In these exciting days, the Bitcoin price grows higher every week, and people are investing an increasing amount of money into cryptocurrencies. An important aspect of the swinging trend of crypto-money, is the trading activity. In simple words, trading is buying bitcoins when their price is low and selling them when it’s higher. Posed these conditions, it becomes of capital importance to understand which are the ways of converting our electronic coins in physical, spendable money. To do it, different systems come to your attention and with this article, I’ll try to explain what kind of options are the best for you.
Offline Systems
Also read. bitcoin-mining-is-it-still-profitable
LocalBitcoins – LocalBitcoins allows you to find Bitcoin sellers and buyers near you. Through the website, people talk in order to meet each other in the real world exchanging money directly. LocalBitcoins, implements a peer to peer system that helps to circumvent restrictions in problematic countries like China, or to remain anonymous during an online transaction. Once on the website, follow the free registration process:
And you will be prompted to the home page:
In the “wallet” section, you’ll find the instructions to send and receive bitcoins and to monitor your transactions.
In the section “public an offer”, you can create an announcement with your selling or buying offer that has to follow strict rules that are showed to you here. You can choose to sell or buy online or offline (locally), the location, the currency and so on. There are also security options like accepting transactions only with verified users, or requiring a confirmation SMS. In the forum section, you can find threads about every kind of transaction, with useful hints, or you can write a thread yourself to ask a specific question.
Paxful – Paxful is a peer to peer system that works exactly like LocalBitcoins, allowing people to exchange money directly in the real world or online. Paxful gives 300 different ways of buying bitcoins including Amazon Gift Cards, Paypal, Visa and more.
Mycelium – Mycelium is an offline (hardware) wallet with interesting characteristics. Mycelium is HD (hierarchical deterministic), that means that all the addresses are generated sequentially starting from a master seed. Mycelium allows secure authentication with BIT ID open protocol (instead of using passwords).
Online Systems
All the online systems work like intermediary between you and a potential buyer or seller. The website will ask a fee to accomplish the transaction, that varies from site to site. Coinbase is the most famous among this kind of services and it applies fees that go from 1-2% for bank accounts based in the United States, to 3.75% for Paypal. BitBargain is also this way. To register a Coinbase account follow the registration process that will only ask you your email, username and password:
Choose a strong password:
Verify your email address:
At the end of this procedure, click on the verification email and you will be able to start doing transactions on Coinbase. It is worth mentioning that Coinbase accepts fake email addresses, while LocalBitcoins does not. Just saying.
Bitcoin Trading Exchanges
Trading Exchanges are platforms used to accomplish your transactions. Instead of arranging with another person, you place your sell/buy offer and the platform finds a similar request for you. At the moment, Kraken is the best trading platform, it allows you to exchange Bitcoin, Ethereum, US Dollars, Canadian Dollars and Japanese Yen. It has never been breached by hackers. The fees are about 0.10-0.30%. Bitfinex is also excellent as a trading platform, the site offers a very exhaustive demo with graphs and hints about trading. Bitfinex supports a huge variety of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Monero, Dash, Zcoin and others.
Prepaid Debit Card
Exchange Websites like WorldCore or TheRockTrading offer you to instantly convert your money and to cash out using ATM near you. These sites offer prepaid debit cards that you can load with funds converting your crypto-money into cash. You can then go to ATM (automated teller machines) to withdraw your money. On coinatmradar, you can find ATM that support Bitcoin in your country.
GiftCards
An interesting way of converting your bitcoins into real cash, is buying Gift Cards. There are several websites that offer this service but I recommend GiftOff for this kind of activity. On GiftOff you can choose from a huge variety of Gift Cards depending on the country you select. The cards include Steam, Starbucks, Amazon and more. The website accepts different methods of payment including Bitcoin. You have to register a free account, select your card, use the QR-code to pay with your phone and receive your code to use on the dedicated website (Amazon, Steam and so on). Connecting through Tor and a VPN, this service gives you full anonymity. Buying Gift Cards will make you earn GiftOff points that will make you save money in your next purchase.
Offline Systems
Also read. bitcoin-mining-is-it-still-profitable
LocalBitcoins – LocalBitcoins allows you to find Bitcoin sellers and buyers near you. Through the website, people talk in order to meet each other in the real world exchanging money directly. LocalBitcoins, implements a peer to peer system that helps to circumvent restrictions in problematic countries like China, or to remain anonymous during an online transaction. Once on the website, follow the free registration process:
And you will be prompted to the home page:
In the “wallet” section, you’ll find the instructions to send and receive bitcoins and to monitor your transactions.
In the section “public an offer”, you can create an announcement with your selling or buying offer that has to follow strict rules that are showed to you here. You can choose to sell or buy online or offline (locally), the location, the currency and so on. There are also security options like accepting transactions only with verified users, or requiring a confirmation SMS. In the forum section, you can find threads about every kind of transaction, with useful hints, or you can write a thread yourself to ask a specific question.
Paxful – Paxful is a peer to peer system that works exactly like LocalBitcoins, allowing people to exchange money directly in the real world or online. Paxful gives 300 different ways of buying bitcoins including Amazon Gift Cards, Paypal, Visa and more.
Mycelium – Mycelium is an offline (hardware) wallet with interesting characteristics. Mycelium is HD (hierarchical deterministic), that means that all the addresses are generated sequentially starting from a master seed. Mycelium allows secure authentication with BIT ID open protocol (instead of using passwords).
Online Systems
All the online systems work like intermediary between you and a potential buyer or seller. The website will ask a fee to accomplish the transaction, that varies from site to site. Coinbase is the most famous among this kind of services and it applies fees that go from 1-2% for bank accounts based in the United States, to 3.75% for Paypal. BitBargain is also this way. To register a Coinbase account follow the registration process that will only ask you your email, username and password:
Choose a strong password:
Verify your email address:
At the end of this procedure, click on the verification email and you will be able to start doing transactions on Coinbase. It is worth mentioning that Coinbase accepts fake email addresses, while LocalBitcoins does not. Just saying.
Bitcoin Trading Exchanges
Trading Exchanges are platforms used to accomplish your transactions. Instead of arranging with another person, you place your sell/buy offer and the platform finds a similar request for you. At the moment, Kraken is the best trading platform, it allows you to exchange Bitcoin, Ethereum, US Dollars, Canadian Dollars and Japanese Yen. It has never been breached by hackers. The fees are about 0.10-0.30%. Bitfinex is also excellent as a trading platform, the site offers a very exhaustive demo with graphs and hints about trading. Bitfinex supports a huge variety of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Monero, Dash, Zcoin and others.
Prepaid Debit Card
Exchange Websites like WorldCore or TheRockTrading offer you to instantly convert your money and to cash out using ATM near you. These sites offer prepaid debit cards that you can load with funds converting your crypto-money into cash. You can then go to ATM (automated teller machines) to withdraw your money. On coinatmradar, you can find ATM that support Bitcoin in your country.
GiftCards
An interesting way of converting your bitcoins into real cash, is buying Gift Cards. There are several websites that offer this service but I recommend GiftOff for this kind of activity. On GiftOff you can choose from a huge variety of Gift Cards depending on the country you select. The cards include Steam, Starbucks, Amazon and more. The website accepts different methods of payment including Bitcoin. You have to register a free account, select your card, use the QR-code to pay with your phone and receive your code to use on the dedicated website (Amazon, Steam and so on). Connecting through Tor and a VPN, this service gives you full anonymity. Buying Gift Cards will make you earn GiftOff points that will make you save money in your next purchase.
