Is it Easy to Start with Bitcoin in Australia?

It’s 2020 and Bitcoin is easier than ever to purchase in Australia.
You can easily grab what you need and start your crypto journey in no time at all.

To get started, you will first need a place to store your Bitcoin (BTC). If you are unfamiliar with Bitcoin wallets take a look at our Australian Crypto Wallet Guide.

If you are new to Bitcoin wallets – think of a Bitcoin wallet as an online bank account for your Bitcoin. Just be sure to take precautions as you are now essentially your own bank, so it is your full responsibility to store and safeguards your digital assets.

The good news is that Bitcoin wallets are incredibly easy to set up – so don’t stress, kick back and follow our guide to learn how to get started in the exciting world of Bitcoin.

How to buy Bitcoin in Australia

To buy Bitcoin in Australia, you need to sign up with a reputable Bitcoin exchange or Bitcoin Brokerage.

Exchanges are great for the ‘day trader’ but let’s keep it simple. For someone just entering the scene we just need a simple path without any unnecessary stress.

Taking this into consideration, when buying Bitcoin we highly recommend using the friendly locals at Easy Crypto Australia.

How to buy Bitcoin in Australia with Easy Crypto

Simply go to easycrypto.ai/au and create a free account, and within minutes you’ll be all green to buy Bitcoin and get your Bitcoin adventure underway! ₿

Need more convincing? … Maybe you’ve tried your luck googling “buy bitcoin Australia” or “buy Crypto Australia”, and you’ve been overwhelmed by the search results. Perhaps it all seems too hard and you’re starting to think you just might not bother. No one would blame you. The world of bitcoin and cryptocurrency is an intimidating ether. To start with, the nature of the technology behind the currency mining process is complex to understand.

Equally, the somewhat “cloak and dagger” beginnings of bitcoin, with its infamous inventor Satoshi Nakamoto and his white paper explaining how bitcoin works, as well as bitcoin’s association with the Dark Web and now-defunct Silk Road, could understandably turn off the more conservative of potential investors. But such concerns are unfounded. As will be described, the process to buy crypto Australia can be straightforward with the help of those with know-how.

That’s all it takes for you to enter the world of cryptocurrency. Sure, from afar, if you listen to mainstream media that dissuade you from purchasing Bitcoin, you might have some reservations about the security and cost of entering the crypto market. However, with the help of an exchange provider like Easy Crypto Australia, the process is smart, simple and safe. Make your bitcoin adventure fun and exciting, just as it should be.

The post How to start with Bitcoin in Australia appeared first on Easy Crypto.

And even better news, we don’t charge any fees on this!

With our new crypto-to-crypto exchange feature, you can now directly exchange cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin into other cryptos like Ethereum – sent directly to your wallet of choice. 

Instead of having to use an international exchange (or an expensive wallet) to convert your coins into others, Easy Crypto is here to help you with everything from buying, selling, tracking and now exchanging your cryptocurrency assets. We have your back!

How To Use ECAU’s Crypto Swapper

To showcase our Crypto Swapper feature, as an example we’ll run you through converting Ethereum into Bitcoin. This is just ETH and BTC though, you have the option to convert between 150+ of our listed currencies.

Your first step is to head to our crypto swapper page, insert the coins and amount you want to swap and provide us with your wallet address.

As soon as the swap is completed on our end, your new coins will be sent directly to your wallet of choice – typically within under 10 minutes of creating your trade.

You can also easily summon any address saved in your address book!

Once you’ve entered in those details, your next step is to simply click ‘Create swap’.

Once you’ve done that you’ll be prompted to send the crypto you’re swapping over to us to complete the transaction. 

Just copy the send address into your wallet and send away!

After that, head on over to your My Account/Orders page to see the order. 

It will appear just like any of your other orders.

Under ‘Order Type’ you will see ‘Swap’ which will identify this is the one. And then we wait…

And BANG. You’ll see that under status this has changed to ‘completed’, and your new coins will be sent to your wallet within about 15 minutes.

Don’t forget to reach out to the team if you ever get stuck creating a swap order and we hope this makes life a lot easier for everyone out there!

The post You Can Now Exchange Between Cryptocurrencies! appeared first on Easy Crypto.

