How to buy Bitshares

Bitshares being technologically awesome and everything is great, but how do I buy some? After all I can use BTS (the Bitshares symbol) and convert it to bitUSD, bitCNY, or even bitGold and then send it to my cousin Joe on the other side of the world. It just takes an average of 1.5 seconds, for less than a penny, without caring whether kitties are taking over the blockchain because Bitshares has a strong blockchain capable of handling at least thousands of transactions per second. Ain’t no kitties gonna bring it down!

Bitshares is a decentralized exchange, which means there is no central company running it. Everything is automated using the blockchain. This unfortunately also means there is no way to convert fiat (this means the US Dollar, or the Chinese Yuan or the Rupee or any other normal currency that you use). So if you cannot convert your $ to Bitshares, what do we do? Even though we can’t convert fiat to Bitshares, we can however convert any other cryptocurrency to Bitshares. For example if you have Bitcoin or Ethereum or Litecoin or any other, you can convert those to Bitshares.

If you don’t have any cryptocurrency, and you would like to buy some, you can go to CoinBase.com or LocalBitcoins.com and buy Bitcoins (or Ethereum too in the case of CoinBase)

Once you have your cryptocurrency ready, its time to open your Bitshares account and convert to BTS.

1. Head over to https://wallet.bitshares.org/ and click on Create Account

1. Enter your account name. Remember, unlike Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, your account name is your address. So to receive money, you just give out your account name, and not a long gibberish code. A few things to keep in mind though, you’re creating a free account (your registration will be paid by a faucet), so you need to enter a – or a number in your account name. Don’t worry, later you can buy a membership and use a cooler account name. A strong password has been generated for you. This is because your password needs to be very strong. If anyone guesses your password, they can use all your funds. However, the password is also impossible to remember so you would want to write it down and/or use a password manager like LastPass. Read all the checkboxes and then check them before clicking on Create Account. Congratulations, you now own a Bitshares wallet that can hold thousands of different coins from the Bitshares blockchain

2. There are 2 ways to convert your Bitcoins to Bitshares, the easy way and the easier way! The easy way is to Deposit your Bitcoin and store them as OPEN.BTC and then use the built in exchange to convert to Bitshares, this way you will get an exchange rate that you want. The easier way is to use Blocktrades to automatically convert your Bitcoins to Bitshares as they reach your wallet. In this article, I’m going to focus on the easier way, and later add another article for the easy way. First, click on the Deposit menu (if you cannot see it, click on the little arrow at the top right next to your account name). You will be taken to this page: https://wallet.bitshares.org/#/deposit-withdraw. Now for the Transfer Service dropdown select BlockTrades.

It will take a few moments to load, and then you’ll get a screen like this:

Under deposit you can enter an amount in BTC to see how many BTS it will convert to. On the right side, you will see a Bitcoin address where you can send your BTC to receive them in BTS in your account. Make sure the amount is less than the Limit mentioned below the Bitcoin address.Use this address to withdraw your Bitcoins to from your wallet in Coinbase or Localbitcoins depending on where you bought them. Please make sure you copy the address correctly.

1. Once you do the above, all you got to do is head over to your Dashboard and click on Activity and wait for the funds to arrive.

And they’ve arrived!

Awesome! Now you can explore the Bitshares exchange and convert your Bitshares to other coins, trade, profit from trends and much more.

In another article I’m going to teach you a way to use these Bitshares to borrow USD or any currency without any interest! Until then :)

This article was originally posted at my new website BareCrypto.com, do check it out!