How to Buy Bitcoin Cash

Anybody interested in Bitcoin specifically for investing purposes should learn how to buy Bitcoin Cash. That’s the reason Bitcoin Cash exists. Evangelist Roger Ver (some call him Bitcoin Jesus) is one of the project’s biggest proponents. He along with many others believes people simply holding cryptocurrency as an investment need a cheaper alternative to Bitcoin core.

He’s right and the market data proves as much. Bitcoin Cash currently ranks fourth in market capitalization among cryptocurrencies. The BCH coin is currently worth more than $5.5 billion as of this writing. As its name suggests, Bitcoin Cash transactions are faster and cheaper than Bitcoin. It’s ironic that Ver and others consider BCH the better investment vehicle, yet they call it Cash and make it cheaper for daily use.

Its brief history is intriguing and its value among other cryptocurrencies is proven. That’s why readers will be glad to know how to buy Bitcoin Cash.

How to Buy Bitcoin Cash: The Easy Way

This post will cover all the ways a person can buy Bitcoin Cash. Why not begin with the easiest method first. It’s simple. Use Coinbase.com.

Coinbase.com allows customers to buy cryptocurrencies with credit cards instantly. Bitcoin Cash is just one of the digital assets available for purchase. Buying is easy. Create a username and password for free. Submit government identification including a web cam photo holding the ID and register a credit card. The whole process takes a few business days. Once ready to purchase Bitcoin Cash, select the amount and confirm it. That’s it.

There is one catch however. Customers can only buy a limited amount of crypto when they first register at Coinbase. This is a security measure to prevent large-volume transactions from going through a credit card without permission. The only way this limit increases is if Coinbase allows that to happen. There is no way to request a limit increase. Increases are based on how long a customer has been registered with the website, how much they spend in relation to the limit and how often they make purchases.

Most users buy Bitcoin Cash strictly through the company’s website as the Coinbase mobile app wasn’t initially ready to support Bitcoin Cash from a technical standpoint. That’s changing. As of February, 2019, customers can now interact with Bitcoin Cash coins on their smartphones and other mobile devices.

More on Bitcoin Cash and Coinbase Wallet Options

Coinbase Wallet aims to create the world’s largest user-custodied wallet crypto wallet. It’s basically a decentralized application for storing crypto. It’s not the same as the regular Coinbase.com app. That does everything using a centralized server. Both wallets already support Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and over 100,000 different ERC20 and ERC 721 tokens. The most up-to-date version of Coinbase Wallet offers Bitcoin Cash by default. No need to do anything to add it to the wallet.

Coinbase Wallet will still support Bitcoin Legacy wallet addresses in addition to accepting Bitcoin Cash’s CashAddr format. Same goes for the original Coinbase.com app. Both addresses provide a string of alphanumeric characters as unique identifiers. This means users have to be careful to choose the right kind of Bitcoin when completing a transaction. Remember, if a user sends the wrong cryptocurrency to the wrong address, there’s no way to take it back.

While there is no security blanket for taking back transactions, the Coinbase Wallet app allows users to protect Bitcoin Cash and other cryptocurrencies with the biometric features and Security Enclave chips embedded in most modern-day smartphones.

Bitcoin Cash, Coinbase and Controversy

Just last month, a. U.S judge dismissed claims made by a group of traders that Coinbase.com acted fraudulently in adding Bitcoin Cash to its portfolio of offerings in December of 2017. The case was a protracted lawsuit brought forward by trader Jeffery Berk. He and fellow plaintiffs filed a claim because the price of Bitcoin Cash spiked really high, really quickly just before the company announced BCH would be added to the Coinbase platform.

