Case Study: Playing with Cryptocurrency Exchanges to Buy Steem Power

When I started blogging for this community, I tried to identify mentors and teachers of Steemit. Which I did.

One of them was Joe Parys. The first piece of advice I learned from him was to invest in STEEM to power up. Then, in that video, he explains the process of converting from BTC to STEEM through Binance.

He reveals how he uses bots to get to the top of the trending page. He also explains a few sections of the wallet.

What called my attention was how he emphasized the importance of the marketing part of one’s Steemit content distribution.

I liked the idea and wanted to do as he explained. What followed was the bumpiest ride I ever had doing a digital transaction of money.

My First Purchase of Crypto-Currency

When I started this journey to follow Joe Parys’ method, I wanted to use sixteen dollars from my Fiverr account to buy

What I planned to do was, once I got those twenty-odd dollars on PayPal, buy BTC to then buy STEEM with BTC.

But I went through all kinds of trouble to achieve this. What I learned basically is that all moving around of monetary value on the web costs, and not just fractions of one cent exactly.

The first hurdle was that I couldn’t find a way to buy BTC. I don’t remember exactly, but I think I could, but I had a problem with not having accounts in the sites to do the transactions.

Because the sites to do the transactions required all kinds of authentication nonsense, I ended up doing with the transfer with the sites that gave me less trouble.

Because of that, I was a quite convoluted and slow process.

Don’t be penny-pinching like I was. My advice is if you’re going to experiment investing money in your Steemit blog, then go as direct as you can.

Like, use the ‘Buy Steem’ button and use the channels and exchanges endorsed by the platform only. Don’t go as much trouble as I went through.

A Little Word of Advice

Disclaimer: This piece of advice may be wrong, but it’s based on my personal experience and I assure you that it’s the truth of what happened.

If you want to buy Steem Power with digital funds or crypto coins brought from other blockchains or wallets, then don’t do what I did.

What I did was registering in like a dozen different sites, some exchanges, some blockchains, and their wallets, to try to find how I could move the currency around. Don’t do that.

I should have gotten in touch with the community and asked. I didn’t, I just wanted to learn by myself and I ended up losing a lot of time.

To have to lose time getting to know the crypto exchanges, other blockchains, and their wallets was disgusting.

It killed my enthusiasm. After knowing those services, all the fun I was having to work with cryptos up to that moment evaporated.

I think I tried a few wallet services, like Xapo, BlockChain.info, and exchanges like CoinBase, Binance, and Bittrex, but none of these worked for me.

They might have worked for someone with a lot of patience and time on their hands. But not for me, in some I couldn’t even validate myself.

Most of these sites had unreasonably identification measures that require too many motions and personal information that defeat the purposes of speedy transactions and alleged “privacy” of cryptocurrencies.

I ended up using the Ethereum Mist Wallet. It was a clunky, buggy software with a large storage footprint. I think 1GB+ disk space, the 64 bits version.

For some reason that I don’t remember now, I had both versions installed. So it was something like 1.5GB in total. Happily, that wallet is discontinued now. I don’t care about the actual 1.5GB lost to it, but is it necessary for a crypto wallet to take that much storage space?

Still, it was a fun experience, because my first contact with Ethereum was to do something useful, and not just a superficial review. Moreover, I was forced to do it, it is not that I cared about Ethereum.

Today, 8 Months Later

Today, eight months after that unsavory experience, when what I actually wanted to write in this post was the procedure I went through to buy Steem power starting from a PayPal account. Yet, I couldn’t remember how I did it off the bat, of how messed-up the sequence was.

It took me like two hours to reconstruct the sequence, because I didn’t remember what I did, nor where to look for clues.

If I remember correctly, this was the sequence

A. Fiverr releases my funds to my PayPal account
B. I offer to sell my PayPal balance for ETH on Local Cryptos, someone wants to trade with me, invoices me through PayPal
C. He puts the amount of ETH on escrow in Local Cryptos, I pay him on PayPal. He releases the funds in escrow when he sees I paid him in PayPal.
D. The ETH I bought on Local Cryptos is credited in my Mist ETH wallet
E. I bought STEEM POWER from Blocktrades using those ETH
F. STEEM POWER is credited in my Steem wallet, and a “Bloctrades vest” to myself operation gets recorded in my transactions feed

I think Blocktrades doesn’t exchange crypto coins from, or to, STEEM POWER anymore. At least that’s what I saw on the site yesterday, so this procedure isn’t usable anymore.

_{Copy Content © Martin Wensley 2020}