Ask HN: Best way to buy litecoins? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best way to buy litecoins?

14 pointsschrodinger11 comments

What's the best way to buy litecoins? Is it better to go through btc first, are are there reputable USD to LTC exchanges?

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If your bank account is associated with a bank from the EU, I'd recommend you to buy Litecoin through Kraken [1] if you don't want to acquire big amounts (I love this exchange but it doesn't move much volume). Otherwise use Bitstamp [2] to buy Bitcoin and move them to BTC-E [3].

You can also have a look at Bitfinex [4], which is starting to take off with Litecoin trading. I've heard they are already the 4th exchange in terms of LTC volume but haven't had any experience with them yet, so can't say much on them.

I live in the EU so I don't know what are the fees for wire transfer deposits, but I'd expect them to be lower on those exchanges that have low SEPA transfer deposit fees as well.

[1] http://www.kraken.com

[2] http://www.bitstamp.com

[3] http://www.btc-e.com

[4] http://www.bitfinex.com

I'm having a heck of a time doing this right now. So far everything has failed for one reason or another. I think Litecoin local has promise, but that doesn't exist in most areas right now.

Exchanging BTC for LTC is the better option.

But https://litecoinlocal.org/ is good for small-medium transactions.

On that site what does it mean when they say "Amount Available: $100 - $500 USD"?

The minimum and maximum order you can place with that seller.

Buy BTC > Transfer BTC to BTC-E, Exchange BTC/LTC on BTC-E

Is BTC-E the only one that allows this, what alternatives are there?

BTC-E, Bitfinex, litecoinlocal.org, vircurex, crypto-trade, cryptsy, coinmtk, there are a few others. All I believe aren't located within the United States, so there is risk involved other than LTC being worth $0.

I only suggest BTC-E based on it being one of the higher volume LTC exchanges.

Don't buy them, mine them.

How does the complexity look like with LTC mining? Any pointers?

It can be hard to tune your system, but if you build your rig with usual components, that is the ones that appear on guides, it is very easy to get running. We didn't make the right choice for our GPU's and suffered a bit at the start.

Check the litecoinmining subreddit, there's a lot of information there and the community is very helpful.

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