Hello Everyone,
Frustrated at the moment, I have created a coinbase account, Bittrex account, etc… Coinbase limits you to ETH, Bitcoin, Litecoin. I want to be able to purchase any available cryptocurrency, but Bittrex for example doesn’t offer deposit via credit card, bank account. Any help would greatly be appreciated!
Typically exchanges are good at either changing fiat to crypto or crypto to crypto. There really isn’t one that is great at both. I suggest you get crypto at one of the good fiat to crypto exchanges like GDAX, bitstmap, kraken and then use another exchange to go between cryptos.
Thank you of the reply! Thus, I would exchange from fiat to crypto and use that exchange to transfer crypto to GDAX, etc…???
Hmmm yea you would buy with fiat on exchanges like GDAX (coinbase), Bitstamp, Kraken, gemini.
Then you would use the send ETH / BTC functionality to send the crypto to another wallet on another exchange like Bitfinex, poloniex, bittrex to exchange it between all sorts of cryptos like alt coins.
Hope that helps!
I appreciate it Jeremy! Have a great weekend!
There is no one place to go to that takes your fiat deposit and allows you to buy any token or crypto currency. There are a few ambitious projects out there that are trying to create this but it’s a ways off from reality. I buy the big three (BTC, Ether, and Litecoin) from Coinbase. Deposit into your USD wallet within Coinbase. Coinbase also owns Gdax. Transfer USD from Coinbase to Gdax. No fee incurred. Buy one of the big three from Gdax. No fee here either. Then transfer back your crypto to Coinbase. Again no fee. Then spend your crypto out of this centralized exchange into something more secure or transfer to another exchange that offers other cryptos you wish to purchase. You will get charged the typical transaction fees to do this. I then make sure I leave very little if anything with these exchanges and transfer to a hardware wallet or paper wallet.
Thank you Doc! What hardware wallet or paper wallet you recommend? Someone mentioned Exodus?
Ledger is pretty legit. Here is Ivan’s video explaining the ledger.
thank you Jeremy for the vid!
I recently bought a Trezor but chose it as the others I was looking at were out of stock. It works good but I can only store a few types of coins on it. If I’m going to just store and sit on my purchases long term, I’ll generate a paper wallet and keep them off the internet. See:
and
https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/
Depending how paranoid you are, read the second link’s narrative on keeping your paper wallet safe.
For coins I want to trade and play the spread with I’ll leave them on a software wallet (more secure than leaving on an exchange) and spend them in and out of the exchanges.
Ivan also did a video talking about the security issues with the various kinds of storage options. See:
Thank you Doc! Will check out the links and video!
The way it is all set up having to buy either Bitcoin and Ether than using the two to buy alternative coins instead of directly with Fiat. And then if you ever sell an alternative coin it goes to Bitcoin again It seems to me that Bitcoin and Ethereum will always be the big boys #1&2 on coin market cap.
Anyone else see it that way?
Well… essentially yes. It is quite a bit of work to maintain different pairs. Because of that exchanges tend to focus on some pairs and no others. Eventually as things get really popular, new pairs emerge. But even then, they are usually cross pairs unless they are very very popular.
To explain what I mean…
In forex trading today you have what are called major pairs - EUR/USD, USD/JPY etc.
For crypto that would be something like - USD/BTC, BTC/ETH etc.
So a cross pair is when you need to make more than 1 trade to get to the currency you want. This is less efficient but it brings good liquidity to the market. For example, if you wanted to get to JPY from EUR, you would actually go from EUR to USD, USD to JPY.
Till very recently, I believe that even ETH was typically traded through BTC. Meaning that if you want to go from USD to ETH, you would go USD to BTC and BTC to ETH. Now, it looks like ETH might be trading vs fiat by itself. But I could be wrong.
Anyway, long story short is that if you were to try and go from USD to PAY, it means that you need to do many changes and is something a exchange may not want to risk. Not only that, it is going to appear quite expensive to do so.
Of course, you could skip the crossing and go direct. However, you will need ample liquidity in the markets to allow that to happen, something a lot of alt coins do no have.
Long story short, it makes sense that exchanges specialize (at least for now). The same way it makes sense that there are specialized forex exchanges and stock exchanges at the same time.
Do you think that the new Atomic Swaps will become better developed so that it will be easier for end users to swap more coins directly without an exchange?
Like the recently swapped coins by Charlie Lee of Litecoin and Decred - Litecoin and Bitcoin - Litecoin and Vertcoin.
I certainly hope so being decentralized we need a decentralized way to trade coins.
Yea of course, all these advancements will eventually make things easier. If nothing else, you should be able to swap between some cryptos easier so that you can access some of the pairs with greater ease.
For what its worth, if you are just looking to change 1 coin for another, perhaps something like Shapeshift or Changelly isn’t too bad either. Their commissions aren’t all that large.
Shapeshifter is nice but it is still a centralized provider although nice. They had to limit certain coins to us here in the States as they had to comply with the SEC not allowing ICO and some coins.
I don’t like the fact that My government decided that I cannot participate in something that I feel will bring value in the future. I understand that there are lots of junk ICO out there and the SEC is just looking out for it’s citizens but it is my money and I should be able to use it how I like. And if I pick a looser that is on me.
Good thing you don’t live in Hawaii. It’s even more frustrating when they effectively decide you can’t buy crypto but then deny that they’re affecting you.
Oh yea you can buy crypto, just buy direct at 25% mark up. Or better yet, how does a dark alley cash transaction sound? You even get a complimentary knife wound for your troubles.