I’m used to making risky trades, but I panicked today a little bit. I decided to buy more Steem as the Steem/Bitcoin rate is relatively low, near this year’s bottom. And because the end of the year is mostly positive in the investment world, maybe other “Santa Claus Rally” will begin.

Good times to come

Maybe not such huge rally as the last year’s hype, no sign of another mania, but maybe a longer, cautious, gradual uptrend can start. I wrote about Bitcoin price seasonality here. July, August, and September yielded poorly in earlier years, meanwhile, October, November, and December were mostly great.

Tradingview.com

First I had to crack my Bitcoin cold wallet, that was already difficult enough because the 11 years old computer I use for offline keys storage didn’t want to work. But the real surprise came as I bought my Steem with my Bitcoin on my Binance account as in earlier cases. Withdrawals were suspended, due “wallet maintenance”, allegedly.

Bad to be your customer

Later I read it is suspended since at least the 20th of September, I don’t think such a “maintenance” can be really a simple maintenance. I don’t know what the real reason is but I felt really furious. Why did they wait with the notice until I bought Steem? Why they couldn’t warn me earlier, before the buying? What type of customer care is that?

I can imagine also an official announcement board on Steemit.com or Steem.io, where people can read if something important is happening beside the forks.

Offer and bid

Now, if I really want Steem – and I want it –, I have to sell it again, transfer the other crypto to another exchange, eventually after opening another account. So I sold it again. But you always lose money on the margin between offer and bid (the best selling price and the best buying price), or you have to put your offer and wait, who knows how much.

Tradingview.com

Then you lose on the exchange fee, on the transfer fees. I haven’t calculated all the expenses, but I’m sure I lost at least 0.2-0.3 percent, a couple of dollars worth a decent hamburger. Fortunately, I wanted to change only some hundreds of dollars in Bitcoins to Steem.

The FAQ

STEEM purchases made via steemit.com are facilitated by BlockTrades.
bitcoin can also be exchanged for STEEM on external markets such as Binance, Bithumb, BitShares, Bittrex, Changelly, GOBADA, GOPAX, HitBTC, Huobi, LocalBitcoinCash, Poloniex, Shapeshift.io, UpBit, and Yensesa
– writes the FAQ of Steemit.com.

From this exchanges, I registered earlier on two, Binance and HitBTC, and on this two there is no Steem withdrawal today. I think on HitBTC, Steem transfers are halted for many months. I made a registration on Binance in May because I saw I couldn’t retrieve Steem from HitBTC.

(I had the same problem buying Siacoins in spring and not being able to transfer it. And when was they told me about this issue? Yes, after having bought it, of course.)

Exchange fee two percent

I checked Blocktrades today, there was a price exactly two percent above the Steem/Bitcoin market price indicated on Binance. On exchanges, I see mostly 0.1-0.2 percent between offer and bid. Two percent is an interest of a whole year ultimately. And I don’t see if somebody is guaranteeing the success of the trade. Is there a chance of money going lost? I trust more in exchanges, they seem to have more clear security measures.

Last time I wanted to exchange USD to Euros by my traditional (non-crypto) brokerage firm, they made it for a price with one percent above the international exchange rate. But after local business hours, in the evening, they wanted to make the exchange for three percent plus. I hoped crypto was better.

Running to the exit

So, I bought back my Bitcoins for Steem, maybe I was the guy who pushed the price – accidentally and temporally – very close to 0.80 USD/Steem today. Because there were only a few buyers with offers of 10-30 or 40-50 Steem, there was very poor liquidity. But I learned in the last years, it wasn’t safe to deposit many cryptocurrencies on the exchanges, so I ran to the exit very soon. (And there is this Binance-Tether issue I couldn’t really understand…)

Which exchange should I choose? Where should I change BTC to Steem? What do you think? Please comment.

Update

One day after, I decided to use Blocktrades due lack of time for experiments with new exchanges. But I divided my small capital in 4-5 even smaller portions for security reasons. I changed the first portion to Steem. Price premium of Blocktrades was approximately 2.3 percent.

Disclaimer:

I am not a financial advisor and this content in this article is not a financial or investment advice. It is for informative purposes only, or simply to make you think, entertain, increase testosterone and adrenaline level. Consult your advisers before making any decision.

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