Kicking off May saw an explosive 30% increase in Bitcoin’s price in the 7 days lead up to the Bitcoin Halving, which took place on the 11th of May 2020.

Bitcoin’s fruitful price gains would come to a close with a sharp -13% price correction on the day of the halving – sobering up the markets while offering an opportunistic price entry point for new Bitcoin investors.

Those who invested during this dip would enjoy 17.24% BTC price gains until the end of May, stimulating the altcoin market while drawing major headlines from international media outlets. 

Thanks to this surge in interest, the search term ‘Bitcoin’ on Google reached a 10 month high, further fueling confidence and bullish outlook across the crypto markets. 

Key market updates over May:

• Tether overtook XRP to become the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.
• One of Bitcoin’s first wallets made its first outbound transaction ever – with an encrypted message attached calling out Bitcoin SV founder Craig S Wright as a fraud.
• The global cryptocurrency community has enjoyed relative prosperity compared to traditional markets, acting as an independent yet volatile safe-haven asset class.
• Former Bitcoin critic JP Morgan & Chase bank has performed a 180° on their Bitcoin stance – now stating that Bitcoin is ‘Significantly Undervalued’.
• Facebook’s Libra Cryptocurrency has rebranded to ‘Novi’ – and has hired a new CEO to take lead of the landmark project.

With all this action and more, the cryptocurrency markets have made significant progress over May – and have demonstrated yet again just how fast things can change in 4 short weeks. 

The May 2020 Bitcoin Halving – Mission Passed!

On the 12th of May, the highly anticipated 2020 Bitcoin halving executed, and the block reward for the Bitcoin miners reduced from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC per block reward.

The May 2020 Bitcoin halving was the third Bitcoin Halving in history, with previous halvings taking place in 2012 and 2016.

Both previous halvings saw Bitcoin’s price enter fruitful bull runs in the months following both events – so now this time round there is a massive amount of hype surrounding if Bitcoin’s price will skyrocket in the next few months.

See our simple rundown of the 2020 Bitcoin halving to learn more.

Bitcoin – The Underdog Currency

Since the day of Bitcoin’s inception, there has been no shortage of crypto critics and cynics, seeing an endless stream of entities falsely claiming Bitcoin is dead’, ‘worthless’, ‘a scam’, or even ‘rat poison squared’.

In the spirit of progress – here’s two iconic turnarounds that made waves in the cryptocurrency markets over May 2020.

JP Morgan & Chase Bank and Jamie Dimon Stance Flip on Bitcoin

Back in 2017 J.P. Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon made a statement calling out Bitcoin to be a “fraud” that global governments would “crush”.

Being one of America’s four largest banks, Jamie’s statements made influential waves in the traditional markets, making a substantial impact on the way the mainstream perceives cryptocurrency assets and alternative currencies.

In an unexpected turn of events, JP Morgan has revealed that they’re working on the world’s first bank-backed cryptocurrency. And as of May 12th, JP Morgan has revealed they’re providing banking services to Coinbase and Gemini – two of the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchanges!

Bitcoin Outlives First Website That Declared it Dead

Since its launch, Bitcoin has been wrongly proclaimed ‘dead’over 350+ times and counting by the media since 2009. Well, in an absolutely epic move – Bitcoin has officially outlived the first website that declared it as dead!

Boasting over 99.9% network uptime since its inception – Bitcoin continues to defy expectations and drive forward as the magic internet money of the future.

The post May 2020 Cryptocurrency Market Overview appeared first on Easy Crypto.

BITCOIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCY STATISTICS

As you can see on the X-Axis of this graph the number of Bitcoin transactions per quarter is increasing over time.  The Y-Axis of this chart shows each quarter from Q1 2016 – Q4 2019

In this graph, we take a look at the Bitcoin Blockchain size in megabytes over time quarterly.  As we can see the Bitcoin Blockchains total size increase is a perfect exponential uptrend.

Below’s graph represents Bitcoins market cap in U.S. Billion dollars quarterly between Q4 2013 and Q1 2020.

Here we can see the number of Bitcoins in circulation from Q4 2012 till the first quarter of 2020.  Currently, there are roughly 18.3 million Bitcoins in circulation worldwide.

