Hello everyone, I thought I would share how I bought some Ripple currency last weekend, since I am a total crypto newbie and I have to honestly tell you, I struggled.
As for anything having to do with money, if your not sure of what you are doing, it can be quite unnerving - so I'm just going to post the way I did it.
First, I signed up for GateHub (having had Coinbase already), without doing the 2 step verification ( That can be done later, you do have to set up 2 step verification to make withdrawels to your bank account, via a "gateway").
Now- you will want to have some coin bought, I would buy Litecoin or Etherium, not Bitcoin at this time , until this "fork" thing that I don't understand is over and done with. (I purchased my Ripple with Bitcoin, but it was a week ago.)
I used Coinbase to buy Bitcoin, in this case buy Litecoin (or Ether..until later in August anyway).
Unfortunately, I don't have time to show anything about Coinbase, but there is lots of help to choose from for using it.
Once you have been set up on GateHub with just a password, you need to enable your Ripple wallet. Click on the "bars" in the upper right corner of GateHub "Home" page (you can mess with your profile later), click on "wallet"
Now you will see this:
You however, may be showing 0.00 xrp at this time. You need 20 xrp in your wallet to enable the use of your wallet.
This gives you your wallet address, which you will copy to your clip board.
Now, if you just want to drop a quick 20 xrp into your wallet at the drop of a hat, with absolutely no fuss , you can do that with PayPal. ( you will need 50 xrp if you have a "Host" wallet on GateHub- visit this steemian for info on a Host wallet here:
https://steemit.com/gatehub/@cmbartley/gatehub-brief-overview-of-ripple-vs-hosted-wallets )
For no fuss activation, go to https://bithomp.com/activation/
In the second drop-down where it says "PayPal" you can choose 20 xrp or 50 xrp depending on the kind of wallet you have, if it's not a host wallet choose the 20 xrp purchase.
Now just paste in your Ripple wallet address from gatehub and make your purchase and it will be instant ( it was for me).
Now if you go back into gatehub and look in your Ripple wallet it should say 20 xrp for a non host wallet.
Now let's say you bought some coin in coinbase, and to keep it simple let's just say it was Litecoin.
For this part I used ShapeShift, and no account is required. Go to https://shapeshift.io/#/coins
You'll see this:
Scroll down a little to "deposit" click the crypto logo below it, and there is a place to start typing in Litecoin at the top and then you can click on the Litecoin logo to enter it. See here:
Now you should be back on the "deposit" and "recieve" page. Click whatever logo is just below "receive" and in the same way enter Ripple. Now you will receive a warning saying that your transfer that you are about to do will fail if you do not have your Ripple wallet enabled. Shown here
But you will have done that using Bithomp as shown above. So click "okay"
Now you should see this:
Now highlight "quick" to Simply transfer the total amount in your Litecoin wallet, then select "continue" and you'll see this:
(Note: you will be charged a small fee out of your Ripple)
Paste in your Ripple wallet address, then paste in your Litecoin wallet address from coinbase so that if the transfer fails, your coin will be returned to your wallet in coinbase.
You can leave the field for your "destination tag" blank which is how I did it, if you are not using GateHub you might want to put in a destination tag to be safe. Don't bother choosing reusable address, just click "agree" and "start transaction".
Now this is just a fair warning, other people using this method have said that they have waited up to 12 hours for the transaction to actually take place, but this was with using Bitcoin which has a lot of high traffic due to the number of transactions being used everyday in Bitcoin. I did use Bitcoin when I did this and it only took about 30 minutes for the Ripple to show up in my GateHub wallet.
Now in the ShapeShift screen you should be seeing, there is an address given to you to send your Litecoin to from Coinbase,
You'll need to go to coinbase, and send money to that address listed from the ShapeShift screen right under where it says "send (amount ) to this address" in little green characters. (see above, I have my personal info blacked out).
Before you do anything else make a screenshot of this window and keep it. It contains a reference number that you may need if the transaction fails then you will have what you need to open a support ticket with ShapeShift.
Also leave this window open while you are sending your money from your Coinbase wallet.
After you send the money out of your coinbase wallet you will see activity on this shapeshift page, please remember I personally had to wait for about 30 minutes, the progress bar will probably sit in the middle for a long time before it completes transaction.
When the transaction is completed however long that may take, you will see this on the screen:
Now you can go to your gatehub Ripple wallet and view your purchase!
There you go and I hope I didn't confuse you, ( I apologize in advance for any detail I may have left out)
enjoy watching your Ripple grow!
Chris