Nowadays when a coin is added to Coinbase or any other major trading platform, the price will spike. But the spikes we see in the market today are not like the ones that occurred in 2017. And there are certainly no Coinbase related price spikes quite like the one that occurred with Bitcoin Cash. Within three minutes of launching the coin on its platform, Coinbase had to halt trading of Bitcoin Cash because everything was happening so fast. At the crux of the lawsuit is the idea that many Coinbase employees knew about the launch of Bitcoin Cash and that’s what caused the spike. Once the employees took advantage of an opportunity to make lots of money really quickly, trading was halted preventing the general public from capitalizing as well. Along with the sudden price spike team a quick drop that actually caused many retail investors who got in too late to lose money.

The whole incident raised issues with liquidity in the moment and nobody was ready for what happened. The fact the judge dismissed the case is fortunate for Coinbase, but not so much for many of the platforms users. Needless to say, the controversy allowed Bitcoin Cash to raise its brand awareness among crypto enthusiasts. Although there are now many spinoffs of Bitcoin (Bitcoin Dark, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SV), Bitcoin Cash was the first.

Other Ways to Buy Bitcoin Cash

Since Bitcoin Cash shares half of its name with the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world, it trades on pretty much every cryptocurrency exchange that Bitcoin does. Exchanges that choose not to offer Bitcoin Cash trading often do that as a result of personal bias or vendettas. They see the original bitcoin as the only one that matters and stand against Bitcoin Cash. Still, between all the different exchanges that offer Bitcoin Cash, there are 389 different currency pairs involving BCH that traders can take advantage of.

Buying BCH on an exchange is just like buying Bitcoin. Users must go through Know Your Client screening, providing identification and choosing a username and password. This may or may not be necessary using exchanges like EtherDelta.io or wallet apps like Monarch. Those platforms and many others use smart contracts to decentralize exchange transactions, meaning the identities of the users are not captured or relevant for the purposes of trading. However, it should be noted that governments are starting to go after the creators of decentralized exchanges. Particularly the ones that are not registered properly with the United States Securities Exchange Commission.

Nevertheless, once registered on an exchange, users can trade Bitcoin for Bitcoin Cash. Some exchanges even allow users to trade a BCH/USD or BCH/USDT trading pair, meaning that the US dollar and US Dollar Tether can be easily bought or sold without having to go back to go back to the original Bitcoin first. Once the appropriate trading pair is selected, a market or limit order can be placed. Whenever the market is volatile, placing a limit order can work wonders. Especially because cryptocurrencies can experienced dramatic price fluctuations in short amounts of time, even in the absence of a Coinbase controversy.

Buy Bitcoin Cash with eToro

eToro is partly a trading platform and partly a social media platform. Users can take trades that other users offer up. But, they can’t trade one cryptocurrency for another. eToro is mainly good for those that want to trade Bitcoin Cash for fiat currencies. eToro does not offer a cryptocurrency wallet and they don’t offer actual coins. It’s more of a marketplace for selling than anything else.

How to Buy Bitcoin Cash in Person

LocalBitcoins.com is the longest serving in-person Bitcoin marketplace. Well, the marketplace itself is online, but the transactions happen in person. Here’s the thing. Bitcoin is the primary currency displayed on the website. No altcoins are offered. So trading for BCH in person actually means getting your hands on BTC first.

LocalBitcoins.com started out as anonymous. Meaning the website didn’t collect KYC information from its users. That has since changed. It’s still a popular website, but many who want to remain under the radar are moving on to exchanges that do everything with smart contracts.

That’s why the best way to get Bitcoin Cash in person is actually through exchanges that don’t offer an online trading platform. More and more cryptocurrency exchanges are actually doing business in person. CoinNerds.ca is one example out of Canada. The company takes trades from people and does everything in person. Customers get the advantage of not having to do everything through the Internet, but they also don’t have to deal with shady characters in person. In-person exchanges are properly licensed businesses registered with governments. It’s a new trend in buying and selling cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin Cash. As the adoption of digital assets accelerates, more and more people who want to get in on the action but don’t want to worry about understanding wallet addresses or anything technical will get their assets in this way.

Now that you know how to buy Bitcoin Cash, you’re officially a little bit further down the rabbit hole than you were when you started out with Bitcoin. Plus, your transactions will get a little bit faster and a little less costly.