Buy crypotocurrency in Australia

Bitcoin is reaching popularity worldwide. Australia is embracing it wholeheartedly, just read the news about the Turnbull government invests in Blockchain.

And Bitcoin Cash is going to replace Bitcoin soon! I joke, I joke. Relax Bitcoin bulls.

I found out about Bitcoin in 2014 and have asked others at my workplace if they knew anything about it but they didn't seem to care, even after telling them what it does. What's not interesting about replacing the current cash system with ungoverned, no tax, unregulated currency?

Few knew about Bitcoin then, but one guy at work was quite knowledgeable about it. He was actually telling me or convincing me to put more in because it's going to go up in price and it's a great way to store wealth when the dollar collapses. I didn't take heed to his advice because I took out when I made a $200 profit. I was over the moon!

Yep...

Thinking about it now, it really does make me want to shoot myself. So I don't want to talk about it anymore.

You have not missed the boat!

That is right, there are still many chances that you can still be a "Bitcoinaire". Not in the form of Bitcoin of course as it's gone way past AU$12,000 at the time of writing. It is predicted to keep going up to $1M by bullish Bitcoin HODLers. The people that hold bitcoins for a very long term. I should have been a HODLer.

Unless you are extremely rich that have 100k to spend, you can buy yourself 10 Bitcoins and really hold on for dear life as 100k is a freaking large amount of money. There is also no guarantee that it will hit 1M, pure speculation. The fact that it may be heavily regulated by government due to it's popularity is a really risky proposition for 100k investment. But hey, it's your money. I myself can't play around with that much.

You will make profit trading with Bitcoin, if you are game enough to play with large amount of money. I know some people who does and are making a killing, doing 1K a week in general. They are fairly well off though. As for me, I don't have that kind of money.

For those people like me, who wants to kill themselves for not buying and holding when it was only $300 per bitcoin. Let's start afresh with joining high quality projects with great teams behind them that costs under $100. You can even join great projects which value are worth pennies now but may be hundreds of dollars in the future. Early birds gets the worm, as they say.

The risks

You can potentially risk losing your money if you are not smart about your choice of projects to invest in. Or the whole team dies for unknown reasons. This is why you should invest only the amount you are willing to lose. You need this kind of mindset when diving into investments, otherwise you will lose your home, go crazy and might really shoot yourself.

You need this mindset going forward.....
I am willing to lose $100 for a potential growth in the future. I can afford to lose it, full stop.

Say it with me...
I am willing to lose $100 for a potential growth in the future. I can afford to lose it, full stop.

Of course people have different kind of value in mind. How much they can afford to lose depends on their financial situation.

How do I buy cryptocurrency in Australia?

There are many to choose from and it's hard to find the right one. To be honest I have ever only used two Australian exchanges. I have opened an account in overseas exchanges like Bitfinex and also Bittrex but I never used it.

The first one I used to buy my very first crypto, the Bitcoin, was Cointree.com. That was a long time ago. Using it again was easy as I was very familiar. But the only problem I have with them is that when buying altcoins like Litecoin, Ethereum, NEO and others is that you have to use Bitcoin to purchase. You can't use a fiat currency to purchase other coins.

I don't always keep my Bitcoins in the exchanges and buying them just to pay for other altcoins is just a hassle to me. Just want to click on purchase, enter my payment details and done. Why would I spend my Bitcoins anyway. I don't see Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, but a great store of value.

For this reason, I have been using Coinspot.

Why Coinspot?

I have joined coinspot in July this year and I've been buying coins, transferring to my other wallets, depositing and withdrawing AU$ without any hassles.

I did have trouble with my latest LTC transfer but it was my mistake and the customer rep told me how to fix the problem.

There are many things that made me stay with Coinspot. I've tried buying from other exchanges but nothing is more simpler and as quick. Here are my reasons why I still use them.

Lots of coins

I love how they have so many coins on offer to buy instantly. In fact, at the time of writing it has 65 and growing. The number doesn't look massive, considering there are thousands of coins available. But it's more than some of its competitors, locally and internationally.

Customer service

Their customer service is OK. If only they are quicker to reply. When you raise a ticket during business hours, it will take mere minutes to get an email.

I never had any bad experience with their customer support, except my latest transaction as mentioned previously. This is maybe the industry norm, I've heard worst scenarios, hence it rates OK.

It is user friendly

A 12 year old can start investing and trading using Coinspot. They just need a bank account. The graphs are there and it's easy to read. The UI is quite straight forward, not once have I got lost navigating it.

There are some websites that are so cluttered that you don't know where to begin. Coinspot has everything in order, clean and it's an easy to use platform.

Safety and Peace of Mind

Google Authenticator adds an extra layer of protection on top of your own generated complex password. When signing up, the verification process is strict, and Coinspot manually approve their customers. Some may see it as a pain, but I see this as peace of mind and another layer of security to your account.

Instant and easy transactions

You can use POLI to buy your coins. As long as you know your online bank details, it is as easy as 1, 2, 3. It goes through instantly and there are no fees involved.

