In my previous post, I ended saying I was going to buy some Monero (XMR).
This it turns out isn’t as easy as I thought it might be.
I couldn’t find one exchange that traded a fiat currency (normal currency), in this case Sterling (GBP) for XMR.
The closest fiat currency I could trade for XMR was USD to XMR on Kraken, which I didn’t fancy because I don’t have a USD account (I live in the UK). Even though Kraken looks to have a very good reputation (more on that in a future post).
A Google search for ‘Buy Monero’ gave me this result https://www.monero.how/how-to-buy-monero
Reading the above page on https://www.monero.how/how-to-buy-monero and the recommended MoneroEric’s guide (which is SUPERB by the way), told me that I needed to buy Monero with Bitcoin and then either swap the Bitcoin for Monero (like Shapeshift) or buy Monero with Bitcoin using an exchange (like Poloniex or Kraken).
So before deciding which method to go with, I needed to buy some more Bitcoin.
Check out my previous post on buying Bitcoin which is pretty painless. The only thing I would look at again in the future is whether the price of Bitcoin (and other available coins) on Bittylicious is more than the price for the respective coins on other exchanges. But for now, the ease and the confidence I have with Bittylicious outweighs the price considerations. Like I constantly say on this blog, this is like the Wild, Wild West and sites that you have confidence in are worth a lot in navigating this new terrain.
I bought some Bitcoin, but not much, as the price is as high as I’ve seen it. It was GBP 2,999 per Bitcoin (BTC). I won’t tell you how much I bought but it wasn’t much. I realise now that I have to build my BTC position and my Ethereum (ETH) position for two reasons:
- Firstly, they are the most dominant cryptocurrencies in the world at the moment and
- Secondly, they are useful to be able to buy other cryptocurrencies with, whether using exchanges or swapping sites.
So after I bought some Bitcoin, I decided to buy some Ethereum, also using Bittylicious. I bought 0.5 ETH and went through the trade process on Bittylicious but this time I had a problem.
Whilst my bought Bitcoin hit my Bitcoin wallet, my bought Electrum did not. Or at least I couldn’t see that by bought Ethereum reached my wallet.
Remember from my previous post on buying Ethereum, that I chose to use the official wallet on the Ethereum project site. This is a node of the full blockchain. In a nutshell, this wallet has to sync with the entire blockchain in order for your transactions to be visible within your wallet.
My wallet hadn’t been synced in a while and I had 190,000 blocks to sync with until my wallet was fully synced. 190,000!!! At a rate of 2 or 3 a second, this was going to take hours at a normal broadband rate. Not good at all.
A lot of people it seems have this problem with the official Ethereum wallet. I chose it because it was on the official Ethereum site, and safety is important in this space. But it’s not user friendly at all.
Check out these dissatisfied comments on the wallet: https://github.com/ethereum/mist/issues/1795
So I’m in the
Next steps:
- Build my Bitcoin position – using dollar cost averaging to get the best blended price I can get – more in a future post
- Build my Ethereum position
- Get a new Ethereum wallet and send my Ether (ETH) there once my ETH shows up in my current wallet
- Buy some Monero using one of the methods above
Further reading
On how to buy Monero
https://www.monero.how/how-to-buy-monero (Great resource)
https://moneroeric.com (A short blog – so far – but detailed and very useful guide to buying your first Monero and getting a wallet)
https://getmonero.org (The official Monero project site)
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