A quick disclaimer: the value of ether relative to currencies like the £ and $ fluctuates, so there’s a chance any ether you buy will become worthless. Don’t spend any money on ether (or any other cryptocurrency) you can’t afford to lose.

Coinbase

The easiest way to get some ethereum to play with is to use Coinbase. You can use their website or app. It’s free to sign up.

Here in the UK the cheapest way to get money into your Coinbase account is to make a BACS bank transfer from your bank account to Coinbase, which will add it to your GBP wallet for free. To do that in the app open the Portfolio tab, tap on British Pound and then tap the Deposit button to see the details for the bank transfer. Use those details in your banking app to complete the transfer.

Once there’s money in the GBP wallet you can trade if for eth, for which you will have to pay a fee. Tap on your Ethereum wallet, tap the Trade button and tap the Buy button.

That’s all there is to it. Now you’ve got some ether you can do things with it. However…

To buy £100 of ETH from the GBP wallet incurs a fee of £2.99. A fee equivalent to 3% feels pretty steep. There is a cheaper way to get hold of eth, by using Coinbase Pro, that I’ll talk about in a later post.

Now we’ve got some ETH let’s see what we can do with it…