You can buy Siacoins easily with a debit card or, when using some fiat currencies, a bank account. This service is provided by Transak, a fiat-cryptocurrenty gateway service for cryptocurrency-related applications. Transak has partnered with Sia's developers to offer this service to community sites such as SiaSetup. We don't take any percentage from your transaction - all fees are from Transak.
Enter a receiving address from your Siacoin wallet and your email address below, and click Buy Siacoins to start the process. You'll have the chance to specify how many Siacoins you'd like to buy and see the current transaction fees in the next steps. You may also be required to submit KYC documentation. If you'd like, you can also click the button to use SiaSetup's wallet address if you'd like to donate to SiaSetup.
Your transaction is facilitated by Transak. SiaSetup does not sell Siacoins, and is unable to assist with transaction issues when using Transak. Please contact Transak at support@transak.com if you encounter any problems. SiaSetup has no access to your transaction data and is unable to help with troubleshooting transaction issues.
If you're looking for the cheapest option to acquire Siacoins and don't mind a few steps to do so, buying Bitcoins on Coinbase and then converting them to Siacoins is usually the best option. This section will walk you through buying Bitcoin on Coinbase with a debit card or bank account, and then once you've got your Bitcoins you can choose a conversion method and get them switched to Siacoins. Coinbase will be step one of a two-step process.
We'll walk you through signing up for Coinbase and buying Bitcoins below. The signup process is straightforward, but we'll cover it step-by-step anyway. You'll likely be required to provide KYC information during the signup process.
Coinbase is the primary place online to purchase Bitcoin with USD and other fiat currency. You'll need to sign up for an account before you can use Coinbase. Click here for the sign-up page.
Fill in the fields with your information, and click Create account to continue.
Next, you'll be asked to verify your email address. You should receive a confirmation email at the email address you just entered. Click the link in the confirmation email to verify your email address.
Then, you'll be asked to enter and verify a phone number. This number should be able to receive text messages so that you can verify it with a code texted to you. Enter a phone number, click Send Code, and enter the verification code when you receive it.
Finally, after jumping through all of those signup hoops, you should be ready to add a payment method.
Now that we've got a Coinbase account, we need to add a payment method. As mentioned previously, we can buy Bitcoin with debit cards and bank accounts or wire transfers. Debit card purchases give us Bitcoin instantly; other methods take a few days because we don't get our Bitcoins until Coinbase receives the funds from our bank.
You should be prompted to add a payment method - if not, click on the profile icon in the upper right corner of the Coinbase website, and then Settings > Payment methods > Link a New Account to add one.
Follow the instructions to add your payment method.
You can add a bank account by entering the name of your bank and signing in with your online banking credentials for your bank, or by providing your routing and account numbers. Signing in usually results in instant account verification; manual entry of your account requires you to wait for two small verification transactions to show up in your bank statement, and then you'll return to Coinbase and enter the amounts.
Adding a bank account will allow you to make bigger transactions with a lower fee, but bank transfers usually take a few days to complete so you may not get access to your Bitcoin until then.
Adding a debit card is straightforward - simply enter your card information and you'll be all set to go. Debit card transactions are processed instantly and you'll receive your Bitcoin right away, but the limits on how much Bitcoin you can buy are lower than bank account limits, and fees are higher for debit card transactions as well.
You may be asked to complete ID verification:
Coinbase is based in the United States, so like other financial institutions, Coinbase is required to follow certain financial laws and regulations. If you buy or sell over a certain amount of USD, Coinbase will ask you to upload your ID to verify your identity. Coinbase may also ask you to do this for other reasons, such as fraud prevention. Simply follow the steps to do so.
After you've finished adding a payment method, we're all set to buy some Bitcoin!
The hard work is done! Now we can actually buy some Bitcoin and get the process started. Click on the Trade button in the top right of the page, and you'll see a dialog box like the one on the left:
Make sure Bitcoin is selected to buy, as well as your preferred payment method. Enter how much Bitcoin you want to purchase in USD (or your local currency) - don't worry, you don't have to buy a whole Bitcoin! You can buy almost any dollar amount - note that Coinbase charges a small fee depending on your payment method, so if you want (for example) $100 USD worth of Bitcoin, you should enter something like $105 for the amount to purchase. Click Preview Buy when you're ready to see the purchase breakdown.
