These days it’s really easy to buy Bitcoin in South Africa.
We are so spoilt for choice that there is no reason why anyone doesn’t have at least R10 worth of the most popular cryptocurrency.
There are many South African based exchanges and some well established brands from abroad are making their presence felt in this country.
But the best way to own Bitcoin is through what is known as “self-custody” where you download a wallet and keep the “private keys” yourself.
A great way to get Bitcoin is to earn it and affiliate marketing is one way that I do so.
Buying on Exchange
Below you will find links to my favourite exchanges that I use regularly.
After you use the links provided to sign up for an account you need to verify your identity via the KYC (Know Your Client) process they have, you’re then you can fund your account with South African Rand via an EFT or instant payment.
Once you have bought your bitcoin on the exchange, you have the choice of keeping your bitcoins on the exchange (not recommended) or transferring them to an offline wallet possibly a hardware wallet.
Here are the exchanges you can buy bitcoin from.
VALR
VALR is the shitcoin casino that you didn’t know you needed or wanted. They have the most extensive collections of altcoins on their platform for you to buy.
This is great if you’d like to speculate on the DeFi market that really took off in 2020 or buy that obscure coin that you just found out about.
They’re cheap, the charge the least transaction fees and they pay YOU a maker fee if you add liquidity to the platform by placing limit orders.
The CEO, COO and social media team are very active on Twitter
Luno
Luno is one of the most liquid exchanges in South Africa.
Open an account, get verified, make a deposit with one of the big South African banks and you’re ready to buy bitcoin on their exchange.
After you sign up and buy or sell R500.00 or more (exchange excluded), you will receive R10.00 worth of Bitcoin.
Click here to buy bitcoin from Luno.
Binance
Binance is a very interesting company to buy bitcoin from. They make it easy for South Africans to buy with a credit or debit card and the process is normally instant.
If the other options above take too long, as regulation means they have to KYC (Know Your Client) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) process checks on you before allowing you to trade, then try Binance.
Coindirect
Coindirect is a new entrant into the market and is a unique place to buy and sell not only bitcoin but other cryptocurrencies as well (up to 40 coins).
Not only can you buy coins on the exchange, but you can buy or sell Over The Counter (OTC) so you can transact large amounts without impacting the price on exchange.
AltcoinTrader
As the name suggests, AltcoinTrader offers the most amount of altcoins from all the exchanges that we’re investigating here. I haven’t used them yet, so I can’t say how good they are.
Click here to buy bitcoin with AltcoinTrader.
Huobi
Huobi recently made a big deal about entering into the African market and even had a very complicated giveaway to attract more clients.
Very few of the people who saw my content could figure out how to enter, so I invested the rest of the funds I was given into bitcoin and giving out to those who can follow directions sufficiently to enter correctly.
https://harounkola.com/huobi/ for all the details.
Remitano
Remitano seems to be a African based peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange, similar to LocalBitcoins.
I haven’t investigated or used them at all. All that I know is that they pay affiliates 40% commission and a further 10% on a second tier.
Other ways to buy Bitcoin in South Africa
I don’t recommend you use these ways, especially if you’re a beginner, but they may be some times that you need to use another exchange or service to buy your bitcoin.
Spectrocoin
Spectrocoin – This is the way that I buy bitcoin from the payments that forex brokers make into my Skrill account. I pay a lot in fees, but since I don’t need to use the money immediately and am just hodling my bitcoin for the long term (unless I need the cash, then I simply sell on a local exchange.
You can also get a prepaid debit card with them, but I’m not sure how long this is going to last with many other services stopping the service outside of Europe.
Skrill
A few days ago, I also learned that Skrill also allows you to buy and sell various cryptocurrencies on their platform. I don’t see how one can withdraw the bitcoin you buy to an external wallet, so if you do buy from them, you’ll have to wait until it increases in value before you can exchange back to fiat and then withdraw.
Click here to buy crypto with Skrill.
Virwox – Buy bitcoin using PayPal. Once again, I haven’t used it yet, but theoretically you could use your PayPal funds to convert to their own currency from PayPal before converting to BTC.
That’s it for now. There’s also Coinbase, but I don’t recommend them as they’ve had a few phishing hacks and it seems too easy to bypass their sms based 2FA system. If I come across other ways to buy bitcoins from South Africa, I’ll update this post.
