Hi Hubski! I've been riding the ether wave happily as of late. I wrote this guide to send to some of my family members who were interested in buying some ether. I tried to make the process as easy as possible, which I think for my not-too-tech-savvy family members would involve first buying bitcoin with a credit card and then trading for ether.
I'd love some feedback on my instructions. It is better to just have them buy bitcoin with a credit card and then swap it at a place like shapeshift.io? I'm thinking they want it at an exchange so they can easily cash out later, so these instructions send them to Kraken. Too complicated?
Thanks
Mike
STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO BUYING ETHER
0. Decide how much you want to invest. Only use money you can afford to lose. A lot of folks think Ether is going to go way up, but you should be willing to accept the risk that it could go to zero.
1. Go here: https://blockchain.info/wallet/#/signup
2. Register, verify email address, and then buy bitcoin with a credit card. Maybe $100? $20? $5000? Doesn't matter, it can be as little or as much as you want to play with. The site takes a 2.9% transaction fee. It is the cost of money.
NOW YOU HAVE BITCOIN! Congratulations. Welcome to the future. Now you're going to trade it for ether.
3. Register at kraken.com. This is one of the best online trading sites. They deal in all kind of cryptocurrency. You can think of them as a bank where you can store money and cryptocurrency and trade freely between them.
4. In your Kraken account, click on "Get Verified" and upgrade from Tier 0 to Tier 1. Very easy to do, just some minimal information and no documentation to send. At Tier 1 you can trade cryptocurrency.
5. Now click on "Funding", then "Deposit", then pick Bitcoin (XBT) in the side menu.
6. Click on "Generate New Address". You will get a hexadecimal number. This is you address you will send Bitcoin to. Copy it to your clipboard.
7. Go back to your wallet on blockchain.info. Click on "SEND".
8. Paste in the address you got from Kraken. IMPORTANT: double- and triple-check the address. If it's not right, your money could dissappear!
9. Finish the sending process. You must now wait a little until the transaction clears. It might take 30 minutes.
10. Go back to Kraken, click on "Trade". Has your bitcoin arrived yet? Yes?...
Now you have bitcoin in an exchange and can trade for whatever you want. This next part is not all that intuitive...
11. In the top left corner is a dropdown menu to choose type of trade. Choose ETH/XBT. You will be trading bitcoin to get ether.
12. Click on "Trade". Find out how many bitcoin (XBT) you have and copy this amount.
13. Click on "New Order". "Simple" is the type of trade selected by default, that's fine.
14. The green button should be clicked to BUY.
15. In the first field, Amount, click on the dropdown meny and choose XBT. The text under should say "Amount of XBT to spend". Paste in the number of bitcoin (or fraction thereof) you have.
16. In the middle is a button for Market/Limit. Click on "Market". That says you will buy at market price. (You can instead set a limit which with automatically buy for you a price you set, so if the price comes down it buys automatically. I think. I've never actually done that.)
17. Click the big green button: BUY ETH WITH XBT. Complete the order. It will take a few minutes for the buy to take place.
Now you have ether! You can follow the price here: https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/eth/overview/USD
Your ether can live at Kraken for as long as you like. You can sell it for dollars whenever you want to, and then do a bank transfer to send money to your bank account.
It's actually safer to hold your ether in what is called a "paper wallet". If you get this far and want to do that I can talk you through it. http://myetherwallet.com is a great place to create secure wallets.
Just ask if you want help. Good luck!