Sharks that stop swimming end up dead.
Seems like crypto is already moving faster than any one person could ever hope to keep up with. There are simply too many advances. Too many networks; too many developers. Thousands of tokens and even more ideas floating around, some of them revolutionary and some of them ridiculous.
Last night I finally got over the fact that Binance account seems to be gone forever. I was looking to buy some Rune, and I figured I'd need a new exchange from which to launch my base of operations. Remembering that I used Huobi during the hostile takeover days I decided to log into my account for the first time in over a year of dormancy.
Huobi.Global is pretty similar to Binance.
These two platforms were strikingly similar so it was easy to get my account up and running. Made sure to add Google Authentication so that my 2FA wasn't lacking and deposited 50 Hive to test it out.
I realized immediately that I was in for some pain. Huobi doesn't list any of the Binance tokens (BNB, BUSD, BTCB, etc) and they have no connection to Binance Smart Chain (understandably). This was to be expected. Not many exchanges are willing to host the tokens of other competing platforms.
However, I was IMMENSLY annoyed when I realized that Huobi doesn't even list RUNE, which was kind of the entire point of this entire adventure... No matter, I decided I would just buy some Litecoin and send it to another account just to verify that everything was working correctly.
It was not... working correctly.
Apparently Huobi does not support the new LTC public addresses. You might know the ones: they begin with the letters "ltc" signifying the network upfront so that mistakes are harder to make. This incentivized me to rage-buy some Polygon (MATIC) because of the new PolyCUB project launching soon™. So now I am the proud owner of 27 MATIC ($55). Big baller.
But still, I needed to get some Rune...
Rather than use a centralized exchange to buy Rune, I figured I'd figure out a more decentralized way of going about it.
tipped me off to this Trust Wallet solution
So apparently I needed to get some BUSD from BSC to Trust Wallet and then unwrap it from BEP20 to BEP2 in order to use ThorChain. Let me tell ya... it took some doing...
First, I sold 200 CUB and sent the BUSD to Trust Wallet.
However, when I tried to unwrap the BEP20 BUSD to BEP2 BUSD Trust Wallet told me I needed gas. BSC gas.
Second, I sent BSC gas (BNB) to Trust Wallet.
This allowed me to unwrap the BEP20 BUSD to BEP2 BUSD.
So far so good...
Third, I tried to swap the BEP2 BUSD for RUNE.
Didn't work, transaction failed.
I needed RUNE for gas.
It wasn't working...
So I needed RUNE to buy RUNE.
Can you imagine how frustrating this is going to be for new users?
It was already frustrating enough for me...
But we've already dealt with this once before.
The CUB launch on BSC required many BNB bootstraps.
After very politely asking for some gas money to buy more gas, I tried one more time.
Step 4: Try to buy Rune again.
And again, this was a fail.
I didn't realize that not only do I need gas for ThorChain in the form of RUNE, but I also needed gas on the native network I was connected to. In this case the gas I needed was BSC gas (BNB).
But didn't you already use BNB gas to convert BEP20 BUSD to BEP2 BUSD?
lol... yes... that's what I was thinking.
Thanks for asking.
The only problem is that I wasn't using the BSC network.
I was using the Binance Chain (BEP2) not Binance Smart Chain (BEP20).
Therefore I needed BEP2 BNB... not BEP20 BNB.
Hot damn new users are going to get through this so easy!
Step 5: unwrap BEP20 BNB for BEP2 BNB.
After this was done I was FINALLY able to seal the deal and buy some RUNE. CONGRADULATIONS ME! YOU DID IT! Happy day.
And I even skipped the step where I was very annoyed that Litecoin on Trust Wallet isn't connected to the Rune network DAPP and in order to connected the RUNE DAPP to Trust Wallet you have to go into settings, open WalletConnect, then scan a QR code to link your Trust Wallet... wallets to https://app.thorswap.finance/
We're gonna fight on land, right? Right.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
A few hours after I had completed all this madness I was going to complain about how I needed 3 different kinds of gas and twice as many tokens to get the job done. However, I realized that I did make things a bit more complicated than they needed to be by using BUSD. If I had just used BNB the entire time for gas in addition to value transfer I wouldn't of had to transfer BUSD or unwrap it to BEP2, which would have saved me a bit of hassle.
FINAL RUNDOWN:
- Step one: acquire BNB on BSC.
- Step two: send BNB to Trust Wallet
- Trust Wallet refers to this type of BNB as "Smart Chain".
- Step three: Convert "Smart Chain" BNB to "Binance Chain" BNB.
- Step four: Find a way to get a tiny bit of RUNE for gas.
- Step Five: You may now swap BEP2 BNB for RUNE.
- https://app.thorswap.finance/
- Connect Trust Wallet to ThorChain via WalletConnect.
- https://app.thorswap.finance/
So simple! Anyone could have done it!
Conclusion
It's important to note how early in the game we are. The infrastructure simply does not exist to onboard newbies. However, by the time it does the price will of already mooned, so we should consider ourselves lucky that we got here so early and we get paid for our troubles to figure this cool stuff out.
After using RUNE I realize more than ever what a huge deal it is. I can seamlessly connect different liquidity pools together in a totally permissionless manner that absolutely can not be messed with by the regulators. That's a pretty huge deal. Rune and ThorChain are going to serve as one of the ultimate hubs for all liquidity in the cryptoverse. All roads lead to Rune.