Ethereum Wallets: How to Buy and store Ethereum safely?

(Last Updated On: December 11, 2018)

Ethereum is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies and second next to only Bitcoin in Market cap. In this blog, we shall cover minute details on Ethereum wallet in India and how to buy Ethereum using Bank Account or Credit Card or Debit Card. Some of the methods allow you to buy ethereum anonymously or without id proof, while others will require you to complete KYC.

The Intent

Our Intent is to try and buy the ethereum using the INR because conversion from USD -> INR will incur currency conversion costs and you will get hit by a higher net purchase price of Ethereum

1. Buy Etherum from koinex.in

koinex is one of the latest exchanges to have made mark in the Indian crypto market and allows you to buy bitcoin, ether, Ripple or Litecoin from INR. We decided to give it a try and it turned out to be a pretty simple affair. Please not that you can’t buy from credit or debit card on koinex and if you intend to buy with debit/credit card, hop over to method 2.

Here are the steps to buy ethereum from koinex:

1. Sign up at koinex.
2. Submit KYC documents. Yes, koinex is KYC compliant so you can’t buy anonymously from koinex.
3. Once your account is approved, you can place buy orders on the exchange.
4. Please transfer INR to koinex bank account as you will be able to buy ethereum worth only the INR that is in your koinex account.
5. You get Ethereum in your koinex wallet once the order is matched.
6. Done !!

This is one of the best ways to buy ethereum as of today in India. For buying using credit/debit card or anonymously, continue reading this post further.

2. Buy bitcoin in INR and convert to Ethereum instantly :

This method requires that you already have an ethereum wallet and have an address where you can send ethereum to. The best way to get an ethereum address is to head over to blockchain.info, create an account and you get a brand new ethereum address. Otherwise method is to download the default application from Ethereum’s official site(https://ethereum.org/), this wallet can be used as your cold wallet.

1. Buy Bitcoin from Any popular bitcoin exchanges in India. If you are not sure, here is a guide to how to buy bitcoin in India.
2. Once you buy bitcoin and have bitcoin in your wallet in Indian exchange. Head over to changelly.com
3. Put in your email address and then the Ethereum wallet address where you want to send the converted Ethereum to.
4. In the next step, changelly will ask you to send the bitcoin to a specific address.
5. Go to your exchange and send the bitcoin to that address given by changelly.
6. Thats it, Changelly will convert BTC to ETH and send in to your ethereum address (You can see the progress on changelly order page).

Infact this method of changing into ETH will work with any exchange across the world. You can buy bitcoins from anywhere and convert to ethereum using the above mentioned steps.

3. Buy Ethereum from Ethexindia :

There is only one well known ethereum exchange in India and that is ethexindia. Ethexindia.com is an exchange where you can buy/sell ethereum. The website operates in the exchange format i.e the people list their buy/sell orders and the exchange matches their order.

The best part of buying ethereum from ethexindia is that you can buy in INR. Although this is my preferred method to buy Ethereum in India.But, I have moved it to the second spot because ethexindia is not accepting signups for most of the times and their KYC is a long process.

Steps to open an account at EthexIndia (Signups are disabled as of now)

Making an account at ethexindia.com is simple if the exchange is open to accepting new accounts (Please note that the exchange stops creating new accounts for indefinite periods and it can be a bit of trouble for sure).

1. Head over to ethexindia.com.
2. The signup at the home page will ask your email, mobile and name.
3. Once done, verify your account by putting in the OTP that you got at your email or mobile.
4. The system will assign you client code that you will need while signing in to the exchange.
5. Every sign in requires you to put in an OTP which is as secure as it can get.
6. Alright, now back to buying ethereum using ethexindia.
7. When you signin for the first time, you will see that you wont be able to create orders. This is because Ethexindia is KYC/AML compliant exchange. They require you to complete the KYC. The current timeline to process the KYC is 4-6 weeks(I know that this can be a bit painful).
8. Once the KYC is done, you can start transferring money from your account to ethexindia account which is then reflected into the dashboard.
9. You can create buy orders as per the money in your account. Once the order is matched, you get the ethereum in your ethexindia wallet

This is one of the best ways to buy ethereum using the INR. There is no other known exchange offering to buy ethereum using INR as of now.

Buy Ethereum using Credit/Debit Card

In case you are not able to signup to ethexindia or dont want to follow the conversion route for any reason including but not limited to anonymously buying ethereum, continue reading. All the following methods will buy Ethereum by charge on the Credit/Debit Card and hence the currency will be first converted to USD which means you will incur higher price of ethereum.

Buy Ethereum using Cex.io

1. Cex.io is a popular crypto currency trading and purchasing platform. It provides its own ethereum wallet. Head over to buy/sell section of cex.io at https://cex.io/buysell.
2. You will see the Ethereum price which is fixed for 2 minutes.
3. Click Buy and it will take you over to create an account and you can buy ethereum using credit card or debit card.
4. Thats it. Buying with Cex.io is really easy.
5. You can buy a certain amount of ethereum anonymously on cex.io.

Please note that cex.io rates are on significantly higher side and factoring in the credit card transaction fees, you might end up buying ethereum at significantly higher rate.

Disclaimer : There is a high degree of risk involved in trading. Please follow due diligence before investing your money.The information on this website cannot be constituted as professional advice in any regard.

Interested in Virtual currencies, you may also like to have a look at Best Bitcoin Wallet : Review !

Do let us know in comments, if you had used any of the above or other methods to buy ethereum in India as it might be really useful for our readers.