Where to Buy Bitcoin Texas

Buying bitcoin safely on licensed cryptocurrency exchanges in Texas. In addition, bitcoin ATMS are conveniently located, mining is prevalent and also the sale of goods and services to earn bitcoin is common.

Texas Cryptocurrency Market Summary

Buying and selling bitcoin is legal
Cryptocurrency exchanges are available
State licensed exchanges are the safest to choose

Regulation and legality to invest, trade and own cryptocurrency is legal in Texas. Further development of law in the State is veering towards developing further controls to enable anti-money laundering to be effective. Rather then over regulating, Texas as started with a rather hands off approach with a slow increase in controls.

In terms of Texans using onshore or offshore exchanges there hasn’t been any prohibition to speak of as a customer. However, at a Federal level, there has been pointed words towards offshore and “poorly” licensed cryptocurrency exchanges, effectively forcing them to deny access to US customers or else face penalties.

That said, as a Texan, you are free to choose any bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange

If you intend to trade and invest in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies in Texas, then we highly recommend the cryptocurrency exchanges that we have researched and reviewed.

Top 5 Texas Bitcoin Exchanges

Overview of Texas Bitcoin Exchanges

Texas has taken a hands off approach to governance and compliance of bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchanges. Although Texas was the first US state to implement the first bitcoin legislation, it really didn’t amount to much. And so, you will find that Texas has fallen behind the back of the pack of US States with addressing how to treat bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

As a Texan, you can trade and invest in bitcoin and a whole raft of other cryptocurrencies. As an exchange, licensing is being established in the state, however, Federal laws appear to override any state legislation as imposed by the SEC and FinCEN.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ATM’s can be found in the State. These are located at mostly high density populated localities.

If you are planning to invest in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, you will need to engage with an exchange. There are several factors to consider when choosing an exchange. These should include: volume and liquidity, customer support and service, platform user friendliness, cryptocurrency offerings and regulation and licensing.

We delve further into the factors, that you need to consider when choosing an exchange.

🔒 Safety and Security

Safety and security should be at the forefront of your mind when choosing an exchange. You may be aware of anecdotes whereby exchanges have been hacked and coins stolen. There are plenty of other reported incidences of scams, ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, and customer data stolen or leaked to the public. You would be crazy not to consider choosing an exchange that provides the best possible protection for you, especially if you plan on using their online wallet to store your coins.

The locality of where the exchange is based strongly correlates to safety and security. Some are based at offshore tax havens such as Malta or Gibraltar. Compliance is relatively more lax in these jurisdictions that onshore in the US. It is hard to definitively declare that offshore exchanges are less safe and secure, but it would be fair to say, there is less oversight by the US government.

Finding a safe and secure exchange is therefore not an easy process. Thorough research and review of exchanges will NOT guarantee that the exchange won’t be hacked. Ironically, the larger the exchange is, the more expose to hackers it will be i.e. it’s more attractive to hackers. But then again, if you choose a smaller exchange, theoretically they have less money to invest in security.

In any event, when choosing any exchange, make sure they have a two factor authentication process. This requires users to use at least two devices to confirm identity. Choose an exchange that has security in place to protect your identity, and one that has a good track record.

📞 Customer Support

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchanges are online platforms that you use to buy bitcoin and altcoins. Evidently, you will need to learn how to buy and sell through the functionality of the site. Whether you are new or experienced with buying and selling coins, a user will need to understand the functionality of the platform.

Inevitably, you will need to seek customer support to assist with using the platform. Or to explain the behavior, or even technical support.

Many exchanges also offer many investment products (not just the simply vanilla buy and sell). There are some products that includes options trading, derivatives and margin lending. The blend of financial products with cryptocurrencies, can create an extremely complicated platform to use.

It’s imperative that the exchange that you choose, offers quality customer support. The customer support should be accessible with email, online chat messaging, and ideally a hotline. The response should also be prompt and accurate. It would be pointless signing up to an exchange that simply replies with garbage.

