Jumping on the Bandwagon & Buying my First Bitcoins
Buying my first Bitcoin...having initially found it very difficult to buy my first bitcoins and having to wait to be verified by Blockchain and Coinbase, I have finally purchased my first Bitcoin, Yay! This is 2017, but the very first time I tried was in 2013 when an old flatmate told me about bitcoin and how the price had just gone up from £30 to £50 a bitcoin and he was ready to cash in on his profits. I was intrigued and want to jump on this bandwagon and earn some passive income. I quickly grew tired of how difficult it was and not knowing if the websites I was visiting were genuine and trustworthy or not I gave up and didn't venture back into the crypto world for another 4 years!
Fortunately, things have changed...well, kind of...it's still very daunting for someone new to the world to bitcoin and crypto and it sometimes still feels like your doing something wrong and not knowing who to turn to if something goes wrong, or you have a question. Is that person on YouTube leading me down a rabbithole and gaining from my naivety?? I still believe we have a long way to go if we want the Generation X and the less tech-minded of us to take bitcoin and cryptocurrencies into the mainstream.
So, its 2017 and I purchased my first bitcoins via Blockchain using my debit card, unfortunately, it wasn't cheap! I was charged £9 to buy £300 worth of bitcoin, hmm 3% to convert my fiat into bitcoin! I made a mistake, however, I could buy bitcoin commision free if only I did a bank transfer and was willing to wait for a few days. So with a renewed enthusiasm I jumped online and transferred £500 from my UK bank to an account in Denmark, great commission free bitcoin! Unfortunately, I was a little too enthusiastic when transferring and hadn't noticed that I had accepted a charge of £25 for an international payment.
So instead of being charged 3% using a debit or credit card, I was now being charged £25... Fail!
Since first signing up and buying my first bitcoins, I have learnt from my mistakes and even have a couple of tricks and now I buy bitcoin from the UK, commision free, from Coinbase with no international bank transfers. I will be uploading a further video in the next few days on how I have been doing this :) Recently I've been experiencing issues when trying to purchase bitcoin through Blockchain, they haven't banned me or cancelled my account, but I can't seem to buy bitcoin through Blockchain anymore!!
For now, if you're new to bitcoin, based in the UK and want to get started, try Coinbase. As a bonus, they also give you $10 of free bitcoin when you deposit $100 or more, click here to sign up >> http://bit.ly/2fRP4Tn
The video is a walkthrough of Coinbase to help newbies. Please subscribe to my YouTube here >> http://bit.ly/2y7x6pV
If you have any questions or if I can help in any way, please feel free to comment below.
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That was good! I too about fell over when I did my first few transactions. It can be scary because it's new. Then add on the fees and a lot will give up before they even get started with cryptocurrency.
Glad you found your way though :0)
I agree I feel the user experience for newbies still has a long way to go. My day job is in internet security and if I found and still find it daunting and complexed at times, I can only imagine what it's like for others just getting started.
Try showing a 70yr guy who doesn't even like turning his computer on how to buy coins.... I made the mistake of showing crypto investing to my dad a week ago and he's trying to learn but gets super frustrated. I just keep telling him "it's easy" and "It's gonna take a minute to learn" and then bite my tongue and continue on.
Don't suppose you wanna stop in and show the old fella internet security too huh :0)
Thanks for the fantastic write-up! @cryptolou
So pleased you found it helpful!
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STOPNice post Lou :) - Followed and upvoted.
Thank you :)
I dont know how much BTC costs in the UK but in Canada, its over $6000/coin!
imagine buying in 6 years ago!?
I know, I kick myself so often about not investing sooner, that I'm starting to get bruises! haha.
In the UK its hit just over £4,000! However, we are are still some of the early adopters, imagine what they'll be saying in another 6 years!!!
yea I know, now in Canada its just over $7000!! and I only have fractions of a coin, sigh