I have only US dollars, no cryptocurrency at the moment. I’d like to buy about $100 USD in RippleCoin (XRP) now. I can afford to lose that much, and I think it might be in for a nice gain in the next few months to a year. Not a fortune, but maybe as much as a couple hundred bucks return on my investment. Worth it to me, plus I’ve spent a lifetime passing things by that I damn well should have put SOMETHING in. It would be nice to finally act on one of my beliefs ONCE in my life instead of adding to my long list of woulda-coulda-shouldas.
However, it’s a bit difficult to just BUY RippleCoin. I can’t buy it with USD currently, so I have to buy another cryptocurrency with USD on another exchange, transfer the coins to another exchange to buy the RippleCoin.
I have an acct on Bitsane, and can use it to buy RippleCoin with other cryptocurrency (not USD).
I have a verified Coinbase acct, and can buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Etherium and Litecash on it using USD - BUT it will take a week for the transaction to complete! I don’t want to wait a WEEK to buy Bitcoin to buy RippleCoin. Bitcoin’s a little high at the moment, and it might drop a few thousand, in which case I’ll have lost money buying the RippleCoin, and in fact, I might not have allowed enough to buy the amount of RippleCoin I want, if I don’t take a possible few-thousand drop in bitcoin value into acct.
Further, Ripple might have some big developments in a week, and I’ll lose the money I might make if the sale went through today. This seems a lousy way to invest - see something you want now, and wait a week to get in on it.
TL: DR - I have accts on Bitsane and Coinbase. Can I buy RippleCoin using USD and not take a week+ to do it? It doesn’t appear to be the case with those resources, but are there others I don’t know about that I could use? I want to purchase RippleCoin using USD in the next couple days at least. Is there any way to make this happen?
I’m guessing that the “takes a week” part is because of bank transfers and stuff? There are Bitcoin ATMs where you convert dollar bills into Bitcoins (present your phone, with the wallet’s QR code, to the ATM’s camera); those took a few minutes to clear a year ago, I’m not sure how long they take now.
Thanks for the advice. Yeah, they have my bank info and they verified it with the usual, “little deposits” method that I had to list. Guess there are scams where ppl can buy stuff and then it turns out the money wasn’t in the bank in the first place, so they delay the purchase.
My friend and I are feeling like we’re standing outside an exclusive club, and we don’t know the magic words to get in. We’re starting to think it’s just not gonna happen for us, so I appreciate any info you throw our way.
I’ll suggest the Bitcoin ATM to my friend. He lives in a big city. I’ve already looked into it for me, though, and the nearest machine is an hour’s drive away, one way. I have some health issues which make that drive difficult, as well as the usual annoyance an hour’s drive for one thing would be.
Yup. Don’t know the password to get into this club. I guess you have to be deeper in this stuff to do it. Seems like there’s no easy, quick way to buy Ripple. You have to swap crypto around to different exchanges, and even when you do that, roadblocks get thrown up in your way, like the one-week wait I had pop up. When you’re into crypto, I imagine you have many exchange accts and know all the ins-and-outs, maybe even swap with other crypto collectors and avoid the exchanges for fast transactions.
I did the reading, opened exchange accts, joined forums and read. Granted, I’ve been reading about it for less than a week, but I’m just looking to make a relatively small, straightforward purchase. Didn’t think it would be THAT hard to spend money. Guess I’ll wait until it comes to an exchange I can join and buy directly with USD, without a one-week wait during which anything could happen and my money’s already spent.
Thanks to everyone who read this far and gave it consideration.
Having a Bitcoin wallet that you can provision readily is the main key to the “system”. Most other transactions can be done easily from there.
This is General Questions, so I’m not giving investment advice, including whether or not you should purchase cryptocurrencies. But if you intend to deal in cryptocurrencies in the future, it would make sense to continue the process to open your Bitcoin wallet and convert a little bit of money into it and from it. It would save you a lot of time for when you do decide to continue, and you’d get a feel for the whole process. Be aware that right now, because of high volume, a Bitcoin transaction costs at least the equivalent of about 20 dollars. This fee is not readily visible, it’s often embedded in the exchange rates offered by intermediaries.
If it’s any consolation, when I opened my (ordinary, dollar-labeled) online brokerage account in 2015, it took about a week and (after filing the paperwork online) I had to present ID and sign papers in person. Now I can buy and sell shares in about a minute.
You make a compelling case for the OP avoiding Bitcoin entirely: a transaction USD -> BTC -> XRP would cost an extra $40, by your estimate, compared to USD->XRP.
Wikipedia claims “Used by companies such as UniCredit, UBS and Santander, Ripple has been increasingly adopted by banks and payment networks as settlement infrastructure technology.”
Does your bank or online brokerage allow buying XRP in about a minute? If so, which one(s) do you use? Another possibility would be to deal directly with a private individual who already has some, but that might get complicated if he or she wishes to take a big position.
GQ answer: no. You are limited by the transfer time of the exchange. This is inherently slow because crypto is inherently slower than fiat (Bitcoin can only clear 7 transactions per second). Second, because everybody and their brother is now piling into crypto, the network is revealing the limitations of the technology. But take heart… once you transfer into the speculative exhanges, the speed of losing money is limited only by your physical ability to click.