💳 Payment Methods

When using an exchange, you will need to “exchange” fiat with crypto, or crypt with crypto. So, no doubt, there needs to be payment. How you make payment can be through various payment methods. The most common are via credit cards, debit cards, wire transfers and e-wallets. There are so many options available in payment methods, and each method comes with fees (that varies).

In choosing an exchange, make sure it provides the payment method that you would like to use. In addition, make sure that they fees aren’t going to bite into your transactions.

🪙 Cryptocurrency Selection

If you are planning on trading in bitcoin and USD only, you will be able to choose from a vast number exchanges. But, if you intend to invest and trade in a cryptocurrency that is less liquid, less well known as bitcoin, then you will need to search a little harder to find the right cryptocurrency exchange.

Naturally, the larger cryptocurrency exchanges will be able to offer a wider variety. And this will meet the needs of investors that have a diversification strategy (i.e. spreading their risk among several coins). But it doesn’t mean it will have what you are looking for.

Choose an exchange that offers what you want to trade in. Make sure that it fits with your cryptocurrency investment strategy.

🏷 Coupons and Discounts

You may have already been bombarded with emails offering you great bitcoin discounts and coupons to use. (Google is so clever, it knows when you have searched bitcoin and crypto, and ads will starting flooding in!).

Unfortunately, Google is everywhere, hence receiving marketing spam is unavoidable. But what are these coupons and discounts?

Exchanges are marketing to you, the opportunity to sign up with them with cheaper transaction fees, and coins (smart contracts) that entitles you to a slice of profits in the exchange or in other entities. They often describe these are free “shares”, like stock market shares. But instead of receiving a share certificate, you receive a coin.

It is really hard to discern the real and trustworthy discounts and coupons from the fake. There is a mix bag and is very much hit and miss.

DO NOT CHOOSE AN EXCHANGE BECAUSE IT IS OFFERING A COUPON OR DISCOUNT THAT IS APPEALING. It is high risk to simply choose an exchange because of the marketing spiel that you have received.

💰 Fees

When using a bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange, they make money from when through charging you a fee. Each exchange is allowed to charge fees in any manner. It can be fixed, variable, tiered, directly disclosed, implicit, or even hidden in the exchange rate. It is very hard to determine the true fee being charge by an exchange, and thus comparing is almost impossible.

The best way to select an exchange when considering fees, is to first examine your strategy. Will you be a high volume high dollar trader, or a low volume long term user. Fit your strategy with the fee plans that each exchange charges. Each investor will be different, and therefore we can make general comparisons, but please be aware that every investor will be different.

⚙️ Platform Reliability

The platform reliability will be more important for day traders, but it is also annoying for those who are low frequency trading as well. Similar to playing a video game or using an App, you don’t want it to crash. You don’t want it to have bugs, and you don’t want to consistently contact Customer Support to report a platform breakdown.

The bigger and larger exchanges, use expert software developers to maintain their platforms. This is where definitely scale and size does correlate to a higher stability in the platform.

But, what we are seeing in the industry, is that developer are building white label platforms! Behind each brand, each exchange, potentially is the same software platform!

📈 Liquidity

If you are intending to buy bitcoin, then you will have no problems with finding an exchange with high liquidity. I.e. the big exchanges will most certainly have many buyers and sellers.

If you are intending to buy altcoins (particular the new ones), then finding an exchange with many buyers and sellers many be difficult. This is where liquidity is important if you want to buy and sell rapidly and easily.

An exchange that has limited buyers and sellers, (though it may have cheaper transaction fees), could result in difficultly to liquidate positions.

Align your strategy with the liquidity of the exchange.

Texas Bitcoin Exchange Reviews

Texans can choose from many exchanges, both onshore and offshore. As a user, you can choose either without fear of penalty or illegality. Though policy and laws are constantly changing, these usually relate to operators rather than users.

We review some of the more popular bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchanges for your ease of reference.

Coinbase

Coinbase is possibly the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. It has the most liquidity (prima facie) for Bitcoin as well as for the other top ten traded currencies. It is planning to launch an IPO (float on the stock exchange) in the near future, and will be valued at over a billion (if not billions) of dollars. The exchange is widely used because it offers a simply easy to use layout and functionality, and has established a good reputation as a leader in the industry.

