How To Buy Cryptocurrency: Which Exchanges to Trust?

If you’ve come here it’s probably because you’ve considered getting into cryptocurrencies and trading them. Well, you can’t trade any cryptocurrencies without first buying them and as such, that should be your first step! In this article, we will be helping you with that. We’ll go over how to buy cryptocurrencies and how to choose the exchange for you.

Choosing an exchange is an important part of your crypto journey, which is why you should pay special attention to it. What are the main aspects that are important to you? What benefits can different platforms provide? What restrictions are there with each one?

All of these are things that you have to consider when choosing an exchange to trust. As you read this article, you’ll gain an understanding of what we look into when considering an exchange. This will help you do your own research and make an informed decision when choosing for yourself.

If you’re still wondering about which exchange would be the best for you, you’re in luck. We’re written multiple reviews of the biggest exchanges already. You can check these out as a starting point here.

After we’ve gone over the choice of a trusted exchange, we’ll take a look at the actual buying of cryptocurrency. We’ll tell you how to buy cryptocurrency over one of these exchanges. This all should have you covered in the first steps towards achieving financial freedom with crypto. Let’s get it started.

Which Exchanges To Trust?

Which exchange is right for you can be quite variable and depends on what your needs would be. The most important thing that you need to check out for when first looking at an exchange is its trustworthiness. Remember, your exchange holds your cryptocurrency for you during transactions.

As such, you must be able to make an informed decision on which platform to put your money into.

Security

As you’ve probably seen in the news before, hacking cryptocurrency exchanges is a very lucrative endeavor. This is why so many people have tried it over the years. One such example was the recent attack of the Japanese exchange ‘Liquid’. In this case, hackers made out with a reported $97 million worth of digital coins.

For this reason, we make sure that the exchange is bulletproof when evaluating it. What would happen if the exchange is hacked? What options does the platform provide to secure your account? These are all concerns that you need to answer beforehand.

Account Security

One tool that is generally available to secure your account is 2-factor authentication or 2fa. If the exchange provides it, you should always make use of it.

Having a second device that verifies your login is very important as it makes any foreign access very difficult. Usually, hackers will only have been able to compromise one device and not two. An exchange not having this option available to you can make it much less secure.

Exchange Security

Alright, let’s consider that we are happy with our accounts’ security. What does the exchange’s security look like? What would happen if they were compromised?

One common measure for such an eventuality is to store most of their crypto in cold storage or offline, which many exchanges do. This means that even if they were accessed, most of the assets would remain safe. This is important to make sure that the exchange can keep running in an eventuality.

On top of that, you want to make sure your exchange is insured, which is usually the case with the big ones. This means that they would have users’ funds returned to them should there be a widespread hack. While funds would be returned to users, historically these have taken some time to get things fixed.

Exchange History

It is a good idea to also check past experiences that the exchange may have had. While a platform being hacked may not be entirely positive, there is an upside to a previous hack. Being able to see the response of the exchange is something that shines a light on how the team works.

Take the case of the KuCoin hack in 2020, when thieves were able to make away with $275-$285 million in digital assets. The response of the team was quite remarkable.

Within a week, 84% of the user’s funds were tracked and recovered. The remaining percent were covered by the exchange and the insurance fund. This shows that there is amazing info that can be gained from such an eventuality.

User Experience

In such an eventuality, you would also want to be able to make sure that you can contact the team behind the exchange. While customer support has a reputation for taking a long time in the crypto world, it is still important. You want to be able to know that you can contact them and receive the help you need.

Should you however not be a fan of contacting customer support, you want to see if you can find help on your own. This is where you check how good the FAQ and documentation are. If the wiki is extensive, you’ll be happy to know that most of your questions can be resolved on your own.

This is great for us who want to be able to find what we need ourselves. This is also important to see how the platform provides information to its users.

On the topic of communication, it is also a great thing to see the social media presence of a platform.

These are generally a great means to know about temporary issues and events and giveaways that may be going on. You can then make the most of your crypto and participate in the community, making earning more fun.

Finally, ensure the exchange has support via your preferred communication channels. Does it offer support via chat, phone, or DM on social media? Or is it limited to email support?

Fees

Now that we know that an exchange is safe and offers good customer support, we can move to other important aspects. One such aspect is the fee structure.

If you’re trading on a platform, you want to be sure that your earnings aren’t going to disappear in fees. You want to understand the fee structure and what you’re going to be paying before you start.

Do also note that many exchanges have their own token and provide discounts with it. One such example is Binance with their BNB token. On the platform, you get a 25% discount when paying fees with that token. As such, it is important for you to check if you can save money on fees.

Supported Coins

Lastly, you want to make sure that the crypto that you are interested in is supported by the exchange. Most exchanges will have the biggest tokens covered. You can probably be sure that Bitcoin and Ethereum are going to be tradable on your exchange of choice.