Coinbase will advise you of any fees, and show you the final total as seen on the right side of the image above. When you're ready to buy, click Buy now.
Hooray! Now we've got some Bitcoin! Well, maybe... if you purchased with a bank account, you may have to wait a few days to receive your Bitcoin. If you used a debit card, you'll have your Bitcoin right away. Once you actually have your Bitcoin, you can continue to the next step. If you need to wait for your Bitcoin, bookmark this page so you can pick up where you left off.
If you got your Bitcoin instantly, keep Coinbase open somewhere because we'll need it in the next few steps.
Now it's time to convert our Bitcoins to Siacoins. There are two ways to do this - both require signup and likely require KYC:
Select one of the options above for instructions on how to use it to convert your Bitcoins to Siacoins. While Coinbase has a conversion feature, as of August 2020 it does not support Siacoins, so it is not useful for the purposes of this guide.
Shapeshift is probably the easiest way to convert one type of cryptocurrency to another. You simply select two cryptocurrencies to swap, provide a wallet address for the new cryptocurrency, and send the original cryptocurrency you want to convert. However, sometimes Shapeshift is "out of stock" of a certain type of coin, like Siacoins. When this happens, you may not be able to use Shapeshift to get Siacoins.
You may want to quickly click here to visit Shapeshift.io before bothering to go through Step 1 and create an account, and make sure you can select Bitcoin under Deposit and Siacoin under Receive. If Siacoin shows as unavailable, you won't be able to use Shapeshift to get Siacoins right now, and can try Converting to Siacoins on Bittrex instead if you want to get Siacoins right now.
Below are instructions on how to use Shapeshift to convert Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency to Siacoins. Examples will be given using Coinbase as the source of your Bitcoins in case you just bought Bitcoin using the "Buy BTC on Coinbase" guide as step 1. If you're using another cryptocurrency, substitute the Coinbase instructions with your particular wallet and any relevant details like addresses and sending coins from your wallet.
At one time, you could use Shapeshift without an account, and you could simply swap coins by sending them to an address and getting them back at another. Unfortunately, with KYC regulations, this is no longer the case, and you must register for an account and provide identity details similar to Coinbase. We just did that once, though, so what's the big deal in doing it again, right?
Click here to go to Shapeshift's signup page, where you'll see a form to start setting up your account.
You'l receive an email so that you can verify your email address - find it and click Confirm Email.
After you create your account, Shapeshift may take you to a page about email verification - there's a link at the bottom to recheck your email verification status on that page which you can click after clicking the button in the confirmation email, or you can just click the link in the email and then log in again if needed. Either way, you'll end up in the account verification process, shown below.
Provide the requested information and click Next until the process is complete. Once you're done, Shapeshift will say your information has been received, and you'll be ready to convert your Bitcoin to Siacoins.
Now that you're all signed up, you can click the ShapeShift.io link at the top of the page to visit Shapeshift's conversion website. You'll see a box with two cryptocurrencies.
Select Bitcoin under Deposit, and Siacoin under Receive. If you're starting with another cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin, select it under the Deposit section instead - if you followed the Coinbase steps above, we bought Bitcoin so that's what we should select. Make sure you click and select something for both Deposit and Receive, as the coins rotate automatically otherwise. The "Quick/Precise" setting can be left as-is. Click Continue to start the process.
Next, you'll be asked to provide a few addresses. Shapeshift needs to know where to send your Siacoins, and they also need to know where to return your Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrency) if your trade can't be completed for some reason.
Use your Siacoin wallet to get a receiving address for Shapeshift. In the Sia-UI, click on the Wallet tab, then the Receive tab along the top of the transaction list. Click on Generate New Address, and a new address will appear just below. Click the Copy button (the one furthest to the right) next to the address, and it will be copied to your clipboard. You can then paste it in as the Siacoin Address on Shapeshift.