GD answer: If the loss of a week’s transfer time tanks your investment strategy, let’s face it, your odds of success weren’t great. But if you’re still hell-bent on wetting your beak with crypto, use the pause to your advantage, doing 2 things… first, record an imaginary buy of US$100 in XRP and see how it performs. Second, do 7 days more research. Hang out on a crypto subreddit, assess the “flavor of the week”, and pile into something else. There are lots of coins with equal or superior merit to XRP.
This information is irrelevant (mention of Bitcoin) and/or misleading (statistics on the Ripple website claim there are currently 1500 transactions per second and capacity in place for 50000 per second). Transaction time is at 4 seconds, so maybe not quite as fast as one can click, but with large enough transactions I’m sure anyone can lose money as fast as any institutional rogue trader.
Anyway, the company’s web page says that if you are a bank or institution to talk to them directly, and points individuals with USD to the exchanges
Bitstamp, Kraken, Gatehub, and Bitsane.
I’ve read that the biggest beneficiaries of the California Gold Rush weren’t those mining, buying or selling gold, but rather those who sold tools and foodstuffs to the miners (or helped them relax after a hard week at the mine). Is the Cryptorush similar?
You can invest in Ripple on a trading platform such as eToro. You won’t own any of the actual currency but if you only want to invest for financial reasons then I would argue this would be the best way to go.
Aren’t the transactions charged a PERCENTAGE? Upthread, bitcoin ATMs were mentioned, and the pricier ones charge 13%, so right there I’m not sure your $20 min applies across the board.
(time passes)
A test transaction on Coinbase looks to be charging me a $2.99 fee on a $100 btc purchase with USD - but the warning is taken for what it is, and I will be careful. Thanks.
Also, good advice about taking the time to make small transactions and getting familiar with the process, thanks again Heracles.
Thought I better add, I’m aware that when I take that BTC and exchange it for Ripple, the Ripple folks will not-so-transparently exchange the BTC for a lesser value of Ripple, and will charge a fee on top of it. Price of business now. Some folks go to Vegas and think NOTHING of throwing $100 away on a hand of cards. I just want to take a small amount of money and see if I can make a little extra back in a volatile market. Ppl worry when they hear my plans and tell me Bitcoin, for example, is going to crash again. That’s actually not a problem for me, if I’m willing to wait on the crash to buy, and I believe a rebound will occur afterwards. If it doesn’t, oh well.
It’s not a life’s savings, it amounts to a poker hand for a lot of ppl. I just want to buy in here. Why not? I could lose $100, I could make $1,000 or more. More interesting than a lotto ticket, and probably better odds.
As for HMS Irruncible’s thought experiment and pretending to play the crypto-market: Didn’t everyone do that in 8th grade, only with stocks? I’ve done that with many stocks over the years, and foolishly passed on them all. I just want to stop sitting on the sidelines for once and put down the price of a good dinner for two and say I acted on something for once.
It’s nice to come back and see so many responses. Thanks to all who took the time to write.
i’m really tired of all these new coins, it’s like there’s a bunch of get rich quick greedy idiots who are creating these new ones. Why not just stick to the mainstream coins like Litecoin, Bitcoin, Etheruim, etc?
Yes that’s true but with Coinbase you are not holding Bitoins, they are, and they can trade internally (avoiding the $20), and can trade in bulk with others who are buying or selling (diluting the $20 among many buyers or sellers).
Also with coinbase there is a buy and sell price. IIRC both the price you buy at will be higher then the amount it states, and the amount you sell at will be also. Not much but there is a spread there.
And that $2.99 fee sounds like you bought from a creditcard and you should also have a separate charge of $1 less in coins then you bought (buy $100 you have $99 in your account), if you used a bank card it sould only be $1.
There is about a 4-5% spread in total for buying from a CC (1-2% for non CC methods). And a additional 1-2% spread for selling at around the $100 level. Meaning you start the day 5%-7% behind if trading from a CC.
Well, since I am capable of thinking through cause-and-effect, entertaining various outcomes to a single act, and have even on rare occasion displayed signs of other forms of abstract thought, I can tell you that I CAN and HAVE imagined that. I thank you for your deep concern. I can only hope the market doesn’t go against me, and I am forced to sell my mansion and my yacht after my bold, ill-advised, and likely bathtub-gin-fueled decision to invest $100 in crypto goes horribly awry. The one bright side, of course, will be your schadenfreude as I am forced to parade about in my barrel and suspenders.
Seriously, that was on the patronizing side right there. I’m having difficulty buying $100 in XRP. This thread has demonstrated that it is not an easy task for someone not well-established in the the crypto community. Treating me like a child and insinuating that I cannot think through the consequences of my actions is uncalled for. I actually WAS prepared to see XRP go down (though taking off like a rocket would have been better), because I still believe it will rebound, and quite nicely. Buy what you believe in, and don’t panic. And if it doesn’t rebound, hey, there goes that romantic dinner for two at a mid-priced restaurant I could have spent that $100 on.
All I did was point out that while you were complaining about missing out on gains from the mean, unfair delay of having to wait a week, it actually saved you some money, and you might want to think about that. Sounds like you won’t, so good luck with that.
Manufacturers of video cards are making a fortune from selling equipment to coin miners. There are now video cards that are specifically designed for coin mining, costing $5,000 apiece.