If you are however looking into altcoins, you may find that not all exchanges will cover them. It is thus always a good idea to check the supported tokens for what you’re looking to buy. You can’t be about to trade only to find that your exchange doesn’t support the token.

You would then have to transfer the coin to another exchange. Such trades incur fees. This is why the supported currencies are so important.

Some of the top exchanges with the widest coin support include Binance (Binance US), Coinbase, and KuCoin. 

Before You Buy

Now that we have this covered, let’s get to buying your first crypto. There are however some things that you need to consider before you start placing your cash into the crypto world. For one, you’ll have to make a security decision.

When you buy cryptocurrency, you aren’t getting the crypto itself. The crypto is on the blockchain. What you have is a series of keys, one public and the other private. The former is the address that people can see and use to send to you. The latter is the one that denotes that the crypto is yours. This is why keeping your private keys safe is so important.

If you’re looking to just buy a small amount of crypto, it should be ok to keep it on the exchange itself. These will control your private keys for you and give you access to them through your exchange username and password.

This is why we go into such detail about the security of an exchange. The exchange controls your crypto and if they are not secure, your crypto isn’t either.

For large sums, it’s generally recommended that you store your private keys yourself. The best tools to do so are crypto-wallets. We’ve covered these in the past and you can find a list of our different reviews on these here.

How To Buy Cryptocurrency

Alright, now that we got that out of the way, let’s take the next step. Let’s look at how to buy cryptocurrency on one of the most popular exchanges, Binance.

Although Binance provides a multitude of ways to turn your fiat currency into crypto, we’ll look at the most common. We’ll be tackling the buying of cryptocurrency with your Debit or Credit card.

How to Create Your Account

The first step towards buying your crypto is creating your account. This is simple enough on this exchange.

First, simply head to the Binance homepage and click in the top right corner. You can also follow this link here to get to the same place.

Once you’ve done that, just register using your email of choice and a secure password. Do note that you can also use your phone number instead of the email to sign up.

Lastly, just verify your account and you should be set up. It is now that you should also be considering setting the 2-factor authentication. This is an added security measure that has you input another confirmation code to make sure that it’s you who is accessing the account.

Given that crypto is another form of money, you must make sure that your account is safe. If you hold your crypto in an exchange, keeping your exchange account safe is just like keeping your bank account safe.

How to Buy Cryptocurrency with a Credit/Debit Card

You’d think that you’re now all set to buy your crypto but unfortunately, no. You do still have to go through the identity verification process known as Know Your Customer (KYC). This is a legal requirement that all users have to go through to be given access to all the functionality that Binance provides.

The KYC process will require that you provide some ID to verify that you are who you claim to be. Once this simple process is done you are ready to buy your crypto.

Now that that is done, just go to the ‘Buy Crypto’ section that can be found on the home screen. From there, you should be able to select ‘Credit/Debit card’.

Next, you fill the form with the currency you’re going to be buying and what currency you’re paying with. In this section, you also select how much crypto you will be buying.

You then input your credit card details and you should be all set. The crypto will be added to your balance on the exchange.

You’re also not limited to buying just with a credit card. You can also deposit fiat to your account to then use on the exchange or buy crypto using the peer-to-peer platform.

The latter opens a different variety of purchase methods as you are buying crypto from other users. Do note that as you are buying from other people, you will find a variety of different prices. Buying through the platform directly will usually get you the best price.

If you’re still unsure if you’re getting a good deal on your cryptocurrency, it may be a good idea to first look at buying a stablecoin. These are coins that are pegged to a fiat currency.

One of the most popular of these coins is Tether (USDT), which is paired to the US dollar. One Tether being worth one dollar makes it easy to see what you are getting for your dollars.

How to Transfer Your Crypto Into Your Wallet

Once you’ve got your crypto on the exchange, you may still want to transfer it to an external wallet.

At this point, just go to your wallet and find the ‘Receive’ or ‘Deposit’ option. There, select the coin that you just bought. You should now be shown the public address that you need to copy.

In your Binance account, you will need to head over to the wallet overview. In this section, next to the coin you bought, you should find the option to ‘Withdraw’.

Paste the address that your wallet gave you here and select the transferring network. When this is done, you’ll receive two confirmation codes, one over email and one over SMS. Once you confirm it’s you, the crypto you bought should appear in your wallet soon enough. How long it takes can be variable so just be patient.

With that, you’re all set. You’ve been able to buy your crypto and store it in a safe external wallet. It’s as simple as that.

Conclusion

Getting into crypto is as simple as that.

A good exchange is an important tool in any trader’s arsenal. We hope that we have been able to provide you with a stepping stone to evaluate these on your own. That being said, feel free to check out our reviews on exchanges here.

We also told you how to buy cryptocurrency. With that, you should be all set to step forward in the future of the economic world.