If you used Coinbase above to buy Bitcoin, log into Coinbase and click on Portfolio at the top. Under "Your Assets", find Bitcoin and click on it. On the right side, click the Receive tab, and click the big blue button that says I understand. Use the address shown as your refund address in Shapeshift - you can click the icon to the right of the address to copy it, and paste it as the Bitcoin Refund address in Shapeshift. Setting this address ensures that if there's a problem with the conversion, you get your Bitcoins sent back to you on Coinbase.
If you used Coinbase, keep your Bitcoin portfolio/wallet page open - you'll need it in a minute to send your Bitcoin to Shapeshift. If you're using your own Bitcoin wallet or another cryptocurrency, use your wallet to generate a receiving address, and use that as the refund address in Shapeshift.
On Shapeshift, notice the "Deposit Min" and "Deposit Max" in the top section - the amount of Bitcoin we send has to be within these amounts. Unless you're trying to trade a huge amount of Bitcoin for Siacoins, this shouldn't be an issue, but just take note of the values and double-check. In our Coinbase example above, we bought about 0.01 BTC, so we'd be fine to exchange that entire amount for Siacoins based on our Shapeshift examples here.
The conversion rate of Bitcoin (or another cryptocurrency) to Siacoin is determined by Shapeshift, but in our experience the rate is usually very close to market averages and is pretty reasonable. Shapeshift also requires a small fee in order to facilitate this transaction, usually around 5-10 SC, which is a whole $0.01-$0.02 or so (as of this writing in August 2020) and not really significant.
Once you've got your addresses entered, check the box to agree to the terms. You can also select the slider to enable a reusable address, which will give you more time to complete your transaction and skip Steps 2 and 3 in this guide in the future. The upside to doing so is that it makes it easy to convert Bitcoin to Siacoins in the future (just repeat Step 4 below) and you have more time to complete your transaction, but the downside is that the conversion rate fluctuates every minute or so. If you don't turn on the resuable address option, you'll only have about two minutes to complete your transaction and send your Bitcoins, otherwise you'll have to start the process for Step 2 and 3 over on Shapeshift - though you can use the same addresses you just created.
Once you're all set, click Start Transaction. If you didn't enable reusable address, you may want to read through Step 4 before clicking Start Transaction so that you're prepared to send your Bitcoins ASAP before the Shapeshift order expires.
Now it's time to send our Bitcoins and get our Siacoins! You'll see an order screen like this one:
You'll need to send your Bitcoins (or other cryptocurrency) to the address shown under Send to this address. If you used Coinbase to buy Bitcoin, we just opened your Bitcoin portfolio there a second ago - if you closed it, click on Portfolio at the top of Coinbase, then under "Your Assets", find Bitcoin and click on it. Instead of the Receive tab, now we'll be using the Send tab on the right side to send our Bitcoins. Enter the amount you want to send to Shapeshift, or click Send All to send everything, and paste the "Send to" address from Shapeshift into the "To" field. Double-check the address even if you copy and paste it! Once everything looks good to you, click Send, and confirm the transaction if asked.
If you used another cryptocurrency, use your wallet to send your coins to the address Shapeshift gave you. Like before, make sure you copy the address correctly! If you send Bitcoins or another cryptocurrency to the wrong address, they're probably gone and you're probably not getting them back.
Once your Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency is sent, watch your Shapeshift order page - your order should normally be filled within 10-20 minutes. Eventually you'll see your Siacoins show up in your Sia-UI, in the Wallet tab! Remember that blockchain transactions take about 10 minutes to confirm, so the total process may take between half an hour to an hour to complete. If there's a problem and your trade can't be completed, your Bitcoins (or other cryptocurrency) should be returned to your return address on Coinbase and you can try again later.
Congratulations! Now you've got some Siacoins! You can now start Renting on Sia, Hosting on Sia, Using Sia Skynet, or you can just admire them for a while! If you found this guide helpful and you're feeling generous, you can also support SiaSetup by throwing us a little Bitcoin or Siacoin.