Here we have statistical information on Bitcoin transaction times from Jan 18 through until Feb 2020 with the average time per transaction in minutes being roughly 11.

This Infographic represents the total number of active Crypto traders across the globe.  If this information is accurate that means roughly 1.3% of the total world’s population owns some Bitcoin or Cryptocurrency

Let’s take a look at some Bitcoin Mining statistics!

Current Bitcoin mining difficulty – 139,12,524,048,946

Current Hashrate – 115.014 E hash/s =18.12% in 24 hours

Profit made mining Bitcoin with 1THash/s in USD per day – $0.1329

Reward received per block in BTC – 12.50 + 13.79 BTC

Reward received per block in USD – $88,002.85 USD

Reward in BTC for the last 24hrs – 2,000 + 13.79 BTC

Reward in USD for the last 24hrs – $14,080,453,39 USD

Bitcoins left to be mined – 2,692,013.0

Percentage of Bitcoins issued – 87.182%

New Bitcoins created per day currently – 1,800 BTC

Slushpool has around 200k miners, this equates to 12% of the network hash rate.  Judging by these figures and guesstimating that other pools have numbers in this region we can safely say there is likely to be over 1 million unique individuals mining blocks on the Bitcoin network!

According to the mainstream media, Bitcoin has died 380+ times in its 11-year reign

On May 22nd, 2010 Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC (USD 41) at the time of purchase for two Papa John’s delicious (I hope) Pizzas.  Today worth a staggering AUD 105,832,500

To commemorate the occasion May 22nd each year is celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day and many pizza joint’s worldwide give discounts on the day

When WikiLeaks banking was blocked by the US government in October 2017, Julian Assange tweeted thanking the government for forcing them to invest in Bitcoin with fantastic results!
50,000% return!

More fun Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin statistics coming soon…

The post Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Statistics appeared first on Easy Crypto.

The largest media story of 2019 hands down must go to the Facebook announcement of its own Digital Currency named Libra.  When news of this story broke, bitcoin and the crypto market in general hit a 2019 all time high.  However, after the initial hype died down, regulators began to pour cold water on the idea.  There was significant push back from traditional currency sectors and in turn a significant amount of supporting companies began to withdraw support.  Regardless of this Zuckerburg said they will keep moving forward with Libra.  Time will tell whether Facebook will get Libra over the line.

2. Craig Wright and the Satoshi Nakomoto Saga

Probably the biggest crypto feud of 2019 is the claim from Craig Wright that he is the real ‘Satoshi Nakomoto’.  For those not aware, Wright is the driving force behind Bitcoin SV, a fork of Bitcoin cash which he claims follows the true vision of Bitcoin.  Wright spent most of 2019 fighting on multiple fronts.  This included legal appearances, attacks on social media, and the delisting of Bitcoin SV from some of the largest exchanges in the world.  In a very awkward public encounter with the creator of the HEX cryptocurrency, Wright was publicly questioned about his claims, which made for an interesting video which has since gone viral.

3. Growth of the Lightning Network

The Lightning Network is a ‘Layer 2’ payment protocol that utilises Bitcoins smart contract system to create an ‘off-chain’ payment system, which is perfect for extremely fast point of sale purchases, tips and transactions.  A ‘Bitcoin Lightning Torch’ was started as a promotional test by the enthusiastic community.  This test started with one transaction of 100,000 satoshis, with each person receiving the transaction adding 10,000 of their own satoshis. It became so popular that even the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey became involved.

4. Trump Tweets about Bitcoin

In an unexpected communication, the US president weighed in with his thoughts on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency.  This was around the time Facebook had announced its Libra crypto, with president Donald Trump pouring cold water on the idea of an alternative currency and ensuring the world was aware of his pro US dollar stance.  Considering his position this was not a shock to anyone.

5. Ethereum Forks

The second most valuable cryptocurrency in the world has finally forked after a long period of discussion and preparation.  Ethereum officially completed its ‘Istanbul’ fork which improves the speed and efficiency of the Ethereum ecosystem.  Ether’s USD price grew on the back of this news, as well as rising against the BTC price.  At the helm of Ethereum is Vitalik Buterin, who lives and breathes blockchain. He has also become a phenomenon on twitter with in depth discussions on all things blockchain.

