How to buy NEO - a step by step guide

How to Buy NEO

If you are new to crypto currencies then the process for buying NEO can seem a little daunting, especially as at the time of writing it is not possible to buy NEO directly using your bank account or credit card. However the following simple steps will get you up and running with a minimum of effort.

Security and Due Diligence

You’re going to be sending money/coins or installing software from a number of sites. Before you use a site you not familiar with its common sense to do a bit of due diligence. Firstly check the sites certificate, then Google the site name and check that ‘scam‘ doesn’t feature highly in articles referring to it. Also check review on sites like trustpilot. Start small, don’t just send $100,000’s worth of coins to some site you’ve never used before send a trial $100, then build up as your confidence and familiarity increases.

Buying NEO/GAS

At the time of writing (Dec 2017) you can’t buy NEO directly with cash, but the following exchanges exist.

• Bitcoin (BTC) to NEO
• Ethereum (ETH) to NEO

So you need to first buy Bitcoin or Ethereum, the rest of this guide assumes you will buy Ethereum, but the process is exactly the same if you bought Bitcoin.
Note : I would use Ethereum as its faster and cheaper to transact (bitcoin is slow and transaction fees can be $20 or more)

Buying coins

There are a number of sites selling Ethereum, the one I use is coinbase
Free Money!
If you use the links to coinbase provided on this page then you will be given a $10 credit when you complete your first purchase (see referral program).
Complete the registration form, then check your email for the verification email (it turned up in the spam folder on my mail client).
You then need to provide a mobile number and type in the the verification code that will be texted to you.


Still a bit of messing around to go, select Buy/Sell, then Add Payment Method
You have 2 choices Bank transfer or debit card, both require you to submit photo ID.
If you choose debit card then you will be subject to a £750 per week limit, and some card handling fees.
You can provide your ID by capturing an image from your laptops webcam, or you will be texted a link to a web site where you can upload a picture fo your ID.
You will also be asked for your address (which must match the debit cards address).
I used my passport as ID, and it validated it within a minute. I’m guessing this was done automatically using the machine readable strip on the bottom, submitting other forms of ID would probably have to be checked manually and may take much longer to validate.


Your now finally ready to actually buy some coins! Select Ethereum and enter the amount you want to buy, Note the fees are fairly high for using a card, if your transfering larger amounts configure the bank transfer funding source.





If your card was accepted then you are now the proud owner of some magic beans (sorry NEO's). You can see your balance in the accounts section. If you followed the refereal link you wall also see that you have a tiny fraction of a bitcoin (amounting to about $10), which is your referal bonus!

Exchanging you ETH for NEO

Now you have your ETH within coinbase, but you need to swap them for NEO. You can do this at an exchange, there are a number of exchange sites, but I use Binance.
Create a Binance account, verify your email address (again the mail probably went into spam)



You will also be asked to configure 2 factor authentication (2FA) you will need this later to move NEO to your wallet (So don’t skip it).



If you are not in china this requires the Google Authenticator app installing on your phone, then simply open it and point it at the QR code, the Google authenticator app with then start spewing out validation codes, which will be asked for within Binance whenever you do anything significant.



Your account is now setup and you can transfer the ETH from coinbase into your Binance account.
Select Funds->Deposits Withdrawals



Find the type of coin you bought on coinbase (ETH), and press the deposit button, after a couple of seconds a deposit address will appear.
This is the ID of your wallet within Binance, any coins sent to this ID will appear in Binance.
IMPORTANT : make sure you have selected the correct coin type (ETH)



You can then go back to coinbase and send the coins to this address (again ensuring that you are sending from ETH to ETH).
Again if you are new to this then sending a smaller test amount first is not a bad idea (Ethereum fees are just pennies).

Once the coins have been sent they should show up in around a minute within Binance, under the Funds->History section.
They will not be accessible until they are 30 blocks deep (they have 30 confirmation), this can take a few minutes.
Great, you now have your ETH in Binance, now its time to exchange them for NEO.

Open the exchange page (Exchange->basic)

Then in the top right window

• Select the coin type you want to trade (the ones you bought ETH).
• Type the coin you want to buy into the search window (NEO).
• Then select the market

Now you are ready to trade, sanity check that you in the right market (buying NEO using your ETH balance).
The easiest way to trade is to take the market value (explaining Limit’s/Stop-Limits etc is general trading stuff and not within the scope of this article).

• So select the Market Tab
• Assuming you want to trade all of your ETH for NEO select 100%, (or enter an amount as appropriate).
• Press the “Buy Neo” button.

You have now converted your ETH to NEO you can see your new balances on the Funds->Deposits Withdrawals page.



Job Done, well almost….
You now own some NEO, but we are not finished yet, you could be missing out on some free money.

NEO Wallets

With regards to storing you NEO you have 2 options, leave it with the exchange where you bought it or move it into your own wallet. Setting up your own wallet has a couple of distinct advantages

1. It’s much more hacker proof (exchanges are a magnet for hackers, and some of the larger ones have suffered big losses).
2. You get to keep the GAS that owning NEO generates, if the last bit about GAS is news to you then I suggest you read the ‘what is NEO section’.

The NEON wallet is the one I use, it’s simple and installs on Window/Mac/Linux. Its an open source project developed by city of zion the source code and binaries can be found at github.
Download and install the NEON wallet on your computer.
Run Neon

• Select “Create New Wallet”
• Give it a strong password (Note : you’ll need to type this in to access your wallet everytime you use it).
• Give the wallet a name and hit “Save Key”
• Print the page and keep it somewhere really safe, if your computer breaks and you’ve lost this, then you loose your cash

You now have an empty Neon Wallet setup.
Now lets test you actually have access it it before we send any money there!
Close Neon and re-open it, select “Logon using a Saved Wallet”), and enter the wallet Passphrase.

Transferring NEO to your wallet

If all went well we are ready to send the NEO coins from Binance, to your wallet.
Open Binance, and go to the Funds->Deposits Withdrawals page.


Take your time over this bit…

• Select the Withdrawal button on the NEO entry.
• Set the “NEO Withdrawal Address” (the destination address) to be the Neon wallet “Public Address”
  Hint: on the page you printed this is listed as the “public address” When you are logged into your NEON wallet this is also shown at the top of the page with the label “Your public Neo Address”, the button to the right copys it to the clipboard.
• Enter the number of NEO to transfer
  NOTE : NEO’s are not divisible (you have to transfer a whole number, you may own a fractional number of NEO’s in the Binance, but in the real world they are not divisible)
• Then hit submit.

Again if this is all new to you, or your a bit nervous about the whole thing, then I suggest transferring a smaller amount first, the NEO transfer fees are very low.



A few minutes later and the coins should be showing in your NEON wallet.

Claiming your FREE GAS

If you’ve bought NEO then while they are in your wallet they are generating GAS, after a few minutes you will see the ‘Claim xxx GAS’ button starts ticking up. Pressing this button transfers the GAS earned by your NEO into your wallet. At current rates this adds up to about 5% return per year.
Note: Your computer does not have to be switched on or Neon open for you to be earning GAS, so shut it all down and go and have a cuppa.

The End

Well done, you have just helped fuel the crypto currency boom/bubble, if all goes well then “this time next year Rodney…”, anyhow I hope this guide helped, and if you used the coinbase and Binance links on the page then we both got a little something back.