You might think it would be the easiest thing in the world to buy cryptocurrency but depending on your bank and/or your access to a cryptocurrency ATM it may not be as easy as you would think. Also, having not yet used a cryptocurrency ATM I cannot yet speak of it’s ease of use, stay patient that article is coming. I have read a couple of articles on cryptocurrencies ATMs and watched a couple of videos. It seems a bit different than using your typical ATM so stay tuned on that one.
The first step in buying cryptocurrency in most cases is having connections with a financial entity that is going to allow you to connect to a cryptocurrency buying exchange; this might not be as easy as you think. Not all banks will allow you to buy cryptocurrency or connect to cryptocurrency exchanges. For instance, our bank did when my husband set his up at Coinbase but then I set mine up about a month later and it would not let me. Then trying to set myself up at biance.us was a whole other nightmare and I gave up actually trying to connect a financial institution, I figure if I really need it for something I can transfer between crypto exchanges without actually setting up a connection to a financial institution, I don’t trust biance.us as much coinbase and I can’t really say why.
My husband has a high level of frustration with the fees at Coinbase but I don’t think they are so bad and they have a lot of great incentives. They have a great referral program and please if you are going to join coinbase after learning about it here help us both out as we both get $10 USD in bitcoin if you sign up through my link after you spend $100 buying Crypto, and then there are some great courses I can invite you to where you can learn about Crypto and we can both earn. You in turn get this opportunity with others. It’s a win- win as you can learn and earn and share with others who can do the same. So, even if you do very little investing of your own money there are still opportunities to accumulate a bit of cryptocurrency and see if it can grow into something for the future. For me I am looking at this as my retirement as I am fifty and I have none. I don’t make a lot of money and I won’t have a 401K available to me at my current job for almost another year and well I really don’t make a lot and we all know that things are shaky as far as the economy and it’s no more risky than the stock market and after really looking at things and evaluating the bigger picture I have more faith in cryptocurrency than I do in a lot of stocks and such.
Banks and governments are starting to get behind cryptocurrencies further convincing me of it’s value. Many governments are starting to not value the dollar and when you realize that it’s how much other governments value the dollar that determines the value of the dollar well it makes you really consider where you might put your money and cryptocurrency starts sounding more secure than holding on to dollars. In fact, when you actually compare the value of many of these currencies to the US dollar you can quickly see their value is more than the US dollar per unit. Bitcoin being the most popular and well known today is worth $10,342.11 usd each not bad for an alternative currency there are all kinds of wild predictions for what it might be worth in another 2-5 years. I am not offering financial advice but sharing my journey and thoughts so do your own research and see what you think. Dash another interesting cryptocurrency not as well known as bitcoin was created in 2014 and is currently worth about $76.15 USD per Dash. Yet their values seem to waiver. However, if you were to watch the value of the dollar in conjunction with other more well known currencies like the yen, euro, pound and so on you would see it’s value fluctuate also, so the fluctuating value of money is really not such a wild concept.
So, let’s get back to the topic at hand here- buying crypto. First you need a way to get your money to a source that will allow you to buy crypto. When you buy that crypto you are going to need a place to store that crypto(currency). It’s called a wallet just like you keep your paper currency or plastic cards or even your digital cards on your phone- another form of digital currency and perhaps will help you start making the leap to understanding cryptocurrency a bit better. Just like your electronic wallet your cryptocurrency is electronic cash, it’s just not USD – United States Dollars or Federal Reserve Notes that you are used to dealing with. In fact, if you are to consider the short lifespan of these currencies and their strength and growth in value in comparison to the USD they seem like a pretty smart investment to me. Again, I am not a financial advisor and not giving financial advice I’m just your average “Jane” here taking my own journey and sharing my thoughts and insights as I do.
Okay, so my first failure in buying cryptocurrency was my bank. I thought this would be absolutely no problem as my husband signed up a month before I did and already had our bank account linked. So, I thought okay “no problemo” with that. The joke was on me there. Apparently, Capital One has decided to make it virtually impossible to use them as your bank and to buy crypto, actually Capital One seems to have made many things difficult at this point and we are considering whether to consider any of our banking relationships with them at this time. It just depends on how a few things work out, so stay tuned on that front for updates. They’ve not always been so complicated and often have been quite good to work with so I don’t want to completely knock them but with crypto investing for me they get a big fat F. You can’t pass a test on something you make impossible to happen and that’s exactly what they did, they made it impossible for me to buy crypto.
