Well I had been scratching my head and trying to decipher the best path to buy STEEM. Let's face it, it's not easy for a middle-aged man. I had gathered enough anecdotal evidence that maybe Coinbase was the easiest path. I opened an account there yesterday, although the verification process was a little sticky. Of course my bank was concerned the charges were identity theft as Coinbase is located in the UK I guess. So after that was cleared up this morning I was able to try again. Then I was able to purchase BTC.
At that point I had some BTC, but wasn't sure how to transfer to Steemit and purchase STEEM. I found a post from a now inactive user that said go to Steemit Wallet > Buy STEEM. On the next page, on BlockTrades, in "Send" box put the crypto you own (BTC or other) and the amount. With your steemit username in the receive address box click "Get Deposit Address" and it will generate a wallet address. Use the wallet address in Coinbase, which transfers your cryptos via Blocktrades converting them to STEEM for Steemit. The only issue is that it took Coinbase about 20 minutes to accept the wallet address. Also the transfer can take a few hours normally I think, mine took 2-3.
There was a 4% fee to purchase and then another 1.5% fee to transfer, so I'll keep looking at other options. Supposedly there is a cheaper way thru GDAX, but it seemed I might have to wait 7 days for the transfer so I just went thru Coinbase.
Please post below any recommendations or your experience about purchasing STEEM.
