Crypto Newbie: How I got AMPL using KuCoin
Ampleforth (AMPL) is a different kind of cryptocurrency. Its inventor created it to fill a hole he saw in the cryptocurrency landscape. He thinks AMPL will become very useful in decentralized finance transactions.
--The value of one AMPL is supposed to stay within 5% of the value of a 2019 US dollar. So this means that its value won't decrease due to inflation, the way something like Tether (USDT) will.
--It does not have a fixed supply like Bitcoin and many other coins. Instead, as demand goes up and down, the supply of AMPL increases and decreases in response to it. This happens in the wallets of everyone who already owns AMPL as well. So if I had 100 AMPL, and overall demand increased by 10%, I would end up with 110 AMPL. Cool, right? (On the other hand, if demand decreased, I would end up with fewer AMPL.) This means that the percent of the AMPL pool you own always remains the same.
I heard about AMPL a few weeks ago when my Coinbase account gave me the option of earning FORTH tokens by learning about them. FORTH is the other half of Ampleforth--the governance token. Owning FORTH allows people to weigh in on any changes to how AMPL works.
As I read about AMPL (Ampleforth.org has a lot of information), I became convinced that it can be a major player in the future of finance. (I am no expert, though.) So I decided to get some. And then I ran into trouble.
I looked at Ampleforth.org/exchange to review the places you can supposedly get AMPL. But when I looked at the first few options, Uniswap, KuCoin, and Bitfinex, I couldn't find AMPL as an option under buying or trading. (Uniswap said I could "import" it as an option, but I don't know what that means.) I'm not the savviest crypto person, so I thought, maybe I'm missing something.
I went on the Ampleforth subreddit, which also has a lot of good reading, and asked them for help. The first answer encouraged me to check out KuCoin again, so I went ahead and made an account on there. (Side note, KuCoin has a LOT of security features to keep your account from getting spammed or hacked. I think I've seen movies where people broke into the CIA quicker than I can get into my KuCoin account!)
When I read the terms of service, I found this important bit of info: You cannot directly trade fiat money for cryptocurrency on KuCoin. Instead, they send you to one of several third-party exchanges, and then you can use fiat money to buy Bitcoin, Ether, Tether, and a few others--but not AMPL. (I didn't want to deal with deciding whether to trust yet another website, so I decided to transfer crypto from my Coinbase account instead.)
What you have to do on KuCoin is trade another crypto to get AMPL. I went to my Coinbase account and bought $25 (USD) worth of Tether. (I have Bitcoin and Ether, but since they are down in value, I didn't want to use them.)
Then I followed the instructions in this very useful video to see how to transfer the Tether from Coinbase to KuCoin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InoQ_6KuHYo&t=201s
NOTE: There are fees! Coinbase charged me almost $4 (USD) to transfer my little bit of Tether to KuCoin. (This was after the $1.50 they charged me for buying the Tether.) I would imagine that you'd get a better deal transferring larger amounts, but since I was just trying this out, I didn't want to commit much money.
Once the Tether was in KuCoin, I had to transfer it from the "main" account to the "trading" account (click on "assets" in the upper right corner. You'll see boxes labeled with different account types and links in the boxes for "transfer", "lend," "trade," etc.)
Once the Tether was transferred, I clicked "trade" in the trading account box. This took me to a very busy and somewhat confusing page giving a chart for Bitcoin/Tether trades and running columns showing trades happening in real time. The place you actually do your trading is in the lower right corner. (Tip: the default is for a limit order. If you want to buy at the market price, click "market.")
So, for about $19 worth of Tether, I got about 26 AMPL (since it is down in price at this time--May 20, 2021.) When the rebasing gets AMPL back up to the $1 value, maybe I will have fewer of them. I'm still trying to figure that out!
I hope this is helpful to other crypto newbies like me.
