BitcoinZAR

FYI guys, IceCubed exchange has just recently revamped their whole exchange, and have included Ethereum, so now you can trade bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin there. If you are a miner, and want to get some Rand fast, you can exchange it for Rand on www.ice3x.com and then withdraw direct to your bank account.

A hardware wallet is great for security and convenience. A good alternative is a secure mobile phone wallet app, its just as convenient, and good ones are really secure. For bitcoin I highly recommend the Airbitz App, a really good, secure bitcoin wallet.

They just replied about my request for extra devices and shipping date: "Unfortunately we don't have any item left and more than 10,000 orders in the queue and we will not be able to send it earlier."

I have a bulk order for Ledger Nano S wallets which are hardware wallets that can do BTC and also ETH. The problem is with the distributors (Ledger Wallet) as they have a huge backlog of orders world wide. I placed an order at the end of April, and it is still in processing (even though I have paid for overnight courier). They say there is a minimum of 5 week delay on bulk orders. I have not advertised the wallets, as I dont have them yet, but it looks like they will be instantly sold as I have a waiting list going back to April for people who wanted them. I have asked if my order can be increased to accommodate demand, and also to find out when my order will be shipped, but there has been no response to emails since about 2 weeks ago.

LOL I have been very busy sorry....end of month is always manic, and the bitcoin price is a huge distraction

The idea is to buy low, sell high if you are trading....although that is easier said than done. Yes, when everyone is selling, that is often when I am trying to buy and pickup some 'discount' bitcoin Long term is where the real profit will be anyway, that is what I believe too.

If you would like, here is a much better explanation that goes into a lot more detail: https://www.bitcoinzar.co.za/how-much-does-bitcoin-cost-in-south-africa/

You should do some smaller buys over time, and get an average price for your bitcoin, less risky and at least you are in already if it goes up, and when it pulls back, top up some more. I have a Trezor wallet that can do bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, dash and zcash. I only have bitcoin on mine, so not 100% sure how it works with other currencies, but if it is the same, then I think you can use them all together. You use the wallet to store the keys securely, and the trezor website as the interface.

There are a bunch of different suppliers of such cards....one of the biggest and most popular is Wirex/Ecoin, which is one of the ones I did a post on here: https://www.bitcoinzar.co.za/bitcoin-debit-card/ I dont actually have one of those cards yet though, as I was away, and unable to receive it in the post. Another big company is Xapo.com, which is one of the more well known ones, and the xapo company itself is very well known in the bitcoin community. I do have one that I have been testing from Coinsbank.com, which I think is awesome. I got it last year before I went traveling, and found it to be amazing. I also did an advertorial post on Spectrocoin here: https://www.bitcoinzar.co.za/spectrocoin-bitcoin-debit-card/ which is well known, but I have not actually tested the card they sent me yet. It seems to me that most of these companies use the same card provider, so it probably does not really matter which one you use. What I have found is that some of the cards do work differently though. All the cards are either VISA or MasterCard debit cards, but its the way they work with bitcoin differs. Some of the cards are debit cards that are funded with bitcoin (Wirex / ecoin). That means that you deposit bitcoin, and the card is 'loaded' with USD / GBP / EUR, depending on what currency you have chosen when you signed up. When you fund the card with bitcoin, it uses the latest exchange rate to load the appropriate amount of USD / GBP / EUR onto the card. When you swipe the card here for Rand, it does the conversion and deducts the appropriate amount of currency from the card. I prefer the other type of card that works differently, maybe this is the kind marco79 is talking about. The card I use is linked to a bitcoin wallet, so only at the time I swipe the card for say R100, is the exchange rate calculated, and the appropriate amount of bitcoin taken from the wallet, and converted to Rand. With this type of card, my balance stays in bitcoin the whole time, so when the price of bitcoin goes up or down, the amount of USD I can spend from my balance goes up and down too. I think this is also the way the Xapo.com card works too, but I still have to get one to test. I have been using the coinsbank card linked to a bitcoin wallet for over a year now, and it works great for me. There are no fees for swiping the card, but if you try to withdraw cash at an ATM, the charges are high. I went all over S.E. Asia last year, using the bitcoin debit card most of the way because Standard bank shafted me shortly after I left the country. Even after pre-approving and double checking with the bank beforehand that nothing would go wrong, it was about a month and my credit card stopped working. I was unable to call from a mobile phone to S.A. to stay on hold and try to fix it, and the bitcoin debit card really saved me. So if I had to recommend cards, I would say the coinsbank.com card is amazing, and I think Xapo.com is basically the same card under a different name, and probably also the spectrocoin card. The wirex/ecoin card is different, and uses the other method as far as I know. What I have heard though is that they have a much better mobile app and better options / features, compared to the other providers. What is nice about having a bitcoin debit card, is that if you are getting paid in bitcoin, you can use it to fund your debit card, and use the card to basically spend bitcoin anywhere in the world that accepts VISA / Mastercard. The vendor just gets Rand or whatever currency they use as normal, they dont even know its a bitcoin card. So its a great way to spend bitcoin, which helps if you earn bitcoin but dont want to exchange it to Rand, and withdraw it to a bank account to be able to spend it on everyday things.

