How to Buy Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum on Coinbase

Cryptocurrency has really become a buzzworthy topic over recent months. You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, unless you’ve been living under a rock. Investors who speculated on this new form of currency years ago have most likely become millionaires on $1000 investment seeing as the coin started off around the nickel area and has spiked close to $20,000 per coin in 2017. You can still ride the cryptocurrency train to possible riches! The easiest way to buy cryptocurrency including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin is through the popular website coinbase. In fact, sign up for free through this link and receive $10 bonus bitcoin if you acquire over $100. It’s very easy and fast to sign up online or even through your smartphone. You will have to link a funding resource with either a credit card or bank account. If you use a credit card, there will be a 4% fee when you purchase the currency. Also, you will have a starting spending limit of only $200 which will increase to $1000 (weekly) after you make some transactions. The advantage of this route is you get the coin immediately and can begin trading or sending it right away. If you connect your bank account, the fee will only be 1.5% of your transaction, and you’re spending limit will be $7500 weekly. The disadvantage of this method would be the fact that you don’t get your coin until five business days.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin BTC is the granddaddy of cryptocurrency  It was created in 2009 is the first decentralized digital currency  It works peer-to-peer rather than through a bank of any kind. Currently, over 100,000 merchants accept bitcoin and there are over 6 million users that have a wallet. The price of one coin is fluctuating around $15,000.

Ethereum

Ethereum ETH has become another popular crypto currency rising as high as $900 per coin in 2018. This currency was initially released in 2014 and developed by programmer Vitalik Buterin.  It is currently available for purchase in the United States through coin base and is a solid backup to Bitcoin.

Litecoin

Litecoin LTC  Is the third of the big cryptocurrency coins which was inspired by bit coin and is very similar technically. It was created by a former Google employee Charlie Lee in 2011. As of this blog post, the price of the coin is around $250. Litecoin processes a block every 2 1/2 minutes instead of 10 minutes, which is the big coin standard, so there are claims of faster transactions.

There are also many other coins available, but not directly on the US market. You can purchase crypto currency on coinbase and transfer those funds over to another company overseas (such as binance or bitfinex) that will allow you to turn that into the new coins such as Ripple XRP and IOTA which people are very excited about for the future.  Keep in mind this is all very new and very high risk, high reward. Of course, there is always the boring mutual funds and stocks for you old timers.