Coinmama

Coinmama is the new kid on the block, but we like them. They are more limited in coin offerings, but are expansive in bitcoin and is available to connect traders globally.

Trading fees tend to lean towards the higher side, from 3.9% and 5.9% depending on dollar value and volume. This may eat into your investment strategy, particularly if you are a day trader. On the flip side, they have invested in a safe and secure platform, and can be found to be reliable and honest.

Etoro

Etoro is a well established financial services company, that first began as a forex exchange offering a fast and reliable platform for trading. They have since expanded in cryptocurrencies and are marketing extremely hard to attract more customers.

Etoro was founded in 2007, creating a platform that is accessible to many countries around the world. Pioneers in providing easy access to financial markets to retail investors, they have now expanded their offerings to Californians into the crypto world. Their customer support can be a little slow at times, with the quality of user advice of their platform a bit and miss.

Their platform, isn’t as user friendly as the others, hence the reliance of customer support. Having said that, they have been around for a long time.

What we don’t like about Etoro is their aggressive marketing campaigns. We understand that marketing is important, however, social media is flooded with “customers” vouching for them. This is a very bad look and in fact, gives the impression that Etoro is a scam site.

CEX.IO

One of the best exchanges in terms of fees. Extremely reasonable and won’t hurt your investment strategy. Offering a wide range of fiat and cryptocurrencies, CEX.IO is a relatively newcomer that is looking to expand quickly in the market. Payment methods are also extremely broad, with credit card, debit cards, wire transfer and e-wallets accepted.

Can they be trusted? Still a bit too early to tell, but they are moving up in size quite quickly.

Kraken

You may have heard of the twins that invested Facebook and took Mark Zuckerberg to court. Well, the twins developed and invested in Kraken, one of the best cryptocurrency exchanges for Americans. The support behind the platform stems from the twins, who also own a large quantity of bitcoin, enabling them to facilitate and sustain an exchange.

According, liquidity is not an issue, with many customers choosing to use Kraken. The platform itself, is smooth with very little latency. Trades can be performed quickly and reliably, with security at the forefront with a three tiered verification process.

In addition, transactions fees, through not the cheapest, are very reasonable.

Texas Legality of Bitcoin

It’s hard to believe, but yes, Texas was the first US state to take action and propose and introduce laws that relate to cryptocurrency industry. In 2014, the Texas Department of Banking issued the Regulatory Treatment of Virtual Currencies Under the Texas Money Services Act. This Act specifically declares cryptocurrencies are not to be treated as “legal money”. Though Texas was the first state to introduce legislation, it really didn’t amount to much.

It wasn’t until 2017, that there was an attempt to change the constitutional to officially declare the right to own and use cryptocurrencies. H.J.R 89, 85th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Tx. 2017). However this was voted down and therefore failed.

It wasn’t until 2019 that a taskforce was established by government to formulate blockchain policy and a framework. The task force was approved in legislation H.B. 4517, 86th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Tex. 2019).

Subsequent to the establishment of the task force several bills were introduced. These included:

Embedding blockchain into the Business Code of Conduct regarding “electronic data systems”- S.B. 1859, 86th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Tex. 2019).
The use of blockchain to enhance local government cybersecurity – S.B. 64, 86th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Tex. 2019).
A Know Your Client requirement that mandates the collection of identity prior to selling cryptocurrencies – H.B. 4371, 86th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Tex. 2019).

Lastly in September 2019, cryptocurrencies were defined. The definition essentially allowed law enforcement agencies to pursue activity that related to money laundering -S.B. 207, 86th Leg., Reg. Sess. (Tex. 2019).

Summary

Texas was the first mover in introducing bitcoin and cryptocurrency policy. Having said that, it has been slow to advance further regulation and has consistently had a hands off approach.

Therefore, the federal laws are more pertinent to users in Texas. Residents of Texas can choose from onshore or offshore exchanges.