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. In this article I’m going to discuss the various ways that you can get your hands on your first Bitcoin.
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.
The best place to buy Bitcoin and send it to your own wallet is to use the services of Bitvice. you want to buy more than R20,000 of Bitcoin, then listen up because buying on an exchange is not the best place to do so and this is what you should do instead!
Buy Bitcoin The Right Way On BitVice
- Buy Bitcoin securely and receive it to your own wallet immediately.
- Self-custody your Bitcoin
- Buy at a competitive market rates and receive it directly to your own wallet.
- Refer and help others to buy Bitcoin and earn 0.25% in referral fees, paid in Bitcoin, for every order!
Protect your wealth against inflation by investing and holding a globalised, tested and deflationary asset.
Because I’m an authorised Adviser with BitVice I can help you open an account on their platform.
All you need to do is send me a WhatsApp to (082)561-4455 and introduce yourself to me. I will then request the info that’s needed.
The way that BitVice works is that after you’re been successfully FICAed on their platform, you will make an EFT deposit into their FNB bank account. The minimum amount is R20,000 (if you are buying less bitcoin than this, use the exchanges below)
They then do a single OTC transaction a day with all of the funds that they’ve received for the day and then they send your portion of bitcoin bought for the day directly to the address you specify in your account settings, they never hold your bitcoin and this is much safer (you don’t have to worry about the exchange disappearing, which has happened).
I will help you set up one of the self-hosted wallets to keep your wallet safe and teach you best practices to keep your Bitcoin secure.
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 on your favourite platform 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.
Once you have bought your bitcoin on the exchange, you have the choice of keeping your bitcoins in the exchange or transferring them to your personal offline wallet or doing whatever else you want to do.
Here are the exchanges you can buy bitcoin from.
VALR
VALR is like the Bittrex of South Africa. In fact, they may still have a partnership with that company to get liquidity for their more exotic coins. 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
The easiest way to buy bitcoin is from the exchanges and 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.
LocalBitcoins
LocalBitcoins is not an exchange.
Its a website that puts you in touch with other people in the similar area who want to buy or sell bitcoin. I haven’t used it before and the price is sometimes at a premium to the other exchanges or it could even be cheaper (if you find a good deal)
Click here to buy bitcoin with LocalBitcoins.
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.
