Buying Bitcoin in Australia - My Experience
I've bought a small amount of Bitcoin to play with on the philosophy that the best way to learn about blockchains is to get my hands dirty.
Recently, I read an article on buying Ethereum in Australia by Jamie Skella. It recommended BTCMarkets as the best option for buying bitcoin in Australia because its fees are slightly lower than Coinjar.
I have used CoinJar in the past, but made a BTCMarkets account because of Skella's recommendation. For larger amounts, BTCMarkets may be cheaper, but for me, using only $100, CoinJar looked better because as well as the exchange fee, there are also possible fees for depositing and withdrawing funds.
Exchange Fee:
Right now, the fee for AUD -> Bitcoin is 0.85% on BTCMarkets and 1% on CoinJar.
I’m not sure if BTCMarkets has something similar, but CoinJar also has a loyalty program where you earn points on transactions. These points can be used to offset fees on future transactions, so now and then you can have a fee free transaction on CoinJar.
Deposit Fee:
At BTCMarkets, a Poli deposit costs $3.30. Although BTCMarkets has “Australian Bank Transfer” listed as fee free, there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism to do a bank transfer. There are several queries about this in the knowledge base, so it’s not just me unable to find the right button. CoinJar doesn't seem to charge anything for depositing AUD in your account using either Poli or BPay.
Withdrawal Fee:
I've never noticed a fee for sending bitcoin anywhere from my CoinJar account. (See correction in reply to this post.) The fees page on BTCMarkets shows a flat-rate charge for withdrawing any currency, other than Australian bank deposits. For example, to send your Bitcoin anywhere costs 0.0005 BTC - around $2.90 AUD at time of writing.
So, it appears that for the small amount I am buying, CoinJar is the better option.
Next, I want to exchange some BTC for Ethereum. I'll let you know how that goes.
Edit: Added links and pointer to a correction.
!originalworks
I found more info on CoinJar's fees. Where BTCMarkets has a link to their fee explanation page in each page footer, you have to go looking in the knowledge base to find CoinJar's. BTCMarkets wins points there for more accessible info.
The explanation of CoinJar's fees is spread across more than one page:
Understanding CoinJar's Fees
and
Bitcoin transaction ("mining") fees
The transaction/mining fee is the same as BTCMarkets' withdrawal fee: 0.0005BTC.
I will be using coinjar most as the fees are cheaper :) and I have points :)
Coinbase doubled there fees on me to nearly $7.00 AUD ..that's over 100000 sats that I could of bought coins with :(
Hi Dardi,
I saw your post on buying some steem. It looks like we're in the same boat - taking baby steps into a brave new world while trying not to get burnt.
Your point about fees doubling is a good one. In this space things are moving so quickly that you have to keep rechecking the conditions all the time.
I'd be really interested to hear if you managed to work out how to do the transfers, and how you went about it.
Hey @beachhermit, you are soo right about baby steps in a new world lol..
I have managed to work out transferring out some steemdollars on to bittex, then bought some altcoins lol,
I can find you the links that helped if you like, or maybe attempt a post about it. What were you needing help with? cheers..
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