I think most of us would agree that the crypto train is alive and well but if you're anything
like me then you might feel a little overwhelmed and maybe even have a fear of missing out.
So today I'm going to walk you through exactly how to buy cryptocurrencies using one of my
favorite finance platforms SoFi, and I'll even show you how you can use your credit
card rewards points to buy cryptocurrencies.
Alright let's jump right into it.
What is going on everyone?
I hope you are all having a fantastic day.
So I have made a full review video on the SoFi crypto platform and in that video I did
quickly walk through how to buy crypto's within the app.
So we will be brushing up on that process in today's video but several things have changed
since I made that original review including the addition of many more cryptocurrencies,
some awesome educational resources, and of course the ability to buy crypto's with your
credit card rewards points.
So first let's brush up on how to set up your SoFi crypto account and fund it and then we'll
talk about some of those awesome new features.
So like I talked about in my full review, SoFi crypto is a free extension of the already
free SoFi investing account.
So if you don't already have a sofi investing account you'll definitely want to go ahead
and open one and I will leave a link in the description where you can get $25 of a stock
of your choice when you open your SoFi invest account and will also help support my channel
which I seriously appreciate so much.
Okay so once you open up your SoFi invest accounts, you want to navigate to the invest
tab at the bottom of the screen.
So as I've talked about in previous videos I keep like 90% of my investments