The post The big crypto moments of 2019 appeared first on Easy Crypto.

There are many exchanges in Australia where you can purchase Bitcoin.  Some are slow and cumbersome to verify with also some are very complicated.  Easycrypto.com.au is the fastest most user friendly onramp for buying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in Australia.

Who buys Bitcoin in Australia and why?

There is a range of people buying Bitcoin in Australia for a range of reasons but first let’s look at the global statistics:

• 9% of the total world’s population owns Bitcoin.
• 18% of 18 to 34 year olds own Bitcoin
• 12% aged 35 to 44 year olds own Bitcoin
• 4% for 45 to 54 year olds
• 4% for 55 to 64 year olds
• 65+ year olds coming in at a mere 1%

So looking at this data we can see Bitcoin is definitely a younger person’s game but also the more savvy mature audience is still prone to dabbling in and understanding the fantastic benefits to this new technology.

Now let’s take a look at where in Australia people who buy Bitcoin reside

• 29% are from New South Wales (NSW)
• 27% reside in Victoria (VIC)
• 24% live in Queensland (QLD)
• 8% are in Western Australia (WA)
• 6% are from South Australia (SA)
• 3% live in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT)
• 2% reside in the Northern Territory (NT)
• And just 1% of Australia’s Bitcoin owners live in Tasmania (TAS)

Interesting isn’t it?  Now delving deeper…

Of all the Australian Bitcoin holders, what percentage of Alt Coins do they own?

• Ethereum 17%
• Litecoin 9%
• Monero 6%
• Dash 5%
• Dogecoin 5%
• Any other of thousands of Alt Coins 8%

The post How to buy Bitcoin in Australia – Statistics on buying Bitcoin internationally and locally appeared first on Easy Crypto.

Bitcoin Growth Over the Past 11 Years

2008 was the year of Bitcoins inception in which the early pioneers like the unknown person or persons named Satoshi Nakamoto started implementing the new technology.  

Initially Bitcoin didn’t take off, but once people started to see it’s many use cases and potential it started becoming a force within a few years. Bitcoin, over the years since has had many highs and lows. Like any new emerging speculative market there has been some major setbacks, but Bitcoins recovery and battle-scarred endurance was there for all to see. In late 2017 when Bitcoin really started to make a rocket like move past all old all-time highs we saw google trend searches also skyrocket and Bitcoin became a real household name.

Come around to 2020, it is reported that 4.7% of Australians have used Bitcoin exchanges like Easy Crypto Australia to buy Bitcoin. By looking back the last 11 years of Bitcoin, it feels safe to say that the number of Australians buying Bitcoin will only to continue to increase. 

How Much Bitcoin Growth Can Expect in 2020?

At its peak, Bitcoins market cap grew to a staggering $320 Billion dollars and that is only Bitcoin not including the whole cryptocurrency market. $320 Billion is an absolute motza; Let’s compare that to the global stock market. The market cap of the global stock market was an incredible $70 Trillion Dollars. If we break that down mathematically Bitcoins market cap was a mere 0.005% of the global stock market’s market cap.

The potential for Bitcoin growth given the ever-increasing adoption of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in relation to the total global market cap is what drives many long term investors to throw their hard-earned cash into Bitcoin.  Even if we see 0.020% of the entire global market cap funnel into Bitcoin it will make Bitcoins market cap balloon to a staggering $1.28 Trillion dollars with an estimated single unit Bitcoin price of $80,000 USD.  This could easily be dwarfed however with some experts looking at a price closer to $1 million per Bitcoin in years to come.

How to Buy Bitcoin in Australia

Many Australians hear about Bitcoins potential as an international currency or digital store of value and immediately decide to buy Bitcoin. Actually doing so, on the other hand, can not always be easy.

That is where we, Easy Crypto Australia can help.

Easy Crypto Australia is your best choice to buy Bitcoin in Australia with Australian dollars for three key reasons:

• We typically have the best Bitcoin (BTC) prices in Australia
• You can glide through our automated verification and purchasing process and buy or sell Bitcoin in minutes after signing up.
• Our ordering process was built to be used by someone who is brand new to the Bitcoin world, so you won’t have any trouble getting started.

