How To Buy Cardano (ADA)
- Real Vision
- December 17, 2021
- 12:45 PM
Cardano currently ranks highly when it comes to market capitalization. Because of its popularity and market size, there are many places where Cardano’s token ADA can be bought and sold. Crypto exchanges like Binance, Coinbase Pro, Huobi, KuCoin, Kraken or Bithumb offer the option to trade ADA. There are also traditional fintech players like eToro and Revolut that have listed Cardano’s token. Since Cardano is not an Ethereum-based token, but a public blockchain on its own, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap, 1inch or SushiSwap don’t support ADA swaps.
Why Buy Cardano?
Cardano is surely one of the most popular public blockchain projects to date. Its founder, Charles Hoskinson, is a smart and well-connected guy. And Cardano itself already has some interesting partnerships. Input-Output Hong Kong (IOHK), one of the developing organizations behind Cardano, has teamed up with Wolfram Alpha, one of the world’s most prominent computational knowledge engines. Additionally, IOHK has partnered with the United Nations to help in fulfilling the latter’s development goals. At the same time, an Australian developer is aiming to build Cardano integrations with e-commerce, starting with Shopify.
So, there is already progress being made. Innovation is vibrant and competition intense. Some consider Cardano to have a disadvantage vis-à-vis Ethereum, because the latter has been around much longer and has already greatly profited from network effects. While Ethereum is certainly way ahead when it comes to smart contract dApps, the underlying blockchain infrastructure is just as much in development as Cardano’s. After all, Ethereum and its developer community is currently aiming at bootstrapping a whole new base layer infrastructure named Ethereum 2.0. In that sense, Cardano might not be that far behind.
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Where to buy cardano
ADA can be bought on several large crypto exchanges. The most liquid ones are Binance, Coinbase Pro, Huobi, KuCoin, Kraken or Bithumb. Interestingly, ADA is not listed on Coinbase (only Coinbase Pro), Bistamp or Upbit. On exchanges, where ADA is available, the token’s most used trading pairs are ADA against BTC, USDT, EUR, ETH or BNB. On Bithum, the Korean exchange, ADA can also be traded against Korean Won.
In the beginning it was mentioned that ADA cannot be bought through Ethereum’s most popular decentralized exchanges. While the actual ADA token cannot be bought, DEXs like Uniswap or 1inch offer a synthetic version of ADA called sADA. This is tokenized ADA on the Ethereum blockchain, a token that tracks the price of ADA as the underlying asset of sADA.
In order to buy ADA on one of these exchanges, an account is needed that requires basic identification, and if larger amounts are traded a complete verification. The process is straightforward and similar to that of an online brokerage. You will be asked to provide your information such as name, address, an official public document (passport) and a proof of address (utility bill). Usually, this process takes only a couple of minutes.
Once you have the documents submitted, it will take 1-2 business days for your account to be verified and fully operational. Be sure to enable 2-factor authorization and other safety features (such as delayed withdrawals) when opening the account. This ensures that unauthorized access to your account and funds is significantly more difficult.
How to store ADA safely
As with every token, ADA can be stored in the account one operates with a centralized crypto exchange. For tokens stored on the exchange itself, no extra transaction to an external wallet is needed. Obviously, this is a convenient way to store one’s ADA tokens, but it comes with a counterparty-risk. Should the exchange be hacked, go bankrupt or be fraudulent, ADA tokens might be lost.
Alternatively, ADA tokens can be stored in a personal wallet. If one does this, one effectively takes self-custody of the tokens. The most popular wallet in the Cardano ecosystem is the Daedalus wallet. It is open-source and focused on building and supporting the Cardano blockchain. At the same time, Cardano’s native token can also be stored with hardware wallet providers like Ledger or Trezor. Coming soon, Celsius Network will launch ADA deposits. Here, ADA can de facto be lent out and generate interest. Bear in mind that this comes with risk as your coins are being put to work by a borrower, who is at the risk of potential default.
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