Blocktrades.us is one of the quickest and safest ways to buy or sell Steem. It is also the primary way through which you can buy Steem directly from your Steemit account page. So I have decided to do a review of them, after successfully purchasing some Steem a few minutes ago.

---

Review of Blocktrades

Intro

Blocktrades and Shapeshift are at the center of quick convertibility of altcoins. Blocktrades specifically focuses on Bitshare Assets, but since we use Steemit, it's also very good to buy sell Steem, Steem Dollar, or even buy Steem Power.

Now I am not entirely sure how Steem Power buy works, because I thought that it's non transferable, I hope somebody can answer that in the comments, but to buy or sell Steem and Steem Dollar it's very useful and very easy.

The Website

The website is very simple in the good sense, in this world of complexity people just want a simplicity. I am a big fan of simplicity and I love how simple it is, no registration, no nothing just enter your address and buy/sell instantly.

You can optionally sign up if you want but I don't think its necessary, so everything is just fast and smooth there.

The Steemit Interface

You can buy through Blocktrades via Steemit's built in interface, by just going to:
WALLET> STEEM OR STEEM POWER > DEPOSIT

As you can see I was interested in buying some Steem, it's a pretty simple and easy to use interface, I learned it in 10 seconds, so it's very newbie and user friendly.

My purchase then got finalized, and everything went smoothly. It took 1 confirmation for the transaction to finalize, which depends on Bitcoin, but in my case it was roughly 5 minutes I haven't measured it, and then the Steem got into my Wallet:

Costs

Well to my surprise Blocktrades actually has better liquidity for Steem than Shapeshift, which I just realized now:

• I bought 41.625 Steem for 0.006942 BTC = 0.000166775 STEEM/BTC price
• At the same time around 5867 Steem was 1 BTC at Shapeshift = 0.000170424 STEEM/BTC price

So trading Steem through Blocktrades is 2.14% cheaper than through Shapeshift.

Customer Support

I didn't have any problems with my transaction. It was smooth and without any complications. The best customer support is the one which you don't need to use, because things work fine.

So even though I had no need for customer support, I am sure they have a good customer support. But as I said, it's always better if things go smoothly, and they do!

Conclusion

I think it's the best way to platform Steem or Steem Dollar on currently. I think everybody loves simple platforms where you don't have to login or confirm e-mail or confirm phone number. It's just a masterpiece of simplicity and it's perfect for Steemit.

I will be using it in the future now that I have had my first experience with them. They are also present on Stemit at @blocktrades, and they are a big whale as it looks like with a 700,000$ account, so their commitment to Steemit is remarkable, and because of this I am sure they will continue to provide a great service to us all.

---