You can use a cryptocurrency exchange such as Bittrex to convert your Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency into Siacoins (or trade between many other cryptocurrencies). Using Bittrex may make more sense if you plan to become more involved in cryptocurrency, and want the ability to convert between many different coins and set buy and sell orders similar to traditional stocks. While we won't cover every intricacy of Bittrex, we'll at least show you how to get your Bitcoins from Coinbase to Bittrex and buy Siacoins at the current market price. We'll use Coinbase as an example for moving Bitcoins to Bittrex in case you bought Bitcoin through Coinbase earlier in our tutorial, but if you're using another wallet or cryptocurrency, you can substitute your wallet and the appropriate steps for moving your crypto to Bittrex.
If you want to try converting Bitcoins to Siacoins using a somewhat simpler conversion service instead, see Converting to Siacoins on Shapeshift.
Account creation is essentially the same for every crypto-related finance website which gathers KYC data. We won't walk you through Bittrex in detail, as the process is self-explanatory if you can follow directions. See the tabs for using Coinbase and Shapeshift if you want to know what to expect.
Click here to go to Bittrex's signup page, where you'll see a form to start setting up your account.
Follow the directions and provide the required information in order to complete your account setup, verify your email, and provide your KYC identity verification. You can skip any steps related to funding your account for now - once your account is registered and verified, continue below.
Click on the Holdings link at the top right of the Bittrex website. You'll see a list of cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin (BTC) should be near the top of the list. You can also search for BTC in the Search box to narrow it down quicker. Make sure you're looking at Bitcoin, and not Bitcoin Cash or something else with Bitcoin in the name. You can also search for another cryptocurrency if you have something else and want to transfer it in.
Click on the Deposit link on the right side of the Bitcoin row, and you'll see a dialog box with a Bitcoin address.
You'll need to send your Bitcoins to the address shown here. If you used Coinbase to buy Bitcoin, log into Coinbase, click on Portfolio at the top of Coinbase, then under "Your Assets", find Bitcoin and click on it. Under the Send tab on the right side, we can send our Bitcoins. Enter the amount you want to send to Bittrex, or click Send All to send everything, and paste the Deposit address you just got from Bittrex into the "To" field. Double-check the address even if you copy and paste it! Once everything looks good to you, click Send, and confirm the transaction if asked.
If you used another cryptocurrency, use your wallet to send your coins to the address Bittrex gave you. Also make sure you selected your correct cryptocurrency in the Bittrex Holdings list - you shouldn't be able to anyway, but don't send anything like Ethereum to a Bitcoin address. Like before, make sure you copy addresses correctly! If you send Bitcoins or another cryptocurrency to the wrong address, they're probably gone and you're probably not getting them back.
Your deposit may take a while to show up in your Holdings on Bittrex. You can click the Deposits tab at the top of the Holdings page to view your pending deposits - your Bitcoin transfer will eventually show up here. Deposits on exchanges typically require several confirmations before they are released for you to use, so it may take an hour or so before you reach the required amount of confirmations and can actually do anything with your Bitcoin on Bittrex. Once your Bitcoin transfer is complete, it will show in your Available Balance on the Balances tab of the Holdings page.
Now we can go to the BTC-SC market and sell our Siacoins. We can get to this market by searching for SC in our Holdings / Balances, and clicking on the blue SC symbol to show the available Siacoin markets. If SC doesn't show up when you search for it, make sure the "Show zero balances" slider is enabled. We want to select BTC-SC, as we want to trade Bitcoin for Siacoin. Alternately, you can click here to go to the BTC-SC market on Bittrex.
And holy crap, we're presented with what looks like a ton of intimidating information:
As was mentioned at the beginning of this section, we're not going to teach you everything there is to know about Bittrex. We'll cover some basics though - there's just a lot of information being presented, but there's not much for us to do here. If you don't care about the details, you can skip to the "Setting a Buy Order" section below.