When you do a price check on Google, it simply takes the USD price, and then does a conversion on what that would be in Rand based on the current USD/ZAR exchange rate. Google is not going to any S.A. exchanges to look for the buy / sell prices or latest trade price. The bitcoin exchanges in S.A. dont price bitcoin on what the USD price is in Rand, it is based on supply and demand, like any market. So if there is very high demand for bitcoin locally, then the price will go up as traders will increase their prices. Doing a Google search for the price is a little misleading, kind of like when you do a Google conversion for USD to Rand, and then expect to get that rate at a bank when you exchange your USD, which wont happen.

Luno has a fee of 0.0002 for a bitcoin deposit or withdrawal. At a price of 24330 per bitcoin, that transfer fee cost you R4.86 if I am not mistaken (24330 x 0.0002 = 4.86). When you send bitcoin to someone, there is a transaction fee that gets included to include your transaction on the blockchain. Normally the fee is based on the size of the transaction in kb, not in $ value, so you could technically send bitcoin for $1milliion and pay the same as sending $10. Luno have the fee included, and it adjusts depending on the current fee price for bitcoin, but they do not make profit from it, so you probably just paid the minimum amount to have your transaction included in a block. Luno dont give you the option to set your own fees, but if you did, and set it as zero, your transaction would never be confirmed.

I prefer to watch the Luno charts on this website: https://cryptowat.ch/bitx/btczar You can set the chart to show 1m, 3m, 5m, 15m, 30m, 1hr, 2hr, 4hr, 6hr, 12hr, 1d, 3d, 1w depending on your preference

it is a fast moving market, risky business...this is why it is advisable to buy small amounts regularly, over a long period of time, instead of going 'all in' with one high volume trade.

Luno is good for trading. The wallet is good, but...in general its not good to store you bitcoin in a bitcoin exchange. The wallet they provide links to your account in the exchange, and you dont get the private keys, so while it is pretty secure...I personally store my bitcoin off their exchange and wallet.

I believe it will, and surpass it....when that will be, nobody knows. It might be this year, or in 5 years, but I think that the rate of new users increasing in bitcoin is a huge factor. There is an increase in financial uncertainty, and people are looking for ways to move and store money, out of the banks. This is a problem bitcoin solves. You can actually watch the price of bitcoin locally spike on bitcoin exchanges when big announcements are made about the Rand. As the Rand starts dropping, bitcoin surges. This is also happening world wide, especially in places like India, Venezuela, Brazil, China to name a few. Combine that demand growth, which has grown dramatically, and will continue to grow, with the daily production of bitcoin that is cut in half, every 4 years, and things get interesting. Today only 12.5 bitcoins are made every 10 minutes, and in 3 years time that will be cut to 6.25 every 10min. There has been a huge increase in value since the last 'halving' in 2016 from 25 bitcoins every 10min to 12.5. Just to recap those who dont know. There will never be more than 21 000 000 bitcoin, ever. As of right now, there are already 16,308,725 Every day 1,728 are created (12.5 every 10min), until the next halving, when that is cut in half. Current inflation rate is 3.94%, after the next halving, it will be 1.73%. So, my guess is that unless something happens and bitcoin fails, the price will far surpass 30k ZAR

Finding places that will take bitcoin for payment is still quite rare offline in S.A., but there are some places that do. Online I think all of payfast's customers (over 30k) have the option to accept bitcoin for payment, and get Rand into their bank account. So payfast customers never see the bitcoin, they just get the Rand as usual in their bank. If you are iching to spend your bitcoin, you could also get yourself a bitcoin debit card, which works like a normal VISA debit card in all stores that accept VISA, except that you fund it with your bitcoin. The merchant never sees the bitcoin, they take the payment and get Rand as usual and never know the difference. You on the other hand get to spend your bitcoin anywhere VISA / Mastercard is accepted in the real world, or even online. I used mine extensively while traveling overseas when Standard Bank decided to cut off my credit card while I was abroad. Being 12 hours ahead, and having to call S.A. to fix the problem was a no-go because, well, you know what its like trying to phone a bank. My bitcoin debit card on the other hand worked like a charm, and saved the day. Do you accept bitcoin for payment? We have a small business directory of people who accept bitcoin directly, so that is not via PayFast. If you will accept bitcoin for payment, then you can get a free listing for your business here: https://www.bitcoinzar.co.za/south-africa-bitcoin-business-directory/ Any businesses that accept bitcoin directly are welcome to get a free listing. Email [email protected] for details if you are keen.

