Exchanges and Permission

An online exchange is one of the easiest ways to buy cryptocurrency. Some have limits to the amount you can purchase per day, but from what I’ve experienced the limits are high enough that I have never had to worry about reaching that cap.

The Downsides

Unfortunately, to purchase cryptocurrency on an exchange you will need a debit or credit card. So what are you to do if your particular bank blocks purchases on exchanges with your credit card? If you don’t know, banks including Capital One, Discover, Bank of America, TD Bank, J.P Morgan Chase, et al. are currently blocking purchasing of cryptocurrency with their credit cards.

Alternatives

Two major benefits of cryptocurrencies are that ownership and spending of coins is permissionless, meaning that all you need is knowledge of your private key. So how do you get into this permissionless space if your bank is preventing you from making the leap?

Cryptocurrency ATMs

Cryptocurrency ATMs have been around for a few years now. You might be led to think that these machines only exist in large, tech-centric cities like San Francisco or Tokyo. But, like me, you may be surprised to find on coinatmradar that the closest Cryptocurrency ATM might be in your very own suburban town.

In order to get cryptocurrencies out of an ATM you will need cash, sometimes a phone number, and your own wallet for the cryptocurrency you want to purchase. The phone number may be required for a simple text code confirmation, which is much less intrusive than some identification other exchanges ask you to provide. You will give the ATM your public key to your wallet to receive the funds, pay for it with cash, and walk away with your crypto stored safely on your own wallet. Keep checking the blog to see a new article coming soon that will detail the usage of Cryptocurrency ATMs.

Local Bitcoins

Local Bitcoins is a site where you can find other people or organizations willing to sell or purchase cryptocurrency in person. They have an informative video detailing the ins and outs of using their website to discover people you will want to trade with. I personally have no experience with this website, but I have often seen people in cryptocurrency forums recomend this to newcomers.

Faucets

You can even get small amounts of crypto from online faucets. We have articles on freebitco.in and the Moon Faucets if you want to take the slow and steady route that requires no investment. It may take you a while to stack up as many coins as you would like to own, but it is worth the time to collect these coins for free.

Mining

Mining non-ASIC resistant coins requires a big upfront investment for ASIC miners. But there are still plenty of ASIC resistant coins out there, such as XMR, that you can successfully mine with your GPU or CPU. I personally have a small XMR mining rig setup currently with just 2 AMD RX 480 GPUs. With this, I have actually been able to work with a pool to mine more than 1.5 XMR in just a few months of operation. If you are interested I will soon be making a guide on how to setup a computer to mine Monero and other such coins.

So there you have four different ways that you can get yourself some cryptocurrency without needing your bank to allow it. Some ways may cost more than others but they are all great learning experiences for the cryptocurrency space. With whatever method you choose you will learn so much about the markets and underlying support of these currencies.

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