How To Purchase CryptoCurrency In Singapore Part 1

Hi guys,

I have been actively reading up about cryptocurrency in the past few months. Some of the people around me have also been coming to me to ask me about cryptocurrency and how do they go about purchasing them. So I reckon it would be good for me to spend my leave writing some articles to share with you guys about it to make it easier for you to join in the cryptocurrency fever.

The fact that you are reading this post makes me assume that you are interested in buying cryptocurrency too. Cryptocurrency might seem to be a foreign concept until recent weeks where mainstream media kept reporting about Bitcoin smashing price barriers (mainly due to the launch of CBOE and CME futures). This is a highly speculative market and most coins/tokens DO NOT actually have a working product. You are investing in the development of these products, unlike conventional stock market where you are investing in company that has certain amount of market share. As such, it is important that you do your due diligence and DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. As a general rule of thumb, put in as much money as you are willing to lose.

Everything that I am going to share are mainly my own opinion so do take it with a pinch of a salt.

I thought it would be a good idea to start off by sharing how to purchase cryptocurrency in Singapore before sharing about more technical stuff in subsequent article.

1. How to purchase cryptocurrencies?
   -Main cryptocurrencies that can be purchased by fiat (SGD/USD) - Bitcoin/Ethereum/Litecoin/Bitcoin Cash (added just 5 hours ago)
   -Alternative cryptocurrencies that cannot be purchased by fiat - Vertcoin/OmiseGo/BAT (and 1300 over other currencies)

Part 1: How to purchase the main cryptocurrencies

Coinbase:

Purchasing cryptocurrencies is pretty straightforward, for beginners I would advise using Coinbase. It has a clean user interface which allows you to navigate easily. It is currently one of the top downloaded apps on the app store. The downside is that Coinbase charge absurd fees.

Coinbase fees for credit card purchase is 3.99% (which is way higher than any other exchanges), and the fees for purchase using bank account is 1.49%.

Do note that what I mean by bank account here is using this platform called xfers (https://www.xfers.com/sg/)
-Do note that xfers currently SUSPENDS digital wallet top up until further notice. (Digital wallet is the wallet we use to purchase crypto currency)

So what does this imply - From now until the foreseeable future, we can only purchase through Coinbase using credit card. All new account would only have a limit of $200/week. The limits would be progressively increased overtime.

For example, I am looking to purchase $200 worth of Ethereum.
The cost break down would be as follows:
You would pay 3.99% of Coinbase fees - $7.98
You would pay $5.20 of DBS bank transfer fees.
So effectively, you will need to pay $205.20 to get $192 worth of coins.

This would technically set you back by almost 10% before you even begin looking at any profit. But fret not, this first time purchase can actually be covered through a referral code.

I shall shamelessly put my referral link here for you: https://www.coinbase.com/join/59efdc0c1ac76d0239e2a282

Any $100 worth of any cryptocurrencies purchase would give you $10 worth of Bitcoin. I would also be getting $10 worth of Bitcoin for myself. Subsequently, you can share your referral link to your friends.

To be honest, if you purchase say any other currency other than Bitcoin, this $10 of Bitcoin that is given as part of the referral would be pretty useless. Because, before any transaction within block chains can occur, you will need to pay network/miner fees. In this case, because Bitcoin network is always congested, the fees are astronomical. You will have to pay $7 to transfer $10 worth of coins, so a better solution would be to keep the money in Coinbase. Comparatively, it cost about $0.40 to transfer Ethereum/Litecoin.

I will be covering network/miner fees in subsequent posts.

Coinhako:

Another alternative would be using Coinhako (https://www.coinhako.com/),
Coinhako charges a significantly lower fees of 0.9%, by using the promo code COINGECKO (not sure if still applicable), it will reduce the fees to 0.7%.

But there are a few drawbacks in using Coinhako
-It only allow purchase through bank transfer (xfers) but currently, xfers is down until further notice which means that Coinhako is useless until xfers is up and running again.
-You are only able to purchase Bitcoin and Ethereum in Coinhako
-Coinhako prices could be slightly more inflated than Coinbase at times, the opposite holds true because the price mainly depends on the demand and supply at that point of time.

If you are interested, you can sign up through my referral link where every $100 of purchase would net you $5 worth of additional coins which will help in covering your initial Coinhako cost. https://www.coinhako.com/referrals/sign_up/KOHQINHON_375707

Gemini:

There is another exchange called Gemini (https://gemini.com/) which allows bank transfer (through DBS to US bank account). I personally have not tried using this before and hence couldn't give much input. I made an account but it is still being verified after almost a week. You can try using it and share your inputs with me!

What I normally do would be to refer to before exchanges and see which exchange would give me more coins or a better rate before deciding from where I would like to purchase my coins from.

*Do note that exchanges would require you to set up 2FA, sending proof of address or even take a selfie for verification purposes.
*Also, as most exchanges are experiencing unprecedented surge in applicants, it might take sometime for your verification to be processed.

As the post is getting too long, I will be covering how to purchase alternative cryptocurrencies in Part 2.
Edit - Part 2: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@kohjohnson/how-to-purchase-cryptocurrency-in-singapore-part-2-alternative-cryptocurrencies

Thanks for reading and feel free to drop me a message about what you would like to learn more about (so long as it is within everything I know).