Where and how to buy MAIDSAFE tokens

Hi, I’d like to know which sites is better to buy cryptocurrencies.
I live in Italy and would like to invest into those tokens. Still confused about this stuff. Someone pointed me bittrex and poloniex. Do they accept euros? And if so, can I buy less than a bitcoin to exhange for maidsafe (don’t want to invest 5k euro right now)?

Thanks for any help.
Can someone point me where I can find my private key within omniwallet?

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Bittrex and poloniex are the 2 most common exchanges used.
You can buy as little as 1 token at a time.
Both exchanges are pure crypto, so you need to buy bitcoin then send that over to your chosen exchange.
As for finding your pvt key in omniwallet. Maybe try their site for instructions?

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As above, and in case it wasn’t clear in the previous post you don’t have to buy 1 bitcoin to transfer over to poloniex/bittrex, you buy as little or as much as you want (there is a minimum on most bitcoin exchanges around $10US or so from memory, add some extra for xfer fees etc)

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thank for the answers. How much are the fees? just to understand if it’s worth or not using those sites.
There’s another thing I want to know. How can I exchange the cryptocurrency into FIAT currency, what fees I’m supposed to shoulder and where those money are going? Do I need to indicate credit/debit card numbers or bank deposit account numbers to have those money transferred?

Sorry for those noob questions. Really new in the field

I recently changed some bitcoin into Euros on Coinbase and the fees were about 1.7%. There are lots of places where you can buy bitcoins with credit cards, although it is usually cheaper with cash or bank transfer. See for example https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/63d66z/with_the_price_pickingup_which_are_good_sites_to/ - but whichever you choose make sure you investigate them first as there are a lot of scams. When buying other coins with bitcoin and vice versa the fees are much less, generally about 0.15% - 0.25%.

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The above post is a good how to. I’ve tried to put myself in your shoes and add a couple of things that most regulars take for granted as the norm but which might catch you unawares. Each bitcoin exchange varies slightly with their fees for both deposits and withdrawals, the info is on the legitimate ones in plain sight with a few nuances thrown in depending on, in the case of your deposit your region and method used to get ur money initially on there.
Breaking down that side of things is pretty straightforward with a small amount of research.
When you to transfer from the bitcoin exchange to poloniex/bittrex etc you will need to send your bitcoin via eg: blockchain.info (there’s plenty of others) so there will be fees there (both a normal or priority one, these fees are paid to the miners) from experience choose the priority one it’s a bit more $ wise but it will go through pretty quickly within a day. Be warned choosing the normal option you may wait a week or more.
Once your bitcoin is on poloniex/bittrex etc and you buy your MAID you will want to withdraw it (to omniwallet, paper wallet etc) for heavens sake DO NOT leave it on any exchange. It’s simple to withdraw however a heads up poloniex charges 10 MAID to withdraw and Bittrex only 2. My personal experience was Poloniex was easier/more user friendly but is more restrictive re the withdrawal charge and their daily withdrawal limits which I’ll get to next.
When you want to withdraw FIAT well that’s when the fun starts. Poloniex has daily limits as to amounts you can withdraw unless you want to provide more ID, bittrex I don’t think do. Be realistic though here both sites are US facing so you will be likely to be required to ID yourself along the way but hey if your legit and not avoiding the taxman you’ll never have too many issues.
The other option if you can wait that long is for SAFE to be completed and you might find yourself spoilt for decentralised exchanges (I personally think certain parts of Asia have this well in the works) and there won’t be as many hurdles :wink:
Hope those tidbits help :+1:

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For Euro <-> Bitcoin: Kraken.com is the biggest market, so probably the cheapest: https://www.kraken.com/help/fees

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Prices for BTC do fluctuate across exchanges. Recently I’ve noticed that GDAX tends to be on the higher end of things, and Gemini on the lower end (for USD). You can download an app like Bitcoin Ticker that will allow you to compare the price of crypto coins across exchanges and currencies. Bitcoin Ticker is fairly solid, and will show you the fiat exchange rate for the major currencies (e.g., BTC, ETH, LTC, etc.). However, you can’t easily see the fiat exchange rates for a lot of alt coins like MAID. You’ll have to convert the BTC price (which they show) to whichever fiat is relevant to you. Hope this is helpful.

And when you ask for a higher limit at poloniex you have to have a lot of patience.
Not that I really need it right now (the price of MaidSafe has to go up a lot), but my request for a higher limit is now 111 days old…
Maybe they do that on purpose to prevent too many people with a high limit, to prevent liquidy/volatility problems.