No, you cant really earn interest on your bitcoin....kind of the same way as having some gold in your safe at home does not earn you interest in gold. There are many schemes that promise 'interest' if you just 'invest' your bitcoin with them....they are almost always scams, ponzi / pyramid / MLM schemes that ultimately crash and burn. Stay away from them.... Bitcoin is person to person, open source and decentralized. There is no bitcoin company, or person in charge that you can call to 'undo' a bitcoin transaction. Once you pay your bitcoin to an 'investment' website, or anyone in fact, that transaction is permanent. If the person or website you send bitcoin to as an investment fails to pay out, or just takes your money, there is not a hell of a lot you can do.

I am holding for the long term, and increasing my holdings whenever possible. I do use bitcoin whenever possible, and when I do that, I normally try to replace what I spent. If I need money for something important, I will dip into my bitcoin holdings to be able to spend what I need to. If bitcoin is going to be worth a lot in the future, just a small amount will be "enough"....so spending it now, and growing the bitcoin economy etc is not too much of a big deal for me, as long as I keep my main stash for that rainy day in the future Almost all altcoins are completely useless to holders, and overpriced because of that fact. Speculating on them is even more risky than bitcoin, and a huge gamble that can pay off big time, or ruin you. I stay away from them, I have been burned in the past, and learned my lesson. Its all fun and games until you get wiped out. Sure, on paper, and in the future, there are lots of things planned for a bunch of altcoins, but so far, they have no real value to me, and are basically useless to the people who hold them. Most people only have them for one reason, and that is to speculate and try to make money trading, which can end badly. At least I can and do use bitcoin regularly, and it is immediately useful to people who have it, while that is not really the case for almost all besides a handful of other crypto currencies.

We normally advise people NOT to get involved with bitcoin mining, especially cloud mining, because of the extremely high amount of scams and ponzi schemes, and new people really dont know enough to make a profit. I don't think it is a good idea to introduce even more risk to something that is already quite high risk, especially if you have very little knowledge of bitcoin, trading bitcoin, mining and crypto currency in general. The bitcoin price is extremely volatile, and most new users who start what they think is 'mining bitcoin', get taken for a ride. Most cloud mining is either not that profitable, or if it is very profitable, is either a ponzi scheme / scam, or the earnings are not all mining, but boosted by signing up other users to the scheme as joining fees, contract fees, mining pool fees or similar which are paid as an income to the introducer. Almost every time, the best bitcoin investment has been to simply buy bitcoin, and hold onto it as the price goes up over time. By doing that, you do not have to risk dodgy companies that might scam your, or schemes that might collapse. If they are legitimate, you also don't have to worry about mining difficulty increases or how long it will be before your profit dries up, and if you will break even. You dont have to worry about mining hardware failure, electricity prices and power failures, internet connectivity issues, or even where to put your miners and the noise they generate. On average the mining difficulty that changes every 2 weeks goes up about 4% compounding, so depending on what you pay for electricity, and maintenance, your profit will go to zero at some point. Most mining hardware has a lifespan of about 10 to 12 months before it stops making a profit. If the price of bitcoin is soaring, mining hardware and mining contracts can go for longer, as they are more profitable with the price increase. They mine less bitcoin because the difficulty is going up, but the bitcoin is worth more, so they are still profitable. Almost always, if you look at the amount you would spend on mining equipment, or cloud mining, and either bought bitcoin instead and just held onto it, you will have been in a better position to have just bought bitcoin. Your total amount of bitcoin mined would most of the time be less that the amount you started with because of the difficulty increases meaning you get less and less bitcoin for your mining. By continuously re-investing, many people simply kick the can to break even further down the road. Yes, you are making money if you convert the bitcoin to Rand and bitcoin has gone up in price, so you see profits, but if you had simply invested all that money in the beginning into bitcoin, most of the time you would have more bitcoin. If you just buy bitcoin and hold onto it, you can also trade it and exit the market quickly if you need to, like if the price is going down, to cut your losses and take profit. By investing in cloud mining and bitcoin mining equipment, your money is 'locked in', you cannot quickly get your money back. You are down in bitcoin or Rand until such time as you have got back ALL the bitcoin or Rand that you have invested in total, including ongoing running costs...until that time, you are at a loss, and only profit once you have exceeded and withdrawn more than you ever put in. @Dwaine van Vuuren - Maybe you have been very lucky and had very special conditions and the expertise to make it work for you, well done and good luck going forward, but for people new to bitcoin, I say "stay away".