After much debate, I ended up purchasing my first crypto the expensive way, I had my husband purchase it for me and then send it to me. It ended up being more expensive because there were additional fees associated in doing it like this and it wasn’t the smartest move. Patience would have been in my interest. I don’t seem to have enough of this sometimes. However, at that time the markets were rapidly rising and I didn’t foresee the fall coming and I doubt I would have waited that long so it could have cost even more if I didn’t wait long enough. It’s hard to say. Timing and waiting to buy at the right time seems to be important but it’s hard to know when that is, and right now we live in extremely volatile times and in a way the markets are down, so it’s all a good buy before they do go back up, so it’s anyone’s guess whether today or tomorrow will be better. It always is and there’s a lot of factors to play into it but in our lifetimes very few of us were alive in a pandemic before and if we were it’s highly unlikely we were old enough to remember the 1918 Spanish Flu, given that was 102 years ago and how that will continue to affect things is hard to guess in both the short in long term. So, you can search around and there are banks that will allow you to invest in crypto. We decided that Ally is easy to use, online and was an easy move so we started moving our banking there as they will allow us to use our money as we see fit including buying cryptocurrency. Bank of America will allow you to buy cryptocurrency last I knew and honestly as bad a rap as they seem to get. I banked with them before I went to Capital One and if they hadn’t forced us out I would have never left. They closed our local branch and weren’t clear that we had a choice to stay instead it seemed we were being forced out and it was not made clear we actually could stay with them and not go with the bank that was buying them out locally so we switched to Capital One at the time. I have already connected Ally to my Coinbase account and honestly that could not have been easier. The other option I have found and while I am still working with my banking options and getting them set up is Cash App which is an app by Square and allows you to buy Crypto and you can even deposit your paycheck there and more. It seems to be a handy app that will let you manage your money as you see fit too. I can earn money for referring you so please use my links. We both get rewarded for it, you get cash I get cash and I get paid for my work for sharing this advice for you. Pretty awesome! Please take a moment and read my affiliate disclaimer, we aim to be transparent in our activities. Also, read my disclaimer about financial advice and legal advice and never forget I am just your average “Jane” sharing my journey.
Now before you go off and think you are ready to go and buy cryptocurrency let’s talk about a couple of more things you are going to need an email account to manage your cryptocurrency goings on. The first thing you are going to want to do is get yourself is a secure email account to manage your cryptocurrency from. Now here’s the advice. Get an account that is separate from anything you have ever set up before. I actually have started moving my financial accounts to a totally separate account for safety reasons. I am rethinking how I redo everything. Security is really important. So Protonmail is a great place to set up a secure email. So this is a great place to set up email that is related to your financial dealings. It was developed by CERN and MIT scientists and is governed by the strict Swiss privacy laws it was born out of a global effort to protect civil liberties. It offers one free email and for less than $50 USD a year you can have multiple accounts. I too am guilty of liking my free apps and google is great when you need those email addresses you have to fill in for everything, protonmail is great when you need secure email, very different purposes, why expose secure email to insecure things, start considering your digital life. We all are exposed because we jumped in and got involved but it’s never too late to start giving ourselves a digital health checkup so we don’t end up with any number of unwanted issues. Check out my techie articles. I will be adding articles to help you secure your phone and keep your phone safe from security issues as well. I have long been concerned with a variety of scams and issues that affect the elderly as my parents are aging and I have worked as a caregiver for the elderly and now in my most recent job I do tech support for a cell phone company and I can see how important it is to give people simple steps they can take to proactively take to keep themselves safe.
Just do it. Yes it is going to take you a few minutes now. Yes you do need some awareness, yes you are going to have to learn a few things. No it’s not hard, yes it is different. You can do it. It’s better than the disruptions that your life can have because someone has hacked into your accounts, stolen your passwords, drained your accounts or otherwise pretended to be you and wreaked havoc on your life. Nothing is fool-proof or guaranteed in this day and age but the more secure things are and a few simple steps to proactively protect your digital health can go a long way in saving you a lot of time and money tomorrow. Invest today and protect your tomorrows. If you are going to be investing in crypto take the time to do this- not just on your phone but on your computer too, digital security is an important first step just as you have locks on your car and your home you need to think about the locks on your digital life as well. So before you just go off and set up this account keep in mind you want this account to be uber secure as it’s your financial stuff here! So, pick a username unconnected to anything you have ever used before, make it something seemingly unyou. Then create a really complex password that you are only going to use here, ONLY USE HERE! This is a gateway to your financial life, all your financial life as your email links you to so much, it’s important you take the time to do this right. There are reasons for taking these steps. Okay so you can’t remember it, well we are going to take steps. We are going to go about this in multiple ways. In a modern world we have to work to make multiple methods work, if the backup ways don’t seem feasible to you, get creative and find a way to make it feasible, find somewhere someway to create the backups you need where you can get or decipher the needed information. Yes there’s always a chance all is lost, but there’s always been that chance all we can do is the best we can to protect ourselves and that’s all we ever have been able to do.
Ally
Apple
Bank of America
Biance.us
Capital One
Cash App
Coinbase
Protonmail
ProtonVPN
Square