finance

Venturing into Cardano

Published · Updated · 4 min read

Cover image for “Venturing into Cardano”

This post was originally published on my old finance blog in February 2021. Transferred here as I am no longer maintaining that site.

Cardano (ADA) had been on my radar since the start of 2021. I had watched several videos on it and was genuinely interested in the thesis — that it could address some of the scalability and transaction cost problems that Ethereum was facing. I wanted to buy when it was in the $0.20 range.

I did not. By the time I actually pulled the trigger, it was at $0.42 — almost double where I had intended to buy. Classic.

But the more interesting part of this story is how complicated it was to actually buy Cardano from Singapore at the time.

The exchange problem

I already had a Coinhako account for buying Bitcoin and Ethereum. Cardano was not listed on Coinhako. I tried Crypto.com — they were not accepting new accounts from Singapore. I opened a Gemini account, but made the mistake of opening the local version, which also did not support Cardano.

Eventually I opened a Binance account — and made sure it was the international version, not Binance Singapore.

The process

With Coinhako and Gemini linked to my local bank accounts, and Binance reserved for crypto-to-crypto trading only, the flow to buy Cardano looked like this:

Step 1 — Transfer SGD to Coinhako or Gemini via local bank transfer

Step 2 — Buy Bitcoin on Coinhako or Gemini

Bitcoin purchase on exchange

Step 3 — Create a Bitcoin deposit address in Binance (Wallets → Deposit → BTC) and transfer the Bitcoin across

Step 4 — Convert Bitcoin to Cardano on Binance (Trades → Convert)

Converting BTC to ADA on Binance

Step 5 — Transfer Cardano to hardware wallet (BC Vault)

Cardano on BC Vault hardware wallet

There are almost certainly faster ways to do this. But this was the route I found that worked, and getting it off the exchange and onto a hardware wallet at the end felt like the right call for anything I intended to hold long term.

Bought at $0.42, sitting in cold storage. The plan is to hold.

This is not financial advice. Crypto is highly volatile. Please do your own research and only invest what you can afford to lose entirely.

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