Cash to Crypto: No Bank, No Problem!

In honour of Power-Up day tomorrow, allow me to present a short pictorial on how to turn the cash in your pocket into Hive (or any other crypto) in Thailand in less than an hour and without the use of banks.

For this demo I will be using the excellent coins.co.th (this is NOT an affiliate link) which is a fully legal and regulated crypto portal here in Thailand and which also operates in the Philippines.

Although there is a phone app, it is only for iOS here in Thailand but there is also an Android App for Philippines users. I have passed their basic KYC using photo ID which allows me to transact up to 5000Baht (£123.66, US$165.11) a day, but I have no bank account linked to the account. If I did decide to link my account, my limit raises up to 30000baht (£742.22, US$990.68) a day.

So I was sat on the step of a 7/11 with a coffee and watching the world go by when I realised, there was SCB (Siam Commercial Bank) ATM / CDM behind me. This means that you can pay cash in as well as take cash out and the thought occurred that I could use this facility, without the use of an account to send money to Coins.co.th and turn it into BTC, then into Hive. For the unbanked, this is an invaluable resource and so I dug in my pockets and found 600Baht (£14.84, US$19.81) Noy a huge amount but to put it into context, minimum wage here in Thailand is 308Baht (£7.63, US$10.17). Oh, that's per DAY not per hour! If crypto has to achieve its ambition of being a serious banking alternative, it must-have utility to the less wealthy nations of the world, a point I've raised on numerous occasions in the past.

With that in mind, let's have a look at the costs involved and the ease of the process, and only using a mobile device.

So firstly, I logged into coins.co.th.....

AS you can see, there is a BTC wallet and a Thai Baht wallet, and the estimated value of both and so I clicked 'Cash In'

I chose the 'No Bankbook Deposit' option and then option 2 which is for SCB Bank. Note the bottom notion of transferring money in using some of the popular mobile money platforms here.

You type in the amount you wish to deposit and go to the CDM / ATM, in this case, the very one pictured below!

It takes just a few seconds to type in the account number of coins.co.th and drop the cash in the slot and after a chance to double-check the account number, the machine gives you a receipt slip. Then it's back to the phone.

Don't lose the slip and note the deposit time which you'll be using as a reference and then as you can see from the screen, you need to upload a copy of the slip for verification and click 'Fully Paid'.

You then get a nice confirmation that the order is being processed...

So I finished my coffee, jumped on the scooter and tootled off the 1km home.
I wish I'd have stuck to the mobile now but I jumped on the laptop and at 16.25 logged into coins.co.th to be greeted by my wallet with the 600Baht sat there in the cash wallet ready to be converted into BTC.

As you can see, there is a fair spread across the buy and sell price and so converting it, I ended up with 0.00106915 BTC which was 585.4 Baht so I'd lost 15Baht which is around 2.5%.

Time to fire-up @blocktrades !! and send the BTC to the Hive Blockchain and convert it into Hive,

Now after this, I have to choose the transfer fee which coins.co.th allows you to do. Obviously, it was going to be the cheapest and slowest due to the small amount being sent!

I didn't think the fee was too bad but wondered how long it would take! Whenever I send crypto about, I've always got the cheeks nipped until it arrives!

I needn't have worried! 145 Hive were sat in my account by five past five. The whole process from idea to getting my hands on the Hive, less than an hour.

I cannot recommend the seamless and simple coins.co.th and @blocktrades enough. They do exactly what they are supposed to do simply and quickly. No frills. Perfect for idiots like me, and other idiots yet to enter the crypto space.