See this photo of me? Notice how my hair is all gone? It's because I was yet again "crypto-blocked" in my pursuit of buying Travala tokens.
No, really, if I actually had hair to pull out, it would be all gone due to the fiasco that I experienced this afternoon.
So after reading a lot of good stuff from some of the users on here (you know who you are), and a good tip about where you can buy AVA, I set about the task.
My first stop was Poloniex because I was thinking I had an account that I setup a long time ago.
I tried to login with the info I had saved... no luck. I asked for a password reset.... the reset email never came. I tried to create a new account.... Not able to complete the task due to my location.
Alright, once again US Citizens get punished because of the governments archaic stance on cryptos. Fine.
I headed over to Leo Discord to find out if Poloniex has KYC. I have a personal VPN that would probably get my account created, but if it asks for KYC after that, I would be stuck in the water.
Someone mentioned that Poloniex is crap, try the Binance DEX. As much as I hate Binance, I like the idea of a DEX where I don't need to provide KYC. So I turned on my VPN and became a Canadian for a short time.
I started setting up my Binance DEX info and eventually realized that there wasn't a BTC/AVA pair, but there was a BNB/AVA pair. No big deal, I will just buy some(a) BNB with the $50 in BTC I was looking to spend and then use that BNB to buy AVA.
Next issue. I don't see where I can deposit my BTC into the exchange. So I notice there is this thing called "Wallet Connect" and it works with Atomic Wallet. Easy! I say, I have Atomic Wallet installed, so I will just connect it and move my BTC there.
I follow the steps and it says it connected successfully, my BTC eventually shows up in the Atomic Wallet, but it is not showing up as a balance in my Binance DEX.
I dink around with if for another half hour or so before I decide it is time to just give up and head back to The States.
You can't say I didn't try... At this point I am not even sure the small $50 investment would have been worth the amount of time I put into the attempt.
I truly hope as crypto becomes more and more pervasive things become easier than this. If they don't I fear mass adoption will be something that is always just outside our reach.