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I don’t think I got to understand the explanation given. Let’s try to recap it and see.
My goal is to invest a certain sum into MAIDSAFE and a lower sum into some minor cryptocurrency that I consider a good speculative bet due to its low low low cost.

That being said I’d like to break down every single passage that will lead me into my goal. I want to be prepared before doing anything.

Step one: use kraken.com/coinbase etc to exchange euro for bitcoin (because i cannot exchange directly for MAID). To do this exchange you have to pay a fee that varies from site to site. You use a credit card or a bank transfer.

Step two: you now have 1 bitcoin (let’s say i want to invest 4.000$). I need to transfer that bitcoin to bittrex/poloniex and “trade” it for X MAIDSAFE. Trading will cost me another fee.

Step three: now i have X MAIDSAFE that i need to transfer again outside of the exchange site to my online wallet. To do this i have to pay another fee.

Here are the questions:

  1. Where do I receive the 1 bitcoin I have bought from kraken/coinbase?
    Do I have to input some sort of address? I suppose they will send it in my wallet (i’m using omniwallet even if it’s not particularly user friendly to me). Is it correct? If so I need to understand where is written my damn private key because all i can see is a public key.

  2. I didn’t understand the blockchain.info stuff and the priority fee. Considering I’m noob would be simplier? Sorry about that

  3. Can i transfer the MAIDSAFE I have bought to an offline address in omniwallet? If so, do I have to set it up beforehand?

  4. Between all those transfers are there waiting times? What I want to avoid is to buy 1 bitcoin right now, then exchange it for other cryptocurrencies at a lower value because of the time I need to wait for the transaction to be validated. Tomorrow 1 bitcon can be 3.500$ and If I have to wait before the exchanges FIAT/BTC → BTC/MAID take place, I could lose 500$ of value.

Thanks for the patience guys. I’m really sorry to make dumb questions

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You receive your bitcoin on the Exchange site, e.g. Kraken.
On Kraken it isn’t yet allocated to a bitcoin address.
You can then withdraw that 1 Bitcoin to a Bitcoin address, e.g. the ‘Deposit’-Bitcoin address that you find on your Poloniex account. Transferring to a Bitcoin adress can take a couple of hours.
Then you can buy(Exchange) MaidSafeCoin on Poloniex with your BitCoin.
After that you can withdraw your MaidSafeCoin to a Bitcoin Address you’ve created yourself with bitaddress.org (to have the private key).
You can access this address with omniwallet.org:
if you give your (public ‘key’) bitcoin address: readonly to see the value of your MaidSafeCoins
if you import your address with the private key in omniwallet.org, you can also send the MaidSafeCoins to another address (e.g. the Poloniex Deposit MaidSafe address).
Mind you: then you need to also have a small amount of Bitcoins on that omniwallet address, to pay omni the fee of sending your MaidSafeCoins to another address.

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  1. When you create an account on Coinbase/Kraken or whatever they will give you a wallet (at least on Coinbase they do, I’m not sure about Kraken). Lets say you buy 1 bitcoin using CC or bank transfer. Once transaction is complete your wallet will show 1 bitcoin. You can then transfer your 1 bitcoin to an exchange like Poloniex. This will take some time and will cost you a small fee (less than 1%).

For some transactions you are offered a choice of fees. Choosing a priority fee will ensure your transaction happens faster. This may be imporant to you as some transactions can take days at busy times.

  1. You can check how your transaction is proceeding on the blockchain.info site.

  2. Once you have transferred your bitcoin to an exchange you can use it to buy MAID and other coins. Once you have bought MAID it’s a good idea to transfer it off the exchange. The easiest way is to use omniwallet.org, but it will cost you 10 MAID (Poloniex) and you also need a small amount of bitcoin in the omniwallet wallet you send it to. There is another thread here which explores offline options for storing MAID. If you just search for ‘omniwallet’ you’ll come up with plenty more.

  3. There are always waiting times for transferring - anything from 10 mins to days. That’s why it may be worth choosing the priority fee if available. Transferring MAID to and from Omniwallet can be particularly slow in my experience. However, the exchange process (e.g. buying MAID with bitcoin) is instantaneous. So the best thing is to leave enough BTC on the exchange to trade with, bearing in mind that exchanges have been hacked in the past.

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is there a way to use a Ledger Nano S to store MAIDSAFE tokens? Is this recommended? What are the drawbacks?

See discussion in this thread: Cold Storage Options for MAID in 2017? - #35 by Runswick

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