By: Ofir Beigel | Last update: 01/13/21
IOTA is a cryptocurrency that focuses on providing a currency for the machine economy (i.e. machines that pay each other for services). In the post below, I’ll give you a brief overview of IOTA technology and its currency, and explain where to buy it online.
How to buy IOTA Summary
How to buy IOTA:
- Get an IOTA Wallet (Ledger, Trinity)
- Find your IOTA address
- Find an IOTA exchange (Binance)
- Exchange Bitcoin for IOTA
- Pull your coins into your wallet
If Binance isn’t working for you, here are some additional purchase options:
* eToro users: 75% of retail CFD accounts lose money. Your capital is at risk
How to buy IOTA in a nutshell. If you want a more detailed explanation of what IOTA is and how to buy it, read on: I’ll cover the following:
- What is IOTA?
- How do I buy IOTA
- Conclusion
1. What is IOTA?
IOTA is a cryptocurrency that focuses on machine-to-machine payments. As such, it should be scalable, secure, and lightweight for any type of Internet of Things (IoT) device to use.
IOTA transactions are quick and easy thanks to a new IOTA model called “The Tangle”. Unlike Bitcoin’s traditional blockchain, IOTA only uses node-to-node verification, where miners invest energy to solve math problems and add new blocks of transactions.
Each node that wants to send a transaction must validate two unconfirmed transactions as payments. The more nodes there are in the system, the faster the transaction verification will be.
After all, IOTA uses quantum secure algorithms that protect itself from hacks from the most powerful computers imaginable.
IOTA’s currency is measured in Mega-IOTAs (or MIOTA for short). Note that when you see the IOTA price on an exchange or on a price ticker, it usually refers to MIOTA, even if the “M” is not there.
The total number of existing IOTAs is 2,779,530,283,277,761. All were created in the Genesis block and sold to IOTA ICO investors.
2. How do I buy IOTA?
Step 1 – Get an IOTA Wallet
There isn’t a huge range of wallets that support IOTA these days, so a lot of people keep it on exchanges. Many newbies who do not know the technical details exactly choose it.
However, this doesn’t mean that storing IOTA on an exchange is a good idea. It is best to use a hardware or software wallet and not risk your IOTA being lost or stolen.
General ledger (hardware wallet)
The Ledger Nano X and Ledger Nano S are hardware devices that allow you to safely and securely store IOTA offline. The Nano X also supports the use of a mobile app to send and receive funds.
Both devices can also accommodate a variety of additional cryptocurrencies. So this might be a good choice if you want to store additional coins other than IOTA. Here is my full review of the Ledger Nano X.
Trinity (software wallet)
Trinity is a dedicated IOTA wallet available for both desktop computers (Mac, Linux, Windows) and mobile devices (iOS, Android). This wallet is currently in public beta, which means it is unlikely to be bug free but appears to be well supported and documented.
IOTA GUI Client (software wallet)
The IOTA GUI client is a desktop wallet available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Setting up this wallet takes some work. When setting up, select “Light Nodes” and a host. Then generate an 81-digit starting value that contains only capital letters and the number 9. Keep this starting value in a safe place.
Here are instructions and comments from some Reddit users discussing how difficult it is to set up this wallet.
IOTA paper wallet
The IOTA paper wallet is great for offline storage without having to pay for a hardware wallet. This paper wallet requires creating a seed consisting of of 81 characters with capital letters and the number 9 (just like the desktop wallet).
After you’ve created the paper wallet, you can print it out and send IOTA to it. This paper wallet should be kept in a safe place for future use. Here is a video that explains the process:
Step 2 – Find an IOTA exchange
Buy IOTA through eToro
eToro is probably the easiest way to go if you want to invest in IOTA for speculative purposes only (i.e. you don’t need to have access to the actual IOTA coins). eToro is a trading platform with a focus on cryptocurrencies. It allows you to easily buy and sell IOTA for fiat (dollars, euros, etc.) with a wide variety of payment options.
If you choose eToro, you can skip steps 1 and 3. You don’t need an IOTA wallet as you cannot send your coins outside of eToros. You can read my full eToro review here.
Important – cryptocurrencies can fluctuate widely and are not suitable for all investors. Trading in cryptocurrencies is not monitored by any EU legal framework. So keep in mind that your capital is at risk.
Buy IOTA through Binance
With Binance you can buy IOTA against Bitcoin. If you need to access your coins or for some other reason you don’t like the eToro solution, this is probably your best possible choice for Binance.
Binance is exclusively a cryptocurrency exchange and only offers an IOTA / BTC trading pair. This means that you either have to buy bitcoin on Binance or deposit bitcoins from another location to exchange for IOTA. Binance also allows users to buy certain cryptos (but not IOTA) with a credit card, which makes it a very attractive solution.
You can read my full Binance review here.
Buy IOTA through Bitfinex
With Bitfinex you can purchase IOTA with BTC, USD, GBP, EUR, JPY and ETH. However, Bitfinex is no longer verifying US users, so those people will have to look for another option.
If you’re eligible to use Bitfinex, this option is probably the cheapest, but also the slowest way to buy IOTA, as you have to go through a full identity verification process and wait for your transfer to get to Bifinex.
You can read my full Bitfinex review here.
Step 3 – Unplug your IOTA
Once you’ve purchased your IOTA coins, it’s time to move them from exchange to the wallet you selected in Step 1. This ensures that only the coins are under your control. Make sure you can find your IOTA address in the selected IOTA wallet to request a withdrawal from the exchange.
While IOTA confirmations should theoretically take 2 milliseconds, in reality they usually take a few minutes.
3. Conclusion – The future of IOTA
With its great vision, IOTA aims to revolutionize the Internet of Things by merging microtransactions with no fees for all connected devices. Due to its smooth method of exchanging value, IOTA could well have a bright future ahead of it.
Anyone who wants to use early adopters status can still do so, as this project is still in its infancy. The only real downside to buying and storing IOTA is the lack of adequate wallets to support the coin.
In addition, the mobile web wallets are in beta, so the IOTA paper wallet or the Ledger Nano wallets are the best and easiest solution for long term owners.
Have you had any experience with IOTA? I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below.
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