How to buy your first cryptocurrency in Coinspot

Nothing can be more simpler, but I did say you have to get verified first and that can take hours to days as they do it manually. Think of them as looking after everyone's interest.

Read my last blog on how to get verified quicker in Coinspot.

Once verified, you can just go to the "Buy" tab in the top right hand corner. Yes, everything you need to navigate this simple platform is located in the top right hand corner, simplicity at its best.

The four most popular coins will be displayed when you click on the "Buy" tab. There is also another option located at the bottom named "View all coins". This option will let you buy other coins like, Powerledger, EOS, NEM, Monero, NEO, IOTA, Qtum, Digibyte, Bitshares, Omisego, Steem just to name a few.

Buying coins at Coinspot

Click on a coin you want to buy and you will be taken to a conversation page. It will show you how much that coin is worth in AUD.

You can either input how much you want to buy in AUD or how many coins you want. Once you do this, click on the "Buy" button just located under the AUD field. It's where you put the dollar value which you wanted to purchase.

If you haven't deposited anything yet then you will be taken to another screen where you will then be taken to a summary of the whole transaction. It shows how much fee you will be paying, how many coins, how much per coin and the total price.

LTC Amount
1.00000000 LTC

Price per LTC
$101.36 AUD

Fee 3%
$3.04 AUD

Total price
$104.40 AUD

When you hit "Confirm Buy" it will take you to a menu where you can choose which bank you will be paying with. They support lots of banks including Commonwealth, Wespac, Bankwest, NAB, St George and a lot more.

If your bank is not listed you can always use BPAY or make a cash deposit at a local newsagent. This will take us on how to deposit money to Coinspot.

Depositing money to Coinspot

Go to your "Dashboard" and click on "Deposit AUD". This will take you to another page with three options of depositing money to Coinspot.

POLI

This is what I always use because it has no fees and it's instant. Daily limit is $10,000. Just type how much you want to deposit, choose your bank and click "Continue to POLI". There you will need to know your online banking details.

BPAY

Take note that using this will take a while for your funds to enter Coinspot, about 1-3 days. There is also a deposit fee of 0.9%. Once this is enabled, it will tell you the reference number which you will be using to pay.

Cash Deposit

Just go to any chosen Newsagent and put your money in there. The maximum amount you can deposit is $2000 per day. There is also a 3% deposit fee.

You don't have to deposit money to explore Coinspot. Just browse through the coins first and look at what's available for you.

Advice for first timers

This isn't for the seasoned traders and investors. It's more for people like me, getting their feet wet.

During the 4 months of my crypto investing life, I have seen how these cryptos move in the market. When they say cryptocurrencies are volatile, they mean it.

Just look at the graph for the 4th highest market cap, Ripple.

That is just within 24 hours.

Ripple has been through lots of pumps and dumps just by looking at it's all time graph. The green line has seen lots of highs and lots of bottoms. It is highly volatile and moves so quick within a day. You really need to know when to enter and when to exit quickly for maximum profits.

For this reason, I can't recommend Ripple as your first coin. I suggest to pick one or two from the major coins that appear in the "Buy" navigation tab located in the top right hand corner of the page.

I know what you are thinking, they are expensive and you can't buy much coins with your money. This is where you are wrong.

Why I don't trade

When you are trading, you don't to think of how much coins you can buy with your X amount of dollars. Instead, you should focus on your return of investment.

For example, Bitcoin, it is a great way to make money as it is a sure money. I put in just a thousand and made $70. It's not much but it's an ROI of 7%. Keep doing this and you will be richer than the guy who believes cryptos are worth nothing.

It's not all good in the hood though. You really need to be good at trading to make heaps of profits. Sometimes you hit the entry too early and it dips some more. Maybe you exited too early, then it reached an all time high a few hours later. Entered too late and made a buck. The feeling of disappointment is not good for the health.

There is also the chance of you not making any money at all. You could lose all your money in just one trade if you don't know what you are doing. This is why I don't really trade so much and I just choose to invest my money on the projects that I believe in. I still do it, but rarely.

Advice on Initial Coin Offerings or ICO

Did I say you haven't missed the boat? Well this is where ICOs come in. They generally cost pennies and have the potential to be the next Bitcoin. Maybe not, but it can make you lots of money.

There are so many ICOs, it's not funny. Be wary of them as some just wants quick bucks. There are legit ICOs though, to which I invested my money in.

Most Bitcoiners would tell you that only if they had bought more and HODLed (Hold On For Dear Life) when it was only $3. They would have been better off today.

Well that is exactly what I am doing. Investing in projects that can potentially sky rocket and make me a good sum of money in the future.

Before investing, always do your own research, learn the positives, negatives, the problem it's solving, read the whitepaper, find out about the team then listen to what others have to say then draw your own conclusions.

Final words

With so many exchanges to choose from It's easy to be confuse as to which one you should choose. As a first time investor in the crypto world or even a veteran, you will not go wrong joining Coinspot. It is simple, fast, lots of coins on offer, more than its competitors and it is a very secure platform.