The following is designed to be a quick and easy step-by-step guide for those not yet familiar with exchanging.
- Sign up on your favorite exchange, this tutorial will use https://bittrex.com/. You can find all exchanges currently accepting STEEM / SBD can be found here. Do take note of potential fee differences as well as volume and prices before you continue.
- Open your Wallets tab, or go directly through the Markets tab.
- You now need to deposit funds from your Steemit Wallet in order to exchange them to other cryptocurrencies or USD.
If you wish to exchange STEEM, click that.
If you wish to exchange Steam Dollars, click SBD.
I will continue with SBD for this tutorial. - The following window will pop up. You will be prompted to generate a memo, do that.
- Now, head to your Steemit Wallet page.
You need to ensure that you click the correct currency - you can only exchange SBD using the memo generated specifically for that. Similarly, if you want to exchange STEEM, ensure to click STEEM on your profile and not SBD. - Carefully enter the memo and account.
- Wait a minute or two for everything to be processed, head back to Bittrex and click the Market tab by clicking the currency you wish to exchange. Again, I am proceeding with SBD for the purpose of this tutorial, so I click the SBD link.
In the header of the right-hand sell column you see the 50 SBD we just transferred in the previous step.
8. Now, if you are completely new to trading the below is a quick explanation of how it works, if you are familiar with trading in general, please proceed to the next step. If you click the order book (next tab, right next to the timeline tab) you will see the amount of buy and sell orders respectively. There is usually a gap and one side appears more significant than the other. This gives a good, visual idea of where the market might be heading and how the price could develop. If you scroll a bit you can moreover get a quick overview of the current bids (buy orders) and asks (sell orders):
If you believe the price might increase based on the amount of buy/sell orders, you can decide to enter your own ask price. Doing this will create an order which will fulfill if the price increases to your prediction. It is in this regard a good idea to check other exchanges to see the overall movement of the price in order to more accurately predict how it might develop. If you are not interested in predicting price development and just wish to sell immediately, you can simply pick a buy order by clicking the bid price. This will automatically select the price and you can decide how much you wish to sell.
9. Find the price you wish to sell for and click confirm
10. The order will fill and you have now successfully exchanged your STEEM or SBD to bitcoins. These will appear in your wallet. You can now exchange bitcoins to dollars through whichever exchange you prefer, or eventually re-invest into other cryptocurrencies. You can find a selection of exchanges accepting BTC/USD here.
