I bought my first crypto in order to buy Steem, I had heard of Bitcoin but never purchased any before. It really was an intimidating process.
I wrote about it at the time and reread it today. Share your Introduction to purchasing crypto in the comment section.
My First Experience buying Steem outside of the Internal Market.
My background is Corporate America, not Crypto. So, when I made a decision to purchase some Bitcoin, I asked how to go about it on SteemIt, but the advice wasn’t very clear to those of us who have never owned Crypto before. (or at least me)
Being a hands-on learner, I took a small amount of money to learn the ropes. I decided on $100 dollars. I wasn’t excited to give out my Credit Card numbers, so I searched for a site that would accept PayPal. Google led me to Paxful.com after doing a bit of due diligence I put in an amount of money I wanted to spend. The site sorts for people who are selling and will accept your form of payment.
A seller contacted me via a chat on the Paxful site. He/She (pictures showed a woman) wanted a very specific picture of me, holding a sign.. With a date, and some verbiage she gave me. I took the selfie. She also wanted me to message her using a Facebook account with the same name. There seemed to be a middleman (brokerage account holding the money in escrow until we both agreed.) So, this seller sent me through some hoops to confirm my identity. Within a half an hour, I owned parts of a shiny new bitcoin. My $100 bid cost, $104 dollars, and resulted in $80 dollars worth of bitcoin.
I then moved the coins to Bittrex and paid a fee to do so. I was able to trade my bitcoin for Steem on Bittrex. Now, how to import it into my Steem wallet? I looked up all my keys, and tried to withdraw… worried all of the time my money would be lost in Bitcoin wasteland. When I tried to create a transfer transaction I used my key. My transactions just sat, and sat … Turns out. I didn’t need my key Rather just my account name… whatsup. Once, I got that straightened out I was able to easily move my new Steem into my Steem account and power up. Mission accomplished.
I know those of you who have been using and trading bitcoin are laughing at me now, and I realize I made a lot of mistakes. I used a small amount of money and went through the process to “learn” and I was okay with making some mistakes in order to learn. I wonder if there isn’t a way to make the process easier for those of us with little bitcoin experience in order to let smaller mainstream users “Power Up” more easily.
Please share your first experience with purchasing Bitcoin in the comments. Alright new-users, have you purchased any crypto yet? Did it feel hard? Tell us about it in the comment section.
@whatsup,
When people start buying crypto in most of times they are ended up with a scammer in my country! So, I made a process and now most of them could buy it without that fear! Specially when we are new to this field it's really hard, but then we adopt and we could find better ways! Like you do!
Cheers~
The key mistake you made was to not use use coinbase to buy bitcoin.
You could have then used the feature on steemit.com to buy steem directly with bitcoin.
But is is true buying bitcoin is difficult still.
I used coinbase now. I'm actually really glad I fumbled through that first attempt.
:) But you are right, if I were advising a new user that is what I would recommend.
It's insanely complicated for anyone outside of the crypto world. I wonder what would steemit be like if it was easier and cheap to do? What if you could just go to your wallet and with a bank debit card and just buy 10 steem or 100 or any amount with a couple of clicks? Yeah i know i sound crazy
You sound crazy like a fox. Imagine if you could simply click "power up" and select a dollar amount in the wallet.
A pass-through pops up, you enter your credit card details. Boom... You've powered up some Steem.
We would be in an entirely different situation if that could happen. We should at least link from the wallet to @blocktrades.
I really really wish that would happen... and soon!
It is a challenge for those of us who are not experienced in this. I bought in to crypto 3 times (it all finally got traded for Steem) and I was a wreck until it was safely over. I ended up using Coinbase and using Litecoin to cut back on the time and fees.
I bought some Steem with Bitcoin in the early months of this year. I suspected it wasn't a smart move financially after the big rally but I did it because I was embarrassed to hold such a small amount of Steem Power while a friend of mine had delegated about six times as much SP to me than I then had. I still didn't have as much as I had been delegated to but it was better. I have reached my goal of outgrowing his delegation a long time ago. I intend to grow more and faster in the future.
Ha! Great job. Sorry about the timing, but I bet it will pay off.
Thanks. In fact, I do remember buying a little bit of STEEM in the summer of 2017, too. Owning SP is better than just passively holding some crypto. It keeps you active, helps you learn new skills and makes you create connections with a lot people.
hi @whatsup. I use a local company that has an app. takes a few minutes but is way cheaper. You must find another route as you got robbed.
Yeah, I did. That was in November of 16. so I've learned some tricks since then.
How do you buy it now?
With Bitcoin, it was last year at this time. Ah it is easy! It is quick and painless! Having to wait to have the transaction clear was nerve racking, and the cost of the transaction was depressing. I switched to litecoin for general transferring and STEEM for fast and free!
While I found it pretty easy to buy, it was more difficult to figure out how to take it off the exchanges and to secure. I ultimately went with a Hardware wallet but the technical aspects are quite intimidating. Also, the first time I bought Steem was with @blocktrades which seemed like magic! While intimidating, once sent, the transaction went by in 3 minutes which was great as I have experienced waiting an hour or two two move other cryptos between wallets!
Nice! Yeah, I am still intimidated by wallets and learning about them using EOS and a few others.
I started crypto with steemit.
Me too! I almost wish i would have been in some crypto first! : )
Dude.... You're on Facebook?? Add me! ( Tyrone "Big Nasty" Biggums )
The first time I bought Cypto was Bitcoin and I purchased it because a company selling it asked me to have a look at their website for Seo recommendations! So I tried out the services and bought some, a few weeks later I sold the bitcoin for a profit since there was a really strong run at the time!
So I was hooked and started researching and bought some BTC again when it went down and then heard about Ethereum and I was like oooh this is cheaper and I can own as whole one lol! So I bought 2 on another website and I haven’t looked back ever since! I’ve made money, I’ve lost money and I’ve had money stolen via hacks but I’m enjoying the journey
Posted using Partiko iOS
It's a pretty interesting road for sure! I'm enjoying it also.
So nice that you share it @watsup. I also tried my first purchase with small amount of money only and sent it through blockchain. But it went in unconfirmed transaction. I was confused to what to do. I was tensed. I sought help of some sites which helps in confirming transaction. Anyway it reached in my account after 2 days. But I got a good knowledge about bitcoin in these 2 days.
Posted using Partiko Android
last week i wanted to buy $50 worth of steem with some money a friend gave me to invest but i couldnt. part of the money has been spent, so i am cracking my head thinking i will replace it. it is really difgicult buying crypto and transaction fees are usually high
My first crypto was Steem.
I was so green that I signed up for Steemit without understanding the 'money' I (might) be making wasn't cash dollars! (Or as I learned to say, 'fiat'.) But I liked the idea of owning 'crypto' and I thought Steemit was a pretty great idea, so I thought why not buy some?
I read up on how to do it. It sounded like a Rube Goldberg machine! So I thought that's stupid and much too complicated. But I kept coming back to the idea. So I read more, learning about fees and what traded where. Oh, and where I could use a debit card to do that. I finally decided to try Coinbase to Block.io to Steem.
Then there was the sign-up process. I forget now all the hoops (um, personal information) involved but one was to take a selfie and a copy of my driver's license and that felt weird sending it to a company that may or may not be legit.
I'm reasonably comfortable doing it now but I would have done it sooner and bought more if I could have just clicked a button in my wallet!
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