In the Exchange ( buying Dogecoin or Bitcoin or whatever!)

On the exchange you have a sidebar with the different markets. Cryptsy has so many markets its confusing. Let's say you want to look at the dogecoin market, you have quite a few options. First you can look under USD and find USD/DOGE and exchange doge for real money. Note, you will need a verified account for this.

You also can look under BTC and find the BTC/DOGE exchange.

 

Here the price is denoted in satoshi with 44 satoshi being the price to buy doge at and 43 being the price to sell doge at.

This is a very active market and there is no price gap. You can also trade litecoin for doge in the LTC/DOGE market. This is a comparatively less volume market. It also features a generally larger price gap. The price here is listed in litoshi ( i.e., satoshi for litecoin).

One thing to remember is your order doesn't need to be at the current price. You can put any price into your order. But if the price is too high, you won’t sell it right away ( or maybe even ever).

To the exchange!

In order to go far with any Cryptocurrency, you need a way of buying and selling it. For most of us, this means it's time to go off to the exchange! One of the most popular exchanges is Cryptsy! This is my referral link. Based on your volume of trade, you give Cryptsy points to your referrer. If you have enough points, you can enter drawings for hardware and goodies! Or if you don’t, you can trade it for straight up bitcoins!

Now, I just use the crypto to crypto markets. In other words, I don’t deal in US dollars. To trade in USD you need to have ID, SSN and all sorts of personal information I frankly don’t want to give.

The best part is, making your account is totally free. The exchange takes a modest .27% fee for transactions. If you compare this to typical costs for stocks and other somewhat comparable examples, it is a steal!

Bigger, however, is not always best! Other exchanges are arguably better. https://poloniex.com/ for instance has lower trading fees.  Currently, it looks like it is .2%. Some users assert the interface is much nicer too.

The last feature I wanted to look at on Cryptsy was Trade keys. With a trade key you can send other exchange users any time of currency with no fees and it requires no confirmations. For example my trade key is: 05f8991eb7ce90a2c059f215b079c0402c0e5282 .

Well that is what an exchange is! Next post, I will talk about using the exchange to trade!

Bitcoinless

After blogging about bitcoins for over a year, I have now done... the unthinkable.
I have, for the very first time, sent bitcoins... all of them....
That's right, I have basically emptied both my wallets.
Don't worry, its not forever! I just am using an exchange for the first time. Cryptsy in fact. Here is a referral link, although I am not sure  what it does...

I was actually a bit surprised at the transaction fees I paid to transfer my bitcoins. It was something like 40 cents in total, and I only transferred 4 dollars. I talk about low transaction fees all the time as a perk of bitcoin,so I must have done something wrong... ( as I mentioned before, the formula for transaction fee is a bit complex)


In other news a bill regarding bitcoin passed in Utah.  One of the most interesting idea of the article reads, "[The bill]... will allow the residents to pay their taxes in Bitcoin." Paying your state taxes in bitcoin is now a thing! At least in Utah that is.


Well the adventure will continue tomorrow as I explore my first exchange!