How Do I Buy Cryptocurrencies?

This is a question a lot of people around the world are having right now.

With the recent enormous growth of the crypto markets more and more people are looking into investing in cryptocurrencies.

What exactly do I need?

FIAT to Crypto

You need to register at Coinbase, an exchange that converts FIAT currency (what you might call “real currency”, like USD) to either Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin.

Signing up is a breeze and you have the option to either do wire transfers, SEPA-payments or directly purchase crypto via a credit/debit card.

When you register you need to validate your identity and the easiest option is to upload a photo of your passport. Other forms of ID also work, however from my experience and that of my friends it seems a passport works best for the Coinbase automatic validation system.

Signing up for Binance

Once you’ve converted your FIAT currency into BTC, ETH or LTC (I’d recommend buying ETH) you can sign up for a proper crypto trading exchange called Binance. This website can look intimidating at first, but fear not, it’s a lot simpler than you might think at first glance.

You sign up via the link I’ve given above and just as you did with Coinbase you need to verify your identity to be able to withdraw more than 2BTC worth of currency per 24 hours.

At this point you might think “2 whole bitcoins, how will I ever reach that kind of money??”. It might seem like a lot right now, but play your cards right in the crypto markets and you’ll be way above that in a while. So might as well verify your identity to make sure when the day comes you don’t have to worry about it.

Trading on Binance

Once you’re signed up and have bought some crypto on Coinbase you are ready to trade.

You now have two options, the first one is to just HODL and wait for your ETH or crypto of choice to rise. If you, like me, aren’t satisfied with just that, but you’re looking for something more interesting to invest into then read on. What you do now is find out your Ethereum address on your Binance account.

Hover your user icon on the top right.
Click the estimated value and it will take you to a new page
On this page you can search for “ETH”
Click “deposit” and you will be given a long address, this is the address of your Ethereum wallet on Binance. Copy it to paste later.
Now go back Coinbase and go to accounts
Find your Ethereum account and click the “send” option.
Enter the same address that you got from Binance into the address field here
Enter the amount of ETH you want to send
Send it
Profit!

Now what?

Now it will take a few minutes and you should receive a message from Binance saying you’ve received a deposit to your Ethereum account.

Now it’s time to trade!

What you want to do is first familiarize yourself with how the layout is on the Binance exchange. And remember you can only trade in cryptocurrencies, so most of the coins on Binance are paired with Ethereum or Bitcoin (or both) so you can think of these currencies as your “base”.

But what to invest in?

Well here’s where it gets a bit harder (but not if you follow the advice on this website).
You can read up on different coins to invest in on this website or you can try your hand yourself by reading up on the different coins you are interesting in.