My First Experience Using Bitcoin to Power Up My Account - Bitcoin Virgin
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 Steem before. (or at least me)
Being a hands on learner, I took the tiniest 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 dilegence 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 shiney new bitcoin. My $100 bid cost, $104 dollars, and resulted in $80 dollars worth of bitcoin.
*pixabay
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. Also, feel free to give advice to others in the comments!
Cherry is popped now....awesome @whatsup. I've never touched bitcoin. You help me when I get some cash.
I would certainly help, but I would advise getting a knowledgeable person to walk you through it when you are ready.
@whatsup, can you guess on my game or resteem it for me. I seriously need help with the cryptocurrency, so im hunting you down when i have the cash.
You've got it!
you can just buy it on localbitcoins.com from someone locally with cash.
Yes, I should have done that.
That's how you learn. Crypto can be daunting.
2011 bitinstant.com (gov overreach shut it down - put charlie in prison) Back then, you had to moneygram via walgreens, wait a day, and btc finally appeared in trading account on exchange. These days, I'm Coinbase registered.
For your small $100 purchase, I'd say a face-to-face trade (cash) in public place/bitcoin meetup. There are money limits on face-to-face transactions due to money handling laws - and vary by state.
Yes, I understand that would have been a good way to do it. It sounded crazy, to go meet a stranger, but the general feedback I have been getting is that would have been the way to go.
Depends on where you are but one of the easiest ways for me when I first started out was Circle or Coinbase. My first BTC was bought to play poker.
That's awesome. :)
Wait until you start learning the really hard lessons in crypto-trading. That's what I'm trying to do right now. It's fun though.
Hi @whatsup, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads today and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.
Awesome @Shadowspub, Thank you
Thanks for sharing your experience. This really highlights the difficulty that exists for people to buy in to Steem/SP. I am glad you were able to figure it out.
I was lucky enough to have my brother who was a 'bitcoin expert' to guide me through it. He had me signup for coinbase, and I've been using it for many years. Its as easy as paypal / online banking in my opinion, but the downside is you have to share quite a bit of personal information (bank account # included) to use it.
As far as using Poloniex/Bittrex to exchange BTC for STEEM and SBD + transfer in and out of Steemit, thankfully others had published fairly straightforward 'how to' guides, where I pretty much just followed the instructions.
Yes, you were lucky to have a helper. That would be my advice to people that want to get in. Find an expert to hold your hand through the first couple of purchases. :)
Thanks for sharing, as a bitcoin holder , i didn't realized it's this difficult and expensive to buy bitcoins for newbies in US.
I'm glad you are taking the plunge and learning how to use Bitcoin! Good job navigating through your first purchase experience. As others have suggested, I would advise signing up for Coinbase and using that for future purchases. It's far simpler and connects directly to your bank account, no need to use a credit card. The sign-up process is not too hard and Coinbase is a reputable company that endeavors to comply with all US laws & regulations. The only reason not to use it is if you want to totally stay off the grid and remain as anonymous as possible, but as you've noticed, doing that means increased inconvenience especially if you will be transacting frequently.
Thank you for the comment and support. I am excited about it.
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