How to Buy Bitcoin in Australia through Easy Crypto

Your first step is to create a free Easy Crypto Account, which you can do in 30 seconds here: https://www.easycrypto.ai/au

Once you have created your account, your next step is to get it verified. Across the world, it is the standard on Bitcoin exchanges to verify your identity, and this is no different in Australia. All Australian Bitcoin exchanges are required to comply to local Australian laws surrounding the sales of Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency – but don’t worry – Your verification can be completed in minutes!

Now that your verification is complete, it’s time to buy your Bitcoin!

To see our full guide on how to buy Bitcoin using Easy Crypto Australia, click here. You shouldn’t need our guide though, our system is very easy!

The post Bitcoin Growth appeared first on Easy Crypto.

The Bitcoin market has been growing from strength to strength.  Today we will cover why Bitcoin is worth investing in for 2020 and beyond.

1. Regulation is bringing new investment

Bitcoin is becoming safer to invest in due to Governments looking to work with the digital currency rather than against it. The smartest world Governments have realised that there is a growing fintech industry sprouting up around this kind of technology, which is bringing investment and creating jobs. What this has lead to is regulation of the cryptocurrency industry; which breathes confidence into the market and breeds positive, investment-ready Bitcoin exchanges. This, in turn, helps grow community confidence and encourages more retail investors to enter the market. It also encourages larger institutions to confidently start to invest. Which bring us to point 2.

2. The worlds largest stock exchanges are getting on board

As the Bitcoin market matures (it has recently celebrated 11 years of existence) more and more large corporations are finding confidence in entering the fray. Some of the bigger names looking at offering investors exposure to Bitcoin and other crypto-assets include the Nasdaq and Intercontinental Exchange. Hedge funds (which are investment funds, that engage in speculative marketing using credit) are also large players in the cryptocurrency space. There are over 150 hedge funds currently engaged in crypto-based investment, with assets totalling over 1 billion dollars. 

3. Bitcoin adoption is continuing to expand

Although Bitcoin has only been around for 11 years, adoption is continuing at a rapid pace. Looking at statistics over the last 2 years, the number of Bitcoin wallets has exponentially increased and is not particularly related to the price of Bitcoin itself. Another strong indicator of continued growth is increased in trading volume in established ‘crypto countries’ as well as emerging economies. Many Australian Bitcoin supporters believe that there is a massive opportunity for developing nations to access financial services free of corruption and with a direct link to global markets. It is hoped that this would assist in the virtuous growth of individual wealth, free of political factors.

For more information on why Bitcoin looks set to for more growth, see our rundown here.

4. Bitcoin is not static

Bitcoin is an ever-evolving technology. Although it is decentralised and is not under control of any one person or group of people, Bitcoin has an active community that contributes to its improvement. Bitcoin is an open-source project and anyone (with the requisite expertise) can assist in maintaining its code. However, changes to Bitcoin are usually very subtle, which gives it stability. If any change occurred that dramatically changed its fundamentals, this could have very negative effects. Its 11-year track record has stacked up very well so far and all the subtle improvements have helped Bitcoin enjoy relevance now, with the tools to adapt to an evolving future.

5. Bitcoin’s price and opportunity

If you are looking to invest in Bitcoin the good news is the market continues to have healthy liquidity. Historically Bitcoin has always surpassed its all-time highs after a price crash. The latest peak was in late 2017 and since that time there was a slow drop in prices. However, since mid-2019, the market has picked up considerably.  This has led to many opportunities for savvy Australian Bitcoin investors to make a profit in the growth and strength of the market.

How to Invest in Bitcoin in Australia

Buying Bitcoin in Australia is a lot easier than you may think, and here at Easy Crypto Australia you can buy bitcoin and have it delivered to your personal Bitcoin wallet in less than 3 minutes.

• Australian Bitcoin investors can generally expect to pay the best Bitcoin prices in Australia when buying Bitcoin through Easy Crypto.
• You can create and verify your account in less than 4 minutes, and be fully in the green for buying and selling Bitcoin.
• We offer upwards of 42 cryptocurrencies for instant trading and we’re always adding more.

Click here to see our guide on how to buy Bitcoin in Australia with Easy Crypto today.

