How to Buy #Bitcoin & other Cryptocurrencies without paying fees!

Tips on how to buy Bitcoin without paying trading transaction or currency fees

I’m not a professional investor but as many of us have seen Bitcoin and a few other cryptocurrencies have risen at an insane rate over the last few years and especially the last few months.

The good news is that you can buy (receive) or sell (send) fractions of Bitcoins (and other cryptocurrencies) so you are not expected to buy the whole coin making them easy to acquire.

This guide shows you how to:

1. Easily purchase cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Etherum & Litecoin.
2. Not get charged any fees from the trading platform/exchanges, local banks and how to not lose out on terrible currency conversions that your legacy banks charge you.

How to acquire and hold Bitcoin

You need secure wallets to store your Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. People can then send you cryptocurrencies (including percentages of coins) to those wallets.

If those wallets connect to a trading platform or exchange you can buy and offload coins into those exchanges where you can convert your coins into regular fiat currency (dollars, pounds, yen, etc.).

Current Bitcoin & Cryptocurrencies prices

At the time of writing (5th Dec 2017) this #Bitcoin is $11,770 #Ethereum is $459 and #LiteCoin is $102

What Fees Does This Guide Help You Avoid

• Funding your trading platform — Many exchanges won’t except GBP, they prefer USD or EUR. So if you are in Britain your legacy bank will charge you around £20 to make an international transfer, they will also give you a terrible exchange rate again losing you around 5–8%.
• Purchasing Cryptocurrencies — Exchanges and trading platforms make money via charging a transaction fee, Coinbase which this guide mentions charges between 1.5% — 4% depending on how you make your purchase (don’t worry I show to avoid this fee). Some exchanges don’t sell you cryptocurrencies at the live rate they show, for example, Coinbase has a 1.3% variance (spread) in their favour (but I show you how to avoid this).
• Also if you sign up to Coinbase with my affiliate url here, then you will get $10 of free Bitcoins.

Quick Summary of the Process To Not Pay Any Fees

• Get a Revolut Account > Get a Coinbase Account > Get a GDAX account
• Top up Revolut from your normal bank account > Transfer those funds to Euros within Revolut > Top up Coinbase with Revolut & link Revolut with Coinbase (special trick required) > Top up GDAX via Coinbase > Make Limit Order Trades in GDAX > send the funds back to Coinbase > Withdraw back to Revolut.

Detailed Process To Trade & Not Pay Fees

Step 1 — Get Revolut to save on international transaction fees.

You need Multicurrency Account with no international transaction fees, Revolut is your solution for this.

• Load funds into this Revolut account from your regular bank account/card. Upload some ID to remove limits on this account (very quick process)
• Then open a GBP account and a Euro account within Revolut.This is done with a few clicks.
• Then exchange those GBP funds into Euros within Revolut. Now you are ready to deposit/load Euros into the exchange (trading platform) without being hit by fees from your legacy bank. The process for this is mentioned in the step below.

Step 2 — Register on Coinbase — Cryptocurrency wallet & exchange

Coinbase is the place where you can store your Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as they give you a wallet. It’s also the place you need to deposit (load) the funds into.

Connect your Revolut account in all of the following ways:

1. Go to Accounts > EUR Wallet > Deposit. Then get the transfer details and use Revolut to send funds to that account. Make sure you add the reference number inside Revolut, screenshot here of Coinbase screen and screenshot here for what to do in Revolut here.
2. Got to Settings > Payment Methods > Add Payment Method > Bank Account. Important, follow this trick: Add your European IBAN number that Revolut provides but use the British Swift/BIC number which is LOYDGB2L (not the European one), screenshot here.
3. Add another payment method which is your Revolut debit card. I’m not sure if this step is required but as it takes 1 minute, I did this in case it helps Coinbase associate my Revolut account.

Coinbase is easy to trade with but there are fees such as:

• Hidden 1.3% fee in their spread, they don’t sell you Bitcoin and other currencies at the rate they show on their dashboard.
• They also charge transaction fees of 1.5% if you use deposited funds and 4% if you do instant purchases via your debit/credit card.

The step below (GDAX) shows you how you can eliminate these fees. Coinbase owns GDAX and they both share the same backend, GDAX is a bit daunting on first glance but there are no fees if you follow the strategy in the point below, I’ve also included a video tutorial showing what to do.

Tip: Upload both your passport and driving license as this will save you having to do these verifications in GDAX mentioned below.

Step 3 — Register on GDAX — Cryptocurrency Trading Platform with no fees

Sign in to GDAX in the same browser you are logged into Coinbase, as they share the same backends you already have an account with them. It’s free to transfer funds between your Coinbase and GDAX account.

1. Load funds into your GDAX account, do this by pressing Deposit and then selecting Coinbase Account, here you will see how many Euros you have available to deposit, screenshot here.
2. In the top left of GDAX you can select the trading pair you are interested in, i.e. Bitcoin to Euro (BTC/EUR), screenshot here.
3. The easy option is to make a Market Order, you simply enter the amount you want to spend for that trade and it instantly makes the trade for you. But GDAX take 0.3% commission for a Market Order, this is actually a small acceptable fee and it means your trade is instant. If you don’t want to pay that fee then you need to do the step below.
4. Make a Limit Order to not incur any fees. This step seems a bit tricky but I have included a video tutorial below and a screenshot here. What you need to do is in the ‘Limit Price’ field select the price you are willing to pay for a whole crypto coin, then in the ‘Amount’ field specify the number of coins or fractions of coins you want. Video tutorial below shows a quicker way of doing this.
5. Once you are done, you can withdraw your crypto coins and money from GDAX back into Coinbase.
6. Video Tutorial on GDAX Limit here

Step 4 — Withdrawing Your Money out of Coinbase back into your Bank (Fiat Currency).

You can simply press withdraw on the Euro Wallet and the Revolut payment method will display as an option. Remember to make sure you followed my trick when inserting the Revolut account which is (European IBAN with British Swift / BIC). Screenshot here.

My funds landed in my Revolut account in 3 working days, there is only a €0.15 fee no matter what the amount.

The reason we are using Revolut is to save on fees that your legacy bank will give you a rubbish currency exchange rate which is probably around 10% less than spot market rate. Once your funds are in Revolut you can transfer them back to your other accounts.