How to buy Bitcoin/Ethereum/Litecoin ?

Today is the day in which the second Bitcoin halving occurred. I am not going to explain in detail what this means, but in general the halving will lead to a decreased supply of bitcoins which is expected to push the Bitcoin price higher. Nobody knows for sure to what Bitcoin prices the halving will lead, but many predict Bitcoin will surpass its all time high of 1200 $.

Surfing on the internet I encountered an increased amount of people asking how to buy Bitcoin. I guess the increased interest due to the halving has something to do with this. A few months ago I was in the same position. I wanted to buy Bitcoins but I had no idea how to do this. I started to search the internet and after a lot of searching I finally found a way to buy my first Bitcoins. In this post I want to help all those people that want to buy Bitcoins but don't know how, by sharing how I found out how to buy Bitcoins. As an extra bonus, this way also allows you to buy Litecoin and Ethereum.

I bought my first Bitcoins by making an account on www.kraken.com. This is a broker that allows you to trade Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum. As this was the first time I used such a broker, I was a bit scared because I had some trust issues. But after being a user for several months, I can guarantee that the broker is honest, trustworthy and whenever you have questions they will reply to all your emails. Registration is quite straightforward. For some reason, me and my friend did have difficulties to find a suitable password that kraken accepted. So if you have difficulties of finding a suitable password, nothing is wrong with you. We all went through this pain ;-).

Inside Kraken every user is verified to a certain level. There are 5 levels, going from tier0 to tier4. Initially everyone is tier0. But at this level you can't deposit dollars or euros to your account. You have to at least get verified as tier2 in order to be able to exchange dollars or euros into Bitcoins. In order to achieve this level of verification you will need to pass personal data to Kraken. If you want to trade small amounts of money, tier2 is appropriate. If you want to trade bigger amounts of money, then I would encourage you to verify as tier3. In order to get verified to these tiers, you will first have to login into your account and then go to "Get Verified" as indicated in the picture below:

Once you are verified as tier2 or tier3, you are ready to start putting money into your account. I will explain how you can do this if you want to send dollars to your account, but it is straightforward to do this for other currencies. As indicated in the picture below, you will need to go to "Funding", then "US Dollar" and then select a payment method. If you do this a straightforward explanation will open, explaining you how you can send money from your bank account to your Kraken account. It is very IMPORTANT that you add the given reference when you make the deposit. If you forget this, you will get a small fine.

It takes normally less than 1 day before you receive your money on your kraken account. You can check the money in your account by clicking on "Trade". A window will open that gives you an overview of the amount of fiat currency (dollar, euro), Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum on your account. Once your money has arrived , you can start buying Bitcoin. You do this by making an order under "Trade", and then "New Order".

The order can be done "simple", "intermediate" or "advanced". The easiest way is to chose "simple". The other options are for people that want to have more advanced trading options. For most people, however, the option "simple" will do. There are 3 fields that can be modified. When you want to buy Bitcoin, the second and third field are of intrest. The second field is the price you are willing to pay for 1 Bitcoin. The third field is the amount of dollar/euro you want to convert into Bitcoin. If you fill in these 2 fields, the first field will automatically tell you how much Bitcoin you will receive.

When both fields are filled in, you can buy Bitcoin by pressing "Buy XBT with euro/dollar", as indicated below:

It can take some time before you receive your Bitcoins because you will only get them when someone on the market is willing to sell you his Bitcoins at the price you entered in the second field. Note that whenever an order is executed, Kraken will take a very small transaction fee, but this amount is so small that you will hardly notice. If you want to sell your Bitcoins later, you can do this again by going to "New Order" but then press on sell. How to proceed here is straightforward.

It is also possible to buy Ethereum on Kraken. This can be done by selecting ETH/USD as follows, and making a "new order".

This is all the information you need in order to buy Bitcoin. There are also other exchanges like coinbase, that allow you to buy Bitcoin, but I never used them so I can't help you with those. I hope this post is learnfull and will help many people buying their first Bitcoins.