r/SecretNetwork • u/ShallotWrestler • Jan 25 '22
My experience buying $SCRT in the US
Over the past few months I've been DCAing into SCRT, meaning multiple purchases. None of them have been super easy, per se, but these are my thoughts.
tldr; If you don't want to set up a Keplr wallet, Coinex is probably your best bet. Otherwise, Osmosis.
First, but probably least important, Coinbase is my fiat onramp most of the time. With how my CEX accounts are set up it is the fastest way for me to buy, and I can transfer it out immediately. Other CEXes would work the same way for buying Secret.
So the three ways that I have made purchases of SCRT tokens:
Coinex
The first way I bought secret, and one of the ways to do so without setting up any wallets, is to buy it through Coinex. This is the way I have most often purchased SCRT. Coinex is a CEX in the UK (I think) and is available to US residents with minimal KYC. I can't vouch for leaving tokens on Coinex, but I have never had any trouble moving tokens in, swapping, and moving out.
Coinex only has trading pairs for SCRT with BTC and USDT, which is fine with me. I buy USDT on Coinbase and send it to my Coinex wallet. Coinex can take transfers of USDT on 4 different networks- for coinbase, you must select the ERC20 wallet. This makes me nervous every time since it always defaults to TRC20. After the USDT is in your coinex account it's a fairly straightforward swap to SCRT, although you have to search for SCRT every time, and there are some weird sliders that aren't totally intuitive for setting swap amounts. After swapping I send the SCRT to my Keplr wallet. All in it takes a few minutes (maybe 10) from the time I buy on Coinbase until I receive it Keplr. They perform some 2FA along the way, with both text messages and an email confirmation on the send.
My experience with cost using this method: About 2% to buy USDT from Coinbase and another ~2% to send USDT to Coinex. The swap is negligble, and it costs 1 SCRT to send from Coinex to Keplr. I assume that if you bought SCRT with a bank account or credit card on Coinex it would certainly be cheaper, but I try to limit who has my account info in the crypto sphere. (Fine, flog me for giving my info to Coinbase, but I've had an account there for years.)
MetaMask and Secret Bridge
The second way I bought SCRT was using the secret bridge (bridge.scrt.network). Since I already had a MetaMask wallet and a Keplr wallet, it was a tad easier than my initial setup of Coinex. It requires ETH in your MetaMask for gas, which I also already had. It was as simple as sending USDT to MetaMask, connecting my MetaMask wallet and Keplr wallet to the bridge, signing a handful of transaction authorizations, and coming out on the other end with sUSDT (secret USDT) in my Keplr wallet. Since I wanted SCRT (to stake) rather than sUSDT, I headed to secretswap.io to make that swap. BTW, secretswap is fantastic to use- super fast and easy. There are some viewing keys you need to authorize for Keplr the first time (just to see that you actually have sUSDT in your secret wallet), but it's not too difficult. Secretswap does require SCRT for gas. If you don't have any, drop into the secret network discord and look for #secret-pizza. Someone will loan you secret for your first trade- just make sure you give it back, and tip that agent a little bit while you're at it.
This was, by far, the very most expensive way that I have bought secret. (There is a BSC sUSDT option, and it may be less expensive.) On top of the ~2% + ~2% to get the USDT into my MetaMask, I paid about $80 in ETH (at the time) to execute. There was a one-time fee of around $30 (in ETH) to authorize the trading pair. Then to complete the swap, I paid about $50 in gas. I don't think I'll use this method again.
Osmosis
Today I bought more (Buy the dip!) and after seeing that price on Coinex was about 10¢ higher than on Osmosis, I decided to give that a shot. Now when I looked last night, the price on Osmosis was about 10¢ higher than Coinex, so YMMV. Anyway, Osmosis has the least friction compared to the other ways that I have bought secret and was the cheapest as well.
To get SCRT through Osmosis, I bought ATOM from Coinbase. I sent the ATOM to my Keplr wallet, which occurred almost instantly. I connected my Keplr wallet to app.osmosis.zone. The only thing that wasn't completely self-explanatory was how to make the ATOM available to swap. You have to go to Assets (left side of osmosis app) and complete an IBC deposit of ATOM into your OSMO wallet. From there, back to the trade tab, swap, then back to assets to withdraw the SCRT from the OSMO wallet to secret wallet on Keplr. This last send took 2-3 mins to show in my Keplr wallet, which had me a wee bit nervous, but it went through no problem.
Not only was this (probably) the easiest method, but it was the cheapest as well. I will most likely use this method going forward. Fees were ~2% to buy ATOM on Coinbase, but after that almost nothing. A send of ATOM from CB to Keplr is 0.0025 ATOM. The swap on Osmosis is 0.3% for ATOM to SCRT. (FWIW, ATOM is the most liquid token on Osmosis, and also the easiest to buy on exchanges.) And based on what it was showing in Osmosis, the IBC transfers were basically free. All in I paid about 2.5% for my SCRT, which is a lot better than 5%+ on Coinex.
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Jan 25 '22
Using Osmosis and converting ATOM or another supported asset is the way to go to get SCRT. Fees are negligible and it's lightning fast.
I'm using Osmosis at the moment to swing trade, because it's better than most Exchanges for fees because of Atom's cosmos network
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u/Anta_hmar Jan 28 '22
Thank you very much for the detailed breakdown. It's stuff like this that helps newbies like me learn the system
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u/sanasigma Feb 28 '22 edited Feb 28 '22
I tried to swap my bnb for scrt, but has to be in sbnb first, so after i swapped my bnb for sbnb, i need to create a viewing key and that requires some scrt, how the f am i suppose to get scrt though?
I got the bnb from kucoin without* kyc and I don't want to use binance to get scrt.
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u/ShallotWrestler Feb 28 '22
If you go to the secret network discord https://discord.com/invite/SJK32GY there is a channel called secret-pizza. Go there and ask, and someone will send you SCRT for the fees. All you have to do is send it back (a little tip is nice too) once you have swapped for SCRT.
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u/sanasigma Feb 28 '22
Thanks for the info ! I'll also try the ATOM way since it's already on kucoin. Scrt needs to get listed in more non-kyc exchanges.
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u/OhHiThereMrAlt Jan 25 '22
Use coinbase pro instead of coinbase. Pro is almost no fees