Where to buy Bitcoin?
Most cryptocurrency traders, myself included, buy Bitcoin on Coinbase.com. The reason for that is that it’s the best regulated, most used, safest, and easy to use exchange out there. It is, however, fairly expensive if you simply click the ‘buy Bitcoin’ button. You’ll lose roughly 3% that way. So, with a little work-around, experienced traders actually buy Bitcoin for 0% fee. That way you’ll make your first 3% gain just from reading this guide!
What we’re going to do is simply buy Bitcoin from the same exchange Coinbase does. That exchange is called GDAX. Coinbase and GDAX are actually one and the same company. Coinbase.com is there for first time users who favor simplicity over efficiency, and GDAX is where you can actually place buy and sell orders.
Ok, so you first need to sign up to Coinbase.
- Navigate to https://www.coinbase.com/join/595767146c612e08d1c77ddc and follow the instructions (That's my referral link by the way. You get a free 10$ if you buy 100$ worth of bitcoin, and I get $10 aswell). You’ll need to provide two forms of identity verification (passport / ID card / driver license) in order to make use of this 0% fee trick we’re going to apply .
- Coinbase will ask you to send a small euro amount over to Coinbase. This links your bank account and verifies your identity. Don’t worry, this amount will be added to your account. But I recommend sending 1 euro, and sending the actual money you want to invest later on when the account is set up.
- Wait for the (slow) banks to process your payment and for Coinbase to verify you. That usually does take 4-5 workdays, like they mention.
- You’ll get a mail once you’re verified.
- Send the money you want to invest over to Coinbase. You do that by logging into Coinbase and clicking on ‘accounts’ and then on the left side of the screen click on ‘deposit’ in the EUR Wallet section. That brings up a menu of data such as the address where you have to send the money to. This should be familiar as you’ve already sent one payment in step 2
- It takes 1-3 days for your money to get there. In the meanwhile, go to GDAX.com
- It should be possible to simply log in with your Coinbase accountname and password. If not, just click on register and it should recognize that you’re already listed on Coinbase. Once you’ve verified that you can indeed log into GDAX, you just wait for the money to arrive
- Once it’s arrived on Coinbase, you need to haul it over to the GDAX account. Log into GDAX, go to the trading section, click on deposit. A menu should pop up. Click on ‘Coinbase account’, hit the max number, and click on deposit.
- Last step! Now you can buy your bitcoin like the real traders do! If you want to just buy bitcoin at current price, but at 0% fee, you have to make a bid at the highest current bid. The way to do that is to click on ‘limit order’ on the left side of the screen. Click on ‘advanced’ and verify that ‘Post only’ is checked’. In the ‘limit price’ textbox, fill in the price you want to pay for bitcoin. The red and green numbers right next to that section of the website are the current bid orders (green) and the sell orders (red). You want to place your bid order as high as possible, so copy the highest green order, or simply click on it and GDAX automatically fills in that price for you. Then, in the topleft, under ‘ORDER FORM’, click on the amount of Euro’s you have in your GDAX account. This automatically fills in how much Bitcoin you would buy at the price you have set in the limit price field. Then, click place buy order and wait for your order to get filled!
a) it is possible that the price goes up and doesn’t ever fill your buy order, so if you just want to buy bitcoin and don’t care about getting it at the best price, then remove your order (middle of your screen, the ‘OPEN ORDERS’ section) and replace it at a higher price
b) it is also possible that the price already went below your bid order while you were making the order. Just place a new one abit lower.
Other tips
- If you plan on using GDAX/Coinbase more often, I HIGHLY suggest enabling 2FA authentication. Do this for every exchange you will do business on. I can’t stress this enough, just do this or get hacked.
- Some popular and safe exchanges to trade on are Bittrex, Binance, and Poloniex.
- EtherDelta is used mostly for new Ethereum-based ICO’s
- Cryptopia and HitBTC are known as ‘crappy exchanges for shitcoins’. They list way more coins, but have less volume, less safety, so more risk for you.