Blocktrades.us is one of the quickest and safest ways to buy or sell Steem. It is also the primary way through which you can buy Steem directly from your Steemit account page. So I have decided to do a review of them, after successfully purchasing some Steem a few minutes ago.
Review of Blocktrades
Intro
Blocktrades and Shapeshift are at the center of quick convertibility of altcoins. Blocktrades specifically focuses on Bitshare Assets, but since we use Steemit, it's also very good to buy sell Steem, Steem Dollar, or even buy Steem Power.
Now I am not entirely sure how Steem Power buy works, because I thought that it's non transferable, I hope somebody can answer that in the comments, but to buy or sell Steem and Steem Dollar it's very useful and very easy.
The Website
The website is very simple in the good sense, in this world of complexity people just want a simplicity. I am a big fan of simplicity and I love how simple it is, no registration, no nothing just enter your address and buy/sell instantly.
You can optionally sign up if you want but I don't think its necessary, so everything is just fast and smooth there.
The Steemit Interface
You can buy through Blocktrades via Steemit's built in interface, by just going to:
WALLET> STEEM OR STEEM POWER > DEPOSIT
As you can see I was interested in buying some Steem, it's a pretty simple and easy to use interface, I learned it in 10 seconds, so it's very newbie and user friendly.
My purchase then got finalized, and everything went smoothly. It took 1 confirmation for the transaction to finalize, which depends on Bitcoin, but in my case it was roughly 5 minutes I haven't measured it, and then the Steem got into my Wallet:
Costs
Well to my surprise Blocktrades actually has better liquidity for Steem than Shapeshift, which I just realized now:
- I bought 41.625 Steem for 0.006942 BTC = 0.000166775 STEEM/BTC price
- At the same time around 5867 Steem was 1 BTC at Shapeshift = 0.000170424 STEEM/BTC price
So trading Steem through Blocktrades is 2.14% cheaper than through Shapeshift.
Customer Support
I didn't have any problems with my transaction. It was smooth and without any complications. The best customer support is the one which you don't need to use, because things work fine.
So even though I had no need for customer support, I am sure they have a good customer support. But as I said, it's always better if things go smoothly, and they do!
Conclusion
I think it's the best way to platform Steem or Steem Dollar on currently. I think everybody loves simple platforms where you don't have to login or confirm e-mail or confirm phone number. It's just a masterpiece of simplicity and it's perfect for Steemit.
I will be using it in the future now that I have had my first experience with them. They are also present on Stemit at @blocktrades, and they are a big whale as it looks like with a 700,000$ account, so their commitment to Steemit is remarkable, and because of this I am sure they will continue to provide a great service to us all.
Upvote, ReSteem & 
Hi, when you purchase Steem Power from us, we transfer liquid Steem from our account to your account as Steem Power using the "transfer_to_vesting" command (available in Steem's command-line interface wallet). It's a convenience feature that eliminates the need to first purchase the Steem and then manually power it up as Steem Power.
Great suggestion!
Love it :)
Is blocktrades acceptable to use in the USA? I know we have to comply with rules made by the SEC.
Yes, it is ok to buy cryptocurrencies in the US. The SEC only has jurisdiction over securities. It's one of the reasons we don't offer a huge number of coins: we try to avoid any cryptocurrencies that we think might ultimately be classed as an unregistered security.
Dude, why did you flag Bad Luck Ned? It was original work with two templates for others to use as well. It had a couple very tame memes that couldn't possibly considered offensive. WTF dude?
@blocktrades I haven't received the SBD After the transaction is showing completed in blocktrades.us. Also the blocktrades given wrong transaction hash which is not visible on Steemd.com
here is an information about transaction :
Transaction State
Successfully Completed
Time (local)
2018‑05‑08 22:39:23
Input Amount
1.01897 LTC
Output Amount
53.441 SBD
Sent to Address
laconic
Input Address
Input deposit address: LgmyjBc2zxaGLGkLhX5Q4WRa4JAXeW13Ky
Input Transaction Hash
112cf371f050248b7d2d69d167efb433f18aeab6e4a8c77d62e097ac546afc4c
Input USD Equivalent
162.49
Output Transaction Hash
5d9ed42cd32bcde662502c328a7c79bf4bbc7835
Ok thank you for the reply. I'm still learning. A good post would be to educate people about how securities work in the USA
Hello sir.
I have problem to lost my steem
I never made a transaction selling steem
I've used blocktrades maybe a half dozen times now and it's always come through fast and effortless. After reading a recent post, I even used it last week to convert some SBD I'd accrued into Steem rather than using the internal feature that takes several days to make the conversion. I hadn't thought to do that before!
I've always bought straight to Steem Power. It's true you can't transfer SP without powering it down into Steem first. But the Steem and Steem Power in your account are essentially just different wallet addresses to my understanding. When you designate a Steem Power purchase in Blocktrades, you're really buying liquid Steem but just asking it be deposited directly into your SP balance. You could purchase Steem and then power it up on your wallet page, but this just saves a couple clicks if you know that's what you're planning on doing.
I see, i knew that SP was not tradeable after it's in SP, but I never thought that STEEM can be powered up from a different wallet into mine. I really have to download a software wallet to checkout how these addresses really work in Steem.
I'm not technically savvy enough to understand the background mechanics vs something like a bitcoin wallet... However, take a look at your wallet. If you go to your steem balance and select the power up option, you'll notice there is an advanced link that opens more options. In here you can actually select another account to send it to during the conversion. Again, you could just send the liquid steem, but it's a way of locking that receiving account into at least a bit of a vested time period as they'll need to power down to convert it for sale.
i concur, big fan of @blocktrades and have used it extensively myself.
Good posting. What I would like to see is the purchase of Steem directly with euros or dollars. It is a pain to have to buy Bitcoin as an intermediary currency.
ColdMonkey mines Gridcoin through generating BOINC computations for science...
Yes but that would cause regulatory problems. Just look at all the mess that is going on with Coinbase with the IRS incident.
Let's keep cryptocurrency as bureaucracy free as possible.
why ? https://steemit.com/steemit/@rublevoy/why-steemit-0-912-sbd-exchange-for-0-00012205-btc
Thanks for the review, i have a question : how they calculate fees ?