lower fees, simply sign up for an account just like you did at Coinbase and ignore all of the charts and matrix-like numbers. Just issue Buy orders for how much you want to put into Bitcoin and you’ll basically be operating with Coinbase simplicity but without the 1.49% fees. The one advantage that Coinbase has over GDAX is you can schedule recurring transactions with Coinbase (both deposits and withdrawals). But if you create both a Coinbase and a GDAX account, as I’ve subtly suggested here, you can get the best of both worlds. You can transfer all of your currencies between both GDAX and Coinbase freely, so even that initial $108.51 you snagged above can be moved over right away into GDAX.
To upgrade your Coinbase account to GDAX, follow the steps here.
(2) Buy other cryptocurrencies at GDAX (Ehtereum and Litecoin)
GDAX allows you to exchange US Dollars or Bitcoin for other currencies as well – specifically Ethereum and Litecoin. Their prices fluctuate differently than do Bitcoin prices but some people like to diversify into them. The whole crypto-currency market is bullish at the moment, so it can be a way to snag more returns while reducing daily risk a bit.
(3) Get to another exchange (Bittrex or Kraken) and buy other types of crypto-currencies
If you are really getting into crypto-currencies, there is a whole world of crypto-currencies out there (over 500).
Bittrex and Kraken are two reputable exchanges. My personal favorite is Bittrex because it offers the most selection, but Kraken is more user friendly.
You cannot easily use US Dollars on these exchanges, so I usually buy Ethereum at GDAX and transfer it to Bittrex. I use Ethereum because the fees are lower than Bitcoin. I then use all of my recently purchased Ethereum to purchase other coins at Bittrex. Ethereum is simply a conduit or middle-man to get my USD into alternative cryptocurrencies. And it can be fun. I recently used this method to get into both Lumen and Monero – both of which have yielded over astronomical returns for me in the last month.
(4) Get a Wallet
Just like you store paper currency in a wallet, so also can you store cryptocurrency in a wallet. Why not just keep all of your money at GDAX or Bittrex? Well, think of crypto-land like a modern day wild west. If you lived in Billy the Kid country, you might try to store money in the bank, but banks were attractive targets for robbers. Why? Because that’s where all the money was! So if your bank was super secure, your money was super secure – but if Billy the Kid showed up and wanted to rob the bank, you might lose all of your money.
Cryptocurrency exchanges can sometimes be like this – they make attractive targets for digital robbers (a.k.a. hackers). And just like in the wild west where you might have better luck storing your money on your farm, it may be most secure today to store your digital currency in offline. These offline locations are called Wallets. Some Wallets are apps on your phone. Some are on USB drives. Some are even just pieces of paper (these confuse me a bit). But whatever you choose, make sure they have at least one feature: they are not constantly connected to the internet. If you see a Wallet that is constantly connected to the internet, stay away, because the real benefit of a Wallet is that it can be taken offline. And if it’s offline, it’s removed from hacker access.
My recommendations for Wallets are:
Digital: Airbitz
USB: Trezor
Paper: Wallet Generator
Be First to Comment