You might be thrown off by the title of this article. But it’s all about my experience when I bought some Floki Inu (CCC:FLOKI-USD). To say that it is a very trying process is putting it lightly. If you don’t know what I mean, you may not know that FLOKI trades for less than 15 thousandths of one dollar.
That’s right. Here is the actual price of one FLOKI token today, Dec. 14 at around noon my time in Arizona: $0.0001441. That involves three zeros to the right of one dollar. The price is 14.41 ten thousandths of one 1 dollar. Or another way to put is this: 0.01441 cents, i.e., 1.441 hundredths of one cent.
That’s not all. You can only buy Floki Inu on a few oddball exchanges, and those exchanges don’t accept U.S. dollars. They only accept other cryptocurrencies. So you can only buy FLOKI now by first buying something like Tether (CCC:USDT-USD). That too was a hassle.
I ended up buying Floki Inu on the Gate.io exchange, partly because that was the exchange that CoinMarketCap reported having the highest trading volume in Floki Inu.
Getting Ready to Buy Floki Inu Was a Hassle
As I said, you have to first buy some other cryptocurrency like Bitcoin (CCC:BTC-USD) or Tether (USDT), and then use that crypto to buy Floki. Are you confused? I was at first, but then I realized that since USDT was almost like U.S. dollars it might work out.
But it isn’t so simple. First, I had to figure out how to buy Tether. Then, I realized that Tether is cheaper than dollars and traded for 1.04 USDT per U.S. dollar. Except there was a hitch. I had to pay a huge processing fee.
The best option that Gate.io has to buy Tether is to use a credit card (never use your bank account to buy crypto) and process it through an Australian bank called BANXA. However, BANXA had all kinds of difficult requirements to decide whether they would accept my credit card.
This included me taking a picture of myself holding my driver’s license right up to my face and sending them the picture. Just figuring how to do this took an hour since I couldn’t get them to accept the picture. Finally, I realized that their software, rather than my cell phone was the best way to get the picture accepted.
Finally, I’m Ready To Buy Floki Inu
Now the interesting part get’s started. Gate.io does not allow you to simply just buy Floki Inu. You have to tell the exchange how much you want to buy and the highest price you’ll pay. This is called a limit order.
The problem is they do not do limit orders the same way that limit orders are done in the U.S. stock market when buying a U.S. stock.
For example, when you place a limit order in the U.S. stock market you tell the broker-dealer your highest price and the number of shares. However, you expect that any expenses for the trade will be taken out in U.S. dollars and added to the total cost. It will not lower the number of shares you wanted to buy.
That’s not how Gate.io works. They take the expenses out by deducting the amount of Floki Inu that you will receive, instead of charging more in USDT.
Are you confused? I was for a long time and couldn’t figure out how to actually end up with a nice, round number of tokens so that my accounting could be easier to keep track of. With Floki Inu and Gate.io, you can’t do this.
So even though I wanted to end up with, say, 1 million units of Floki Inu, I ended up with 999,999.101011 units (for example). This is because they took out the fees in Floki Inu tokens, not in Tether.
As a result, I had to buy more units, except in a smaller batch, which, of course, cost higher fees. This is a very confusing and difficult process to keep track of in a spreadsheet. Eventually, though, I figured out an accounting system that works for me.
Is Buying Floki Inu Worth the Hassle?
The bottom line for me is that I couldn’t figure out if this whole process is worth it. I came to the conclusion that I think it is. Here’s why.
The minute that Floki Inu gets listed on a major exchange like Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), and all the hassles of buying it go away, the price will likely zoom much higher. That’s my hope, at least.
On the date of publication, Mark Hake directly held a long position in Floki Inu crypto but not in any other of the securities mentioned in this article, either directly or indirectly. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
Mark Hake writes about personal finance at mrhake.medium.com and Newsbreak.com and runs the Total Yield Value Guide which you can review here.