The post Top 5 reasons why Bitcoin is worth investing in 2020 appeared first on Easy Crypto.

Are there actual Bitcoin coins? as in… are there physical Bitcoins I can buy and hold in my hand?

The short answer is No.  Yes, there are coins that represent Bitcoins and in the past, these coins have had a real tangible amount of bitcoin encrypted onto them which I will explain as we delve deeper.  So when people ask me what a Bitcoin looks like, I explain to them that it looks like multiple things all of which look nothing like a coin at all. 

Bitcoin looks like:

1. Bitcoin looks like the lines and lines of code it uses to operate
2. Bitcoin looks like encryption
3. Bitcoin looks like cryptography
4. Bitcoin looks like automated functioning parameters
5. Bitcoin looks like maths and equations being transformed at a rapid pace and much more

Bitcoin to me is like electricity.  It is there but you can’t see it.  It is fluid and can be digitally transferred from wallet address to wallet address.  It can be calculated and proven to exist but it cannot be physically touched or seen.  Now at the start, I mentioned some coins can be stamped as Bitcoins and represent what people think of as a physical Bitcoin. 

Although these exist they are simply coins with an encrypted Bitcoin address stamped onto them.  The actual Bitcoin has been transferred to that address to give it the value stamped on it.  This is purely for show as it’s the Bitcoin address stamped onto the coin that holds the Bitcoin value, not the Bitcoin itself.  There are some coins with no addresses on them and are simply for show, so beware!  You can hold Bitcoin in a paper wallet, desktop wallet, mobile wallet, hardware wallet or exchange wallet.  All of which have their pros and cons.

In summary, Bitcoin is a virtual currency, not a physical coin.  It is stored in a bitcoin address which is embedded into a digital wallet.  This wallet has a public key for receiving transactions and a private key for sending Bitcoin to other wallets.

The post What does a Bitcoin look like? appeared first on Easy Crypto.

One Satoshi is equivalent to 0.00000001 of a whole Bitcoin. This is 8 decimal digits. This is the smallest denomination the system can currently handle.  There is also quite a list of different denominations. For that reason I will not name them all but I will list some so we get the idea.

Name of unit – Abbreviation – Amount of Bitcoins

• Mega-Bitcoin – MBTC – 1,000,000 whole Bitcoins
• Kilo-Bitcoin – kBTC – 1,000 whole Bitcoins
• Hecto-Bitcoin – hBTC – 100 whole Bitcoins
• Deca-Bitcoin – daBTC – 10 whole Bitcoins
• Bitcoin – BTC – 1 whole Bitcoin or 100 million Satoshi’s
• Deci-Bitcoin – dBTC – 0.1 of a Bitcoin or 10 million Satoshi’s
• Centi-Bitcoin – cBTC – 0.01 of a Bitcoin or 1 million Satoshi’s
• Milli-Bitcoin – mBTC – 0.001 of a Bitcoin or 100,000 Satoshi’s
• Micro-Bitcoin – μBTC – 0.000001 of a Bitcoin or 100 Satoshi’s
• Satoshi – Sat – 0.00000001 of a Bitcoin or 1 Satoshi

Bitcoin is not infinite.  There is a limit. The limit is 21 million Bitcoins.  So although the above numbers seem a little crazy and useless there is method to the madness.  Let’s look at this simple equation to see why these numbers are required.

Earth’s population as of 2017 was 7.53 billion.  The total amount of Bitcoin that will be in circulation by the year 2140 will be 21 million.  If you divide these two numbers you come to an answer of 358.5714285714286. Or roughly 1 Bitcoin for every 358 people.  This is not taking into account that 30 to 50% of the current coins in circulation are already lost due to a number of reasons including lost private keys and lost or broken hard-drives.  That means the total coins lost forever is somewhere between 2.56 million and 3.56 million. Then you have ‘Whales’ or owners of large quantities of Bitcoin who collectively own in excess of 5 million coins.  If we extrapolate these numbers and really think of the amount lost from now till the year 2140 you can see two things clearly. 1. is that a whole Bitcoin will be incredibly rare and 2. there is definitely a need for these smaller denominations.

The post Bitcoin Fractions appeared first on Easy Crypto.