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Trading#

This guide will introduce you to how to buy and sell Siacoin and Siafund. While IT IS NOT MEANT AS FINANCIAL ADVICE, it will try to get you familiar with most of the knowledge that our contributors accumulated during the years spent in crypto world. Maybe it helps you to do better educated decisions instead of rushed ones.

Where to buy Siacoin (SC)?#

You can buy Siacoin on many exchanges. There are three options:

  • Buy SC with BTC, this is supported by majority of exchanges and is the simplest option if you have - BTC or can get some (on same, or different exchange)
  • Buy SC with ETH or other altcoins that your exchange offers in pair with SC
  • Buy SC with fiat (USD, EUR, etc.)

Not all of these options are available on all exchanges, but many exchanges offer them. You can find list of exchanges here. You can also check CoinMarketCap.

You can also visit the Sia discord and ask in #trading channel for help to get assistance from other users with up to date information. This might be especially useful for NY residents who have more complicated access to crypto due to their regulation.

Most of the recommended exchanges allow users to directly buy crypto for fiat currency. Some let you buy SC directly (for example Transak, but it is not an traditional exchange, it is fiat/crypto gateway), with others you need to buy BTC or ETH first and then trade it for SC.

Most often used exchanges by our english speaking community are Binance, Bittrex and Kraken and quite popular among Koreans seems to be Upbit.

If you decided what exchange you will use, continue with Getting Verified or skip directly to Market Orders.

Where to buy Siafund (SF)?#

Since there is not many Siafunds and they are rather expensive asset, they are quite illiquid and there is only few trades happening per year. This asset doesn’t change hands frequently.

One way to get these is by using Bisq, decentralized exchange. Other way is on official Sia discord where you can use Escrow to assist you. If you’re not sure, you can always ask there in #siafund channel and get help. However, be aware to never continue in conversation with someone who contains you first, even if he has picture and name of known person (like moderator or developer). These are scammers. You should always be the one who checks the user list and color (role on server cannot be faked) and initiates such discussion.

Remember that sending SF is same as sending SC. They can be sent in same transaction as SC since the Sia blockchain supports both of these tokens. If you get to own one, you need to pay extra attention when sending SC to not accidentally select SF because once you own SF, it will start appearing in your Sia-UI wallet (only wallet that supports it currently).

Getting Verified#

As vast majority of exchanges is regulated, so called KYC is required. It stands for Know Your Customer and exchanges are required by law to know your identity in order to provide you any service.

You will be asked to provide documents proving your identity like scans of ID and additional resources for the exchange to be sure it is not a fake person or an impostor. This step of guide is here to let you know this is standard and required procedure. Some Exchanges even have mobile apps that will make entire experience much simpler and user friendly for you.

Once verified, it is also great idea to enable 2-Factor-Authentication on the Exchange. You can usually select between SMS and Google Authenticator. And since there were many victims of attackers that called to user’s operator and got control of user’s phone number due to poor security of said operators, it is recommended to go with the Google Authenticator option.

It is also a good practice to securely store the seed used for the Google Authenticator’s code generator so you can get to it when needed in case you lost your device. To learn more about storing such values scurely check our Secure Seed Management guide.

Market Orders#

Markets are tools for discovery of the price. Market is a place where supply and demand meets and affects price of an asset. This is done by using so called orders. Many of these are made by people and even more by bots that balance the prices between different exchanges and markets. Whenever there is price move, there is an opportunity and this process is called arbitraging.

Whenever you want to buy, you create Buy Order. When you want to sell, you create Sell Order. There are multiple types of these such as Limit, Market.

There are also leveraged orders allowing you to trade with borrowed assets while you provide only part of it. For example, if the you buy with 10x leverage, you can easily double your assets if price moves up by 10% (100/10), but you can lose it all when it moves down by 10% as well. Such event is called forced liquidation and it means you lost your “bet”. Exchange automatically liquidates your position in order to pay back the asset you lost and return it to those who lended it to you through automated process. We do not recommend leverage trading, since you can easily lose everything.

Let’s focus on the most common orders. Limit orders let you specify conditions at which the order will be filled. Once you create such order, you will be able to see it in the order book where it will stay until someone fills it with counter-order with same price. This can happen instantly if such order already exists or it might not happen ever. Some orders can be not realistical and will never met with anyone to fill it.

If you are not sure, easiest way is to just use Market Buy Order or Market Sell Order. You just specify the amount you want and you will instantly buy or sell at best prices according to already existing orders.

Your coins will then appear in the Wallet section. If you want to know how to store, send and receive them, check our Siacoin Wallets guide.

Mistakes to avoid#

  • Don’t access exchange links from third party sources. Be aware that fake exchange links can appear even on google search as paid advertisement. Bookmark your exchange and use that. You can avoid this issue getting used to official mobile apps.
  • Never trust anyone and never talk about your crypto unless aware of consequences. You can become a target of social engineering.
  • When asked by anyone, think about it twice – if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t. Someone might contact you because he can’t get to his BTC and if you help him, he can split it with you. But there is always an catch. Don’t go for it. And if you ever got email from someone asking for ransom because he got access to your computer and made intimate photos, don’t trust it. It’s just smart spam hoping that someone will get afraid, get some BTC and send it to the scammer.
  • Don’t participate in so called pumps & dumps or get tricked to invest in so called shitcoins. Always try to look through the curtain, think about motivation of others. While Bitcoin and Sia are solid projects, not many others are. They are always looking for the next moron that drives the price higher – and then they dump it on you.
  • Be greedy when others are fearful, be fearful when others are greedy. How to understand this? Try to zoom out. If you see some asset just went through exponential growth and everyone, including your non-crypto friends and family talks about it with excitement, be careful and try to look for market indicators that professional traders use since the trend reversal or price correction might be imminent. This is called buying at the top and you can ask 2017 traders how did they feel about buying at $20,000. In long term it didn’t matter, but in short term you will panic and be devastated. Opposite of this is selling at the bottom. While this is not a financial advice, looking at the Siacoin market clearly shows 3 year long bear market and majority of traders is probably very fearful. Is this time to get greedy? Your call. We can only provide you with resources for project with the most advanced technology and best looking fundamentals in entire crypto space.

Written by: Danger & Covalent, Last Edit: April 14, 2021