The difficulties for newbies buying cryptocurrencies

![bitcoin.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmWEsPLU2osyW62k4JDG1PEaQRTmRd8GfWCPrW9UVYedZb/bitcoin.jpg) I am fairly new to the cryptocurrency world and only really got into it in June of this year when my brother setup a mining rig for me. He's been doing it for 2-3 years now so he's done well for himself so I wanted to get into it too. So in July, I decided to take the step of buying my first coins. I initially wanted to buy coins like Ether and Ripple but to my surprise, I found that there weren't many places that sell those in the country where I live - Brazil. In fact, most of the exchanges here only sell you bitcoin. ![Foxbit example.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQma2KSTvu9zfPnqodJMQtdUcXsSxNTurjSx72uqZxYKdCa/Foxbit%20example.jpg) You don't need to understand the Portuguese to see that they only have Bitcoin(BTC) listed. What makes it worse is that if you go to a website like coinmarketcap.com, the price on the exchange is much more than the price on coinmarketcap. ![coinmarketcap.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmegaiEPrEGmWCwTtribrUqYLMBRKiMMavrr8eRgJ7Grtw/coinmarketcap.jpg) Foxbit exchange - a large bitcoin exchange in Brazil ![foxbit price.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmccRQCgjaQsDAd6SY1CdAqkhiQouaxmh2mfekdTCtSbnG/foxbit%20price.jpg) The price difference is over R$2300 (about $720, £560) between what's stated on both. R$14,400 on coinmarketcap and R$16,700 on Foxbit. I know that when you buy bitcoin, you don't usually get the price stated on the coinmarketcap site, but a difference that big is just too much. You would have to wait for some time to make your money back for just buying the bitcoin or any other coin. So buying bitcoin or other coins isn't really viable in Brazil. Luckily for me, I come from London and have family there. So I was able to buy bitcoin there using a site like localbitcoins.com. In case you're wondering, the price isn't much cheaper for bitcoin in Brazil on that site either. It's R$300 cheaper on there. ![localbit bra.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmUYJSJ9gEQBLQESJJwErwkoXXtHyKDcfC1oSLKXLyGhQk/localbit%20bra.jpg) The good news for me was that bitcoin was significantly cheaper for me buying in pounds(£) than in Brazil. If you're lucky enough to live in the USA, you get even better prices. In all, I was paying £60-£80 more on buying bitcoin (around R$400) than the price stated on coinmarketcap. The only issue using a site like that is the sellers require a lot of pictures to verify your identity and sometimes make you write out stuff to prove it's you, which can be a hassle. The last thing you need to do before you can buy other coins is to put it on a decent exchange because localbitcoins doesn't deal with other coins like Ether or Ripple. There are a number of good ones but I prefer to use either Poloniex, Bitfinex (mainly for lending coins that I buy) or Bittrex. Once you've transferred it there, you can then finally start buying the other coins at decent prices. It is quite an effort to get to the point of buying the coins you want and in places like Brazil, it is just too expensive to be worth it in the short term, but if you're lucky like me and know someone you trust in a place where the price of bitcoin is good, then you can buy the coins you want at a good price. I hope you enjoyed reading this and let me know about your experiences buying cryptocurrencies! If you have time and enjoyed this, please up-vote.