It is wise to evaluate things properly...if you do want to get in, I would suggest doing it slow, maybe a small amount over time, averaging your cost, and reducing your risk. I personally find bitcoin fun. Its fun trading, its fun speculating, its fun learning about how it all works...I enjoy demonstrating it to people who only really see how cool it is when they try to use it.

Any other 'bitcoiners' use bitcoin during the recent Rand volatility? I personally stocked up when the rumors started about PG being axed by Zuma. Bitcoin went up, Rand went down, I came out great this time. I have traded back a % and taken profits, but am still holding onto some of the bitcoin I got yesterday as the price has still been rising.

When you setup and decent wallet these days, on your phone, a website, even a hardware one, you are given a random set of 12 or 24 words, which is the 'seed' used to generate your random wallet addresses. When you go through the installation process, you are instructed to write down each word. Keep that seed safe somewhere and if you ever need to restore your wallet, you can use the words as the seed in a new wallet, and your balance will be restored. When you open a mobile wallet to do a transaction on your phone, it also asks for your password which you set during the installation process. So if someone steals your phone, they cannot open the wallet to take your bitcoin without knowing your wallet password. Your phone can die, your wallet address will still work, just like if you turn off your computer, and someone can still send you email.

Hey, If bitcoin forks, the bitcoin unlimited version will be called BTU. If you have bitcoin already, you will have the same amount of bitcoin BTC and BTU when this split happens. Nobody knows for sure what the future price will be, but if it has a lot of hashing power behind it, BTU might be worth something.....or it could crash and burn. Since major exchanges have said that if bitcoin splits, they will continue to keep the core chain as BTC and the Unlmited chain will be BTU, I would guess that BTC will be worth more and more expensive, since it has already got years of infrastructure, backing, branding, and billions behind it in VC funding businesses working with bitcoin etc. But really...who knows for sure.

Hey, First install a secure mobile wallet on your phone. Some good ones are Airbitz, Mycelium wallet, Greenbits, or Breadwallet. If you have the Luno app on your phone, you can use that to easily send the bitcoin from your luno account to another mobile wallet Once you have a secure wallet installed and configured, you can usually press a link or button to receive bitcoin or a payment. When you do that, a bitcoin QR barcode will display on your phone, along with the bitcoin address. Any bitcoin that is sent to that address will arrive in your wallet on your phone. There is normally a button or link to copy the address, press that. If you are logged into a bitcoin exchange, you can choose to withdraw bitcoin, and then use the bitcoin address that was displayed to you on your phone. If you use the luno app, you can open that, choose to send bitcoin, and paste that address you copied from the mobile wallet into the address field you want to send bitcoin to. Now press send, and it will go from luno, to your mobile wallet. If you are not using the luno app, and are using a pc to access luno, things will be different getting the address of your secure mobile wallet onto your pc. You dont want to type your address out on a PC while reading it from your phone, because one wrong letter or number, or making a mistake with upper or lower case, can mean your bitcoin wont arrive in your wallet, and you wont be able to get it back. Depending on the exchange, when you choose to withdraw, you can choose to scan a QR code of the address you want to send to. If you are on a laptop, or have a webcam, you can hold up your QR code from your mobile app to your camera. It will scan, and get the address of the phone. You can now complete the withdraw from the exchange. If the exchange you are sending from does not have the option to scan a code using your webcam, you can scan it using a website like https://webqr.com/. Scan the code on your phone and it will display the address on your screen, which you can copy and paste into the exchange. If you dont have a webcam, you will need to get the address of your phone another way. Do not try to type it out, because of the risk of making a mistake. Maybe then you could choose to copy the address in the app by selecting 'copy', and then send it by email from your phone to yourself. I have even heard of people saving it to a text file on their phone, plugging their phone into their pc via a usb cable, then opening the text file from the pc, copying the address, and using that to send to on the exchange. Once you have the address on your pc, you can re-use the address anytime you want to send bitcoin to your mobile wallet, so save the address somewhere you can access it easily. So even if its a hassle the first time, you only ever have to do it once.

@JamesYellen No problem One thing people should try if they want to get into bitcoin, is to just get a bitcoin wallet setup in the meantime. Get a bitcoin address, and then instead of buying bitcoin, you can try getting someone to pay you in bitcoin. Why not have it as an alternative way that people can pay you? It costs you nothing, gives your customers another option when paying you, and gives you a way to get bitcoin without too much hassle. An easy way to start is to just install a mobile phone wallet, and get a bitcoin address you can hand out to people.