Contents
Note that there may be some repetition in the following info compared to here.
Summary: compare deals with buying and sell through different exchanges such as P2P ones with an arbitrator like LocalEthereum, or with centralized exchanges (which vary with your local jurisdiction, e.g. in Australia there is BTCmarkets and in the US plus worldwide there is Coinbase, which also allows you to spend cryptocurrencies e.g. with a debit card. For more see the table below, here).
The simplest way may be to use LocalEthereum, where you don't need to go through KYC processes. The creator of this wiki has found that "I can sell Ether for a better deal than I can find with an exchange, without any trading or withdrawal fees, apart from those associated with different payment methods". I like that it has lower fees compared to exchanges. I also read about how the localethereum platform works, and it seems pretty secure. The maker fee (which is what the party of the trade that puts up the offer) is 0.25% while the taker fee is 0.75%. BTCmarkets has higher fees compared to the maker fee, and higher than the taker fee if the amount is below $3000. Additionally, there have been hacks with exchanges like Mt. Gox and Bithumb. That's harder to achieve with localethereum since they can't get access to your funds, they can only settle disputes (if they arise) by sending the funds in the escrow to the buyer or the seller. However, I have been able to find a better deal, at least at certain times, with buying Ether if I buy through BTCmarkets, although that would be slower via BPAY with bank transfer than paying via cash deposit via an ATM or bank."
More information about Ether is here.
Disclaimer from the creator of this wiki: I have put most of my funds in Ether, the currency of Ethereum. Does that shock you? 😲 Yep, it's risky, but I've done due diligence 🔍 with fundamental analysis, and a little bit of sentiment and technical analysis, and I think that the market cap of Ether will continue to grow 🌱🌳 and increase, albeit with some volatility 📈. I consider it a digital currency that is in a pioneering, rapid growth stage of development (fuelled by a lot of genuine uptake of the currency as well as speculation about its future value, if not its current value), not just an asset. I hope my post will outline why investing in Ether is a good idea (and not just investing a small percentage of your cash, unless you are tied up with a mortgage 🏠 or have other monetary or non-monetary ties or circumstances that limit your investable capital). However, if you don't want to risk the downside volatility, e.g. if you don't have any risk capital, then you may want to consider buying a stable coin like Dai Coin instead.
Based on my research below, if you're in Australia 🇦🇺 (otherwise skip to the next paragraph), I recommend creating an account with BTCmarkets.net, verifying your ID, and using BPAY or PoliPayments to deposit AUD. Note that the rest of the following info in this paragraph is outdated since MEBank used to not support BPAY publicly, but now they do. If your bank doesn't support PoliPayments and you want to use that instead of BPAY, although I can't think of any good reason why you'd want to use PoliPayments over BPAY, then you can set up a bank account with BOQ (or any other bank that supports POLi Payments, doesn't invest in fossil fuels and has no fees for transaction and savings accounts [note that Bendigo doesn't have an Ultimate Everyday account any more]. You can probably ignore the interest rate since it is so marginal compared to other bank's rates and the gains that you are likely to make by holding funds with Ether instead. However, when I did research for interest rates I found that ME Bank savings rates were second only to UBank, which invests in fossil fuels indirectly as it is owned by NAB.
You can use localethereum anywhere, but in my experience you may not get as good a deal as buying it on a local exchange.
If you're not in Australia 🇦🇺, then here's a comparison of exchange rates 💱 for fiat to crypto- and crypto- to crypto- currencies (note that there is still a focus on Australia, but you can click on the links to get more information of the fees):
| Exchange link (may go to a fees page) | Fiat to crypto exchange fee buy/sell spread |
| BTCmarkets | AUD is the only fiat currency. 0.85% trading fee. Funds available to deposit, withdraw, buy and sell are: AUD, ETH, ETC, BTC and LTC. To deposit AUD, you need to verify your account and then use POLi Payments (available banks are here. My bank is ME Bank, which doesn't support POLi Payments. I applied with BOQ because they do support POLi Payments, they don't invest in fossil fuels [like ME Bank] and they have transaction and savings accounts with no fees [like ME Bank].) |
| GDAX | 0.25/.3% maker fee low volume, 0% taker fee BTC for USD/EUR/GBP, ETH/LTC for USD/BTC/EUR |
| Coinjar, has a debit card with accounts for Ether, BTC, XRP and LTC. | 1.00% AUD/BTC (and only AUD/BTC) |
| Coinbase | In Aus: 3.99% credit/debit card only (no other transaction method accepted). Other fiat and crypto currencies are available. |
| CEX | 7% BTC/ETH for USD/EUR/GBP/RUB |
| ice3x | 1% ZAR/BTC |
| Luno | ZAR/BTC fee not easy to find |
| okcoin | CNY/USD for BTC/LTC, fee not easy to find |
| Maicoin | TN/BTC Fee not shown, claimed none |
| Crypto to crypto exchange fee / buy/sell spread | |
| Poloniex | 0.15/.25% BTC/ETH “maker-taker” (presumably the same as buy-sell) |
| gdax.com/fees/ | 0.25/.3% maker fee low volume, 0% taker fee ETH/LTC for BTC |
| Exodus | ~0.4720–.528% BTC/ETH variable. Desktop app. Sometimes currencies are not available for exchange! |
| NVO | Decentralised. ICO 05/27/17 02:00 UTC to 06/27/17 02:00 UTC |
Exchanges are listed in this article, which I've copied and pasted (repetition is OK):
America, US dollars
Australian Dollar
Canadian Dollar
Chinese Yuan
European Euros
India
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Ethereum+exchange+india&t=brave&ia=web
Mexican Peso
South Korean Won
You could skip to the next section
I bought BTC in a different way. Step 2 worked for me. I will try step 1 next time I buy more BTC.
I created an account on btcmarkets.net, verified my email address, tried to login, but couldn't. I tried to disable two factor authentication, but it asked for my mobile number, which I didn't enter when I created my account. I tried to reset my password and log in again, but that didn't work. I entered my email address correctly. I sent a message to support to ask for help. I figured out that my password was too long, and have notified btcmarkets.net. After creating a password of 23 characters, I was able to log in. I created another password of 56 characters using Chinese characters, emojis and ASCII characters, and was able to log in. (Incidentally, it is a hassle to do this, so a decentralised, private password generator would be wonderful.)
Don't do this (buy BTC then convert it to ETH), skip: The following steps are what I have tried so far, in detail.
- Convert AUD to Bitcoin (BTC) via an exchange like Coinjar. I left a review of Coinjar here. Fee: 1%. While this step is tailored for Australia, it can be adapted to any country that has a bitcoin exchange.
- I created a Poloniex account, sent funds from got the Bitcoin deposit address, then sent my BitGo funds to that address. Once the transaction completed, I then used Poloniex Exchange to convert to Eth, with a maker-taker fee of: 0.15/0.25%.
I also sent an email to Coinjar to suggest that they develop functionality for purchasing Ether directly using AUD. You can do the same with the exchange of your choice. Implemented
I have been able to deposit funds into Coinjar (needing to be less than the transaction limits) but have not been able to get Eth funds as of yet. I have also tried to create an account on BitGo, send coins from Coinjar to BitGo, and use Shapeshift with that account and still with MyEtherWallet, however that didn't work.
I will not discuss trading (which I mean buying with the intention to sell most or all of the purchase at any future time particularly in the short term in order to realize a profit) as I am not very interested in trying to guess the short-term direction of markets (although I admit that trading helps to provide liquidity), plus it is very difficult to predict the short-term direction of the price. However, I recommend that you set up alerts with Coinwink, but bear in mind that if you hold it for the long-term, the price should continue to go up, so if there is a short-term correction, you could bear it through until you make a profit. Finally, it cannot be overemphasised that it is important to actually use the currency, so consider doing that, look into dapps that you'd actually use, and use them, and sign up for updates or check in from time to time for ones that are under development.