How to Buy Darkcoin: Darkcoin Exchanges

A guide on how to buy Darkcoin through Darkcoin exchanges. Darkcoin has taken the crypto world by storm, with a steady increase in value that has been almost unprecedented in the short history of cryptocurrencies. Darkcoin promises several anonymity features and other innovations that have caught the attention of the altcoin community, causing the price to steadily rise more than 50 times over a matter of a month or so. In fact, Darkcoin became the third largest cryptocurrency by marketcap among the several hundreds out there, a huge achievement to be sure. If you want in on the action and are looking to buy or sell Darkcoin, here’s a guide.

How to buy Darkcoin

It isn’t a simple matter today to buy any altcoin, let alone a popular one like Darkcoin. This is because there are way too many cryptocurrency exchanges in the market today, and it is hard to find the best exchanges for your coin. Also, for those who are new, unless there is a very good reason, don’t buy Darkcoin or really any cryptocurrency off an exchange through someone on forums. There are many precautions like escrow and it is usually not worth the effort, unless you’re making a huge one off purchase that could move the markets significantly.

Trustworthy Darkcoin Exchanges

Trustworthy exchanges are the key – you don’t want to lose your money to novice attempts at building an exchange or worse, outright scams. Here are the Darkcoin exchanges that have proven their worth to the community at large, that people generally trust. However, please remember that you should never use an exchange as a wallet. If you’re ‘investing’ for the medium to long term, take the necessary precautions, download the Darkcoin wallet, encrypt the wallet, make backups and keep them secure. No matter how old or how nice the exchange feels, it should be used as an exchange, not as a wallet. Follow this list of exchanges if you want to keep your money safe – almost every altcoin exchange today trades Darkcoin.

Bter: There are two simple reasons why I mention Bter before MintPal on my list: one, Bter is much older and has proven itself over time and two, Bter gives you a whopping 8.3% per annum interest on Darkcoin (on June 4th 2014. This fluctuates daily). These two factors are why I trade most of my Darkcoin on Bter instead of MintPal, even though MintPal has a much higher liquidity and trading volume than Bter. If you’re a patient investor and not looking to day-trade Darkcoin too much, then Bter is a great place to spread your buys and get a nice interest in the process (note: if you’re wondering, the interest is generated through trading fees and needs to be claimed manually every 24 hours). If you’re day-trading and need a much higher liquidity, then MintPal is the best exchange hands down for you.

MintPal: The growth of MintPal is almost as spectacular as the growth of Darkcoin. It provides a very neat interface and doesn’t have frequent issues unlike other exchanges. It is able to handle extremely large amounts of trading quite well, and the fees are reasonable as well. It is today the preferred altcoin exchange for most coins that are listed, and MintPal deserves kudos for pulling off a reliable altcoin exchange. The volume of Darkcoin traded is the highest here (as of today, last 24 hours trading volume was over 1000 BTC!) and therefore also the most liquid.

Cryptsy: No mention of an altcoin exchange list is complete without Cryptsy, perhaps the most love-hate-d cryptocurrency exchange out there. Cryptsy has had several issues in the past with deposits, withdrawals, trades, etc. but they have also come back each time and proved to be a non-scammy exchange. In addition, the fact that they are based in the US and regularly attend conferences gives people the confidence that they are a legitimate business. Cryptsy used to be (one of the ) only real altcoin exchange in town at one point of time, and it has certainly fallen from those glory days, but make no mistake, people still do actively trade here and it still has probably the most number of altcoins traded.

Poloniex: I would tread with caution here, but Poloniex is another exchange trading Darkcoin, which has proved to be a fairly reliable exchange, especially for new altcoins. The biggest strength of Poloniex is that it adds new promising cryptos before other exchanges, but this doesn’t apply to Darkcoin since most exchanges already trade Darkcoin. This is why I see no strong reason to buy Darkcoin from Poloniex unless you want to have an account there and trade several other upcoming cryptos as well.