The current price of Siacoins (SC) as measured in Bitcoin (BTC) is shown at the top of the screen as the "Last price", as well as in the green box attached to the right side of the horizontal dotted line in the chart. Each bar (also called a candlestick) on the chart currently shows us 1 hour of SC price activity. Therefore, the numbers along the bottom of the graph are days, and each day has 24 bars. We can change the scale of this graph by clicking the "1h" in the upper left corner of the graph area and selecting another unit for our candlesticks. In our example, the SC price is hardly moving and is staying between 23 and 28 Satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin measurement) over the course of a week, as we can see by the scale on the right. If the price were more volatile, it might help us to change our scale to 15 minutes or so in order to see real-time changes in better detail, but we don't need to do this if we just want to buy some Siacoins at the current market rate.
All of the red and green numbers and bars at the bottom of the window are the order books. These are orders people current have set to buy and sell Siacoin. The people who want to buy are on the left in green, and the people who want to sell are on the right in red. Wherever these buy and sell prices meet, we end up with the current price. We can also see the recent trades, the price, and how many Siacoins were bought or sold in the lower right panel.
There's a ton more we could look at here, but all we care about is getting some Siacoins at the current price. That means the only thing on this page we really need to care about is the Buy box on the right.
To buy Siacoin at the current price, all we need to do is click Ask above the "Price" box, which will set our price to the lowest current price someone is selling at. Then, we either specify a quantity of SC we want to buy, or how much total BTC we want to spend on SC. Setting one will automatically calculate the other based on our set price. To make this easy, if we want to spend all of our available BTC to buy SC, we can just click the 100% box above the "Total plus fee" box and this will buy us as many SC as we can get for the current price with the BTC we have. So two clicks, and that's all we really need to set!
Click Place buy order, and we'll see a confirmation of our order. Note that in the screenshots above, we adjusted our quantity and final price lower so that our order wouldn't actually fill, and if it did, it wouldn't be for very many Siacoins. Your prices and quantities in the confirmation box will be the same as what you set using the Ask and 100% button, or manually. Your order will likely execute immediately unless SC prices are very volatile and the price is jumping a lot. You'll see a notification when your order fills. In the meantime, you can monitor your order at the bottom of the screen by clicking Open orders and Closed orders. Once your order is filled, it will show under "Closed orders" and you'll be ready to transfer your Siacoin to your Sia wallet using the next step.
If your order stays open for more than a few minutes, expand the section below for help.
Your order might get stuck if you didn't set a buy price high enough, or if Siacoin price is volatile and on the move, or if there's a big spread between the buying and selling prices. Click on "Order books" and your buy price should be highlighted in the list somewhere:
In the example above, we set our buy price low for demonstration purposes so that our order wouldn't actually go through. The current sell price was 25 Satoshis, but we set 16 Satoshis knowing it wouldn't sell. Therefore, our order got added to the order books under the 16 Satoshi level as shown above. This means that all the orders above ours, totaling 28 Bitcoins worth of orders (the "Agg. total" column), would have to sell before ours ever did. The price would also have to drop, and sellers would have to lower their prices for this to happen.
If you get stuck anywhere in the order book and you just want to buy Siacoins now at the current price, click on Open Orders and you should see your order:
Click on the Cancel button on the right side of the order row, and your order will be cancelled. You can then place another order with a higher price - follow the steps in the guide above to try again, and make sure you click the Ask button above the Price box before submitting your order.
Now that our order has filled and we've got some Siacoins, we can move them to our Sia wallet.
Click on Holdings at the top of the page to get back to our holdings. Find SC in the list, or search for it, and click on the Withdraw link to the right. We'll see a dialog to withdraw our Siacoins:
You'll need to get a receiving address from your Sia wallet, so open up your Sia-UI, click on the Wallet tab, then click the Receive tab along the top of the transaction list.
Click on Generate New Address, and a new address will appear just below. Click the Copy button (the one furthest to the right) next to the address, and it will be copied to your clipboard. You can then paste it in as the "Recipient's wallet address" on Bittrex.
Enter your withdrawal amount, which can be your entire available Siacoin balance on Bittrex, and Bittrex will show you the transaction fee related to sending your Siacoins to your wallet (usually insignificant, like 0.1 SC). When everything looks good, click Withdraw SC and your Siacoin will be on the way to your wallet! Remember that blockchain transactions take about 10 minutes to confirm, so it may take a few minutes to see your coins appear in your Sia wallet.
19 Mar 2021
3 min read
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