Cryptocurrency
The Easiest Way To Buy Gold
For the first time in history, gold is buyable 24/7
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Have you ever considered buying gold?
If you indeed did, you may have stumbled upon 90’s looking websites or, if you went a step further, you then faced the necessity to have a broker —an intermediary that handles buying/selling an asset on behalf of someone else.
But if we’re alike, you don’t want all of this.
All you want is:
- logging into your account on whatever website
- having a reasonably recent and intuitive UI (User Interface)
- and press a button to buy/sell your gold whenever you feel like it.
That’s about it.
You don’t want someone to “help you out” with buying or selling your gold, you don’t want to have to wait for markets to open to be able to buy or sell your shiny assets. What you want is a quick and convenient way to do whatever it is you want with your billions of bullions.
If so, I got your back.
I know the easiest way —in the sense of practical and quick—to buy gold in this year of 2020 — and since 2019 in fact. I’m finally writing about it as I know many people may be interested in acquiring such an asset.
The exact process I’ll unveil in this article is a-4 steps one that involves:
- signing up to a website
- completing a KYC (Know Your Customer) procedure
- making a USD deposit to fill up your balance
- use this balance to buy gold.
That’s about it! Are you ready to buy gold? GO!
Note: There are no affiliate links in this article but if you still want to reward me for the gold nugget information you’ll get there, you can always offer me a matcha latte!
Step 1: Signing up for the PAXOS website
PAXOS.com is where all the fun stuff happens.
It’s a website (of a company of the same name) that provides financial services as well as unique financial products that we can easily use.
The company PAXOS is a regulated financial institution whose mission is to build an infrastructure to enable movement between physical and digital assets.
In simpler terms, they want to digitalize the acquisition of physical goods.
PAXOS has a global presence as they have offices in Singapour, London, and New York City. Their website contains additional information if you want to learn more about them.
The PAXOS service that interests us today is the acquisition of their PAX Gold token. It is a product — a cryptocurrency — whose value is backed by a troy ounce of London Good Delivery gold bar.
It simply means that if you own one PAX Gold (shorten with PAXG), you legally own the underlying physical gold that is held in custody by PAXOS.
The first step before being able to buy a PAXG is to sign up for the PAXOS website. Do so here and let’s move to the next step.
Step 2: The KYC (Know Your Customer) process
Important: For this step, you will need a working camera on the computer with which you’ll start the process.
A KYC is an industry-standard practice in which the company asks you to upload identity documents as well as a picture of you holding these documents.
This is what you will need to do in order to be able to deposit USD in your PAXOS account.
The process takes a few minutes to complete and some a bit more to be validated by the PAXOS team.
Step 3: Deposit USD on PAXOS
Once you submitted your identity documents and that your KYC process is ongoing, you will be allowed to deposit USD to the PAXOS website.
To do so, use the “Deposit” button on your dashboard (indicated with a thin red arrow on the following screenshot).
You will notice that in addition to USD, there are other assets that you are able to deposit from your dashboard. At the time of writing there are PAX, HUSD and BUSD. These are USD stablecoins (tokens whose value is equal to $1) that you can deposit that will increase your USD balance. (As PAXOS displays USD and stablecoins as a single balance.)
After having clicked on the deposit button, you will be prompted to choose your desired way to send your USD and the following sliding window will appear.
Choose how you want to send your USD and you’ll simply have to wait for them to be credited. You’ll then be able to buy the shiny assets you’re longing for.
Tip: Choosing to deposit stablecoins (if you own some), or other cryptocurrencies will shorten how long you’ll have to wait before being able to buy gold as cryptocurrencies arrive in minutes and fiat in days.
Step 4: Buying your first gold (token)!
Now that your account has some USD, it’s time to buy some gold!
1st way: Directly from the dashboard
From your dashboard, simply scroll down and you’ll reach the “Additional Assets” part. There you’ll have the “PAXG PAX Gold” item as well as the “Buy” and “Deposit” buttons. And, in the bottom left-hand corner lays the current price of gold.
Clicking on “Buy” will open a menu in which you’ll be able to set the amount of gold you want to acquire. In this one, simply enter the amount of PAXG you want and a quote will automatically be made for you.
There, I entered an amount of “2”, but you can enter a number as low as “0.03” (as processing fees are 0.02 PAXG).
Once you’re okay with the amount you want, click on “Get Quote” and another overlay will appear asking you a confirmation for the pricing that has been established. A final click will then make you the owner of the number of PAXG you selected.
2nd way: From the “Trade” interface
In the case you are using the 1st way when markets are closed, you won’t be able to get a quote, as the button would be greyed out and disabled.
If this happens to you, rest assured.
There is another way to buy PAXG on the platform and it is by selecting the “Trade” interface at the very top of your dashboard. Indeed, by default after logging in on the platform, we arrive on the “Wallet” interface.
It’s the one that I described on the few last screenshots, the one showing your assets and allowing USD deposits and such.
Next to it lays the “Trade” item which allows us to go on the trading part of the PAXOS website when we click on it.
Once on the trading interface, the website automatically prompts us on the BTC / USD trading pair.
To switch to the PAXG / USD pair, simply select it from the dropdown list on the left-hand side.
There you go, you are now facing the UI that will allow you to buy PAXG no matter the moment you chose to do so.
Now all you have to do is setting the amount of gold you want to buy in the green part of the UI, in the input below “USD” and above “Available Funds”.
Click the “Place Buy Order” and that’s finally it!
Congratulations!
Whether you chose the first or the second way to buy your PAX Gold token(s), this purchase now makes you legally own physical gold!
Benefits of owning PAXG
Here’s a short wrap-up of the benefits induced to owning PAXG:
- you own gold that is buyable and sellable 24/7
- you own real physical gold by holding this token
- you don’t need any broker.
Last but not least, using PAXG allows you to buy a super small amount of gold (as low as ~$15, depending on the gold price, or exactly 0,03 PAXG).
Remember: You can reward me with a matcha latte if you believe I provided you a gold nugget with this article.
