How Bitcoin 101
Is it possible to buy Bitcoin in Canada with PayPal?
NO.
Coinbase claims Canadians and makes fiat withdrawals to Paypal. I’ however have not been able to get this to work. And based on what I have read on Reddit and Twitter — not many other Canadians have got PayPal to work either.
Interac e-Transfer in Canada and using a Canadian exchange to convert dollars to crypto is the easiest, fastest, lowest fee way that works with the banks in Canada. Wire transfers for larger amounts.
With so many apps to Buy Bitcoin in Canada, I wanted to compile the ratings and reviews for the most popular apps and exchanges.
This isn’t my opinion this is based on the numbers. The people love Wealthsimple.
I Googled every exchange app. Their app store rating and the number of reviews they have received.
You can decide for yourself which you think is the best app for cryptocurrency in Canada based on this data.
If you are Canadian and tried to use Coinbase, you will quickly realize it’s not as simple to use for us.
It’s hard to fund and deposit because Coinbase does not accept eTransfers. The Paypal withdraw featured didn’t work for me. Not all the coins listed on Coinbase are available to Canadians. For this reason, it is best to use a Canadian crypto exchange.
In my opinion, Newton is the most similar comparison to Coinbase for Canadians. Make instant deposits and withdrawals with eTransfer. The simple easy-to-use design makes buying/selling crypto simple.
Newton – Best all-around exchange. Low fees, easy to use, and lots of altcoins to buy and sell. It is recommended for beginners.
Buying Bitcoin with a Prepaid card in Canada is difficult and expensive. When I first started trying to buy crypto — I tried using a prepaid Visa to fund my account.
Ultimately I decided to use Interac eTransfer to fund my account because it’s faster, cheaper, and easier than using a Prepaid card.
Choosing the best crypto exchange between Newton vs NDAX will ultimately depend on a few factors. Mainly how much you want to buy/sell and if you want to trade or just buy and hold.
I have used both of these exchanges for more than two to three years now and this is what I would recommend and why:
Shakepay makes money on the spread between the price they buy and sell crypto to their customers. This spread rate is usually ~1 to 2%.
If you are trying to figure out which crypto exchange to sign-up for and you’ve got it narrowed down to Shakepay vs. Coinbase — The answer is Shakepay for funding/deposits with a Canadian bank account and Coinbase for trading and altcoins.
I’ve used both these platforms and apps for a couple of years. I also live in Canada.
Basically, as a Candian, the easiest, fastest way to fund a crypto exchange account with $ dollars is with Interac e-Transfer. Coinbase doesn’t offer this option to fund your account.
Shakepay only offers Bitcoin and Ethereum compared to Coinbase, where you can choose from 100+ altcoins.
You can still sign up and verify your account on Coinbase as a Canadian — it is just easier to fund and withdraw crypto for a majority of people using Shakepay and eTransfer.
PercentagesCalculators.com is a website I use to calculate my percentage increases and decreases on my crypto trades. It puts the math calculation in a more human-readable format that I find is easier than doing the math… because I don’t know how.
Launch TxStreet.com and watch a Bitcoin and Ethereum live transaction visualizer. Every tx is a person, and they fill up buses that represent blocks on the blockchain. It shows the block times and fees for the blocks.