How To Get Your Money off of Steemit: A Simple Guide

How to get your Money off of Steemit

When users are introduced to Steemit, they are usually amazed to see the profits that people make from their posts. They often wonder where the money comes from, and more importantly, how to get the money converted to fiat so that they can use it (because what use is money if you can't use it?). The simplicity of the Steemit platform lowers the barrier of entry into the cryptocurrency space and economy, but there are still strides to be made in order to make even this platform more inclusive, this article aims to bridge that gap.

When I first started working in the cryptocurrency space, this was an issue that even I had as a software engineer, converting different cryptocurrencies (other than bitcoin) into currency that I could use for food, bills and etc.. The currency that I was paid in at that time was bitUSD, a currency that runs on the bitShares blockchain and tracks USD. I knew how to convert BTC to USD, but other currencies (not so much), and the aim was to do it at the lowest cost.

Some of the options that I had initially looked into were centralized exchanges, Bitfinex (who no longer supports US customers) and Poloniex. I didn't take this route because I knew that I would be charged multiple times before I actually would have money that I could spend. I would be charged when initially sending the currency to the exchange, then I would be charged when trading that currency for BTC and I would be charged when I withdrawing the money from the exchange.

In order to convert the bitUSD to BTC, I ended up using @blocktrades (blocktrades)(as recommended by @virtualgrowth), a service that allows you to quickly convert to and from Steem, Steem Dollars, the popular currencies on the bitShares blockchain, BTC, Ethereum, Dash, Dogecoin, Litecoin and Omni.

In order to make the conversion, you should have a BTC wallet set up (that either you hold the private keys to, have a debit card such as bitpay (which also charges significant fees but is super convenient) connected to or have a wallet that is linked to your bank account through a service such as Coinbase, which is a CENTRALIZED service that allows you to buy and sell a handful of blue-chip cryptocurrencies using money from your bank account/cryptocurrency from your wallet. Some people are unable to bank for whatever reason and the easiest way for them to get currency that they could actually use, would probably be to create a bitpay wallet and to use @blocktrades to send BTC to that wallet address and order the bitpay debit card, which costs $10 in BTC.

Once your Money is converted to BTC...

Once your money is converted to BTC, you can use either Coinbase or bitpay, I went with bitpay because of the relative convenience (and having a bitpay debit card in my possession).

then...

Please upVote, Share and reSteem this post in order to help new users get acquainted with the platform.

Thank you,

@debraycodes