How to buy Ether (Ethereum) with Bitcoin
At Luno, we’re banking on Bitcoin making it big one day (or continue to make it big). Enough so that we now exclusively take our trading revenue in Bitcoin.
That said, there has been a large amount of interest in Ethereum –an interesting alternative blockchain technology– from our users over the past few weeks. Ether, the currency, has shot up by over 1200% in the past few months with it now holding the position as the second biggest crypto-currency by market cap at around ~USD $1 billion (compared to Bitcoin’s ~USD $6.5 billion).
Reasons for price increase
There are many proposed reasons for the spike: their partnership with Microsoft, large international exchanges adding ether/bitcoin trading pairs, scaling debates (and delays) within the Bitcoin network, media-driven hype, and just a good old demand-driven spike, similar to the one we with Bitcoin back in 2013.
Our evaluation
We’ve been looking at Ethereum –and many other alternative blockchain solutions– and we continuously evaluate the landscape to see what alternative crypto-currencies or blockchain technologies has the largest probability of enabling the most growth.
We are still standing firmly behind Bitcoin.
How to buy Ether
Want to buy Ether? Well, do so!
Step one: Get a Luno account
Get your free Luno account and send us some verification documents.
Step two: Buy some Bitcoin
After you’ve made an online banking transfer to Luno (BitX), you’ll be able to buy Bitcoin in seconds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIkTtZCLnhw
Step three: Trade your Bitcoin for Ether
CoinMarketCap has an extensive list of exchanges that allow you to buy and sell Ether.
We’re not making any recommendations here; you’ll need to do your homework and decide on an exchange that works for your needs.
Future
Our vision is very clear: we want to make payments frictionless and universally accessible. Right now, we’re still convinced the shortest path to realise that vision is with Bitcoin.
We’ll keep monitoring the payment and crypto-currency landscape, keep listening to our customers and keep working hard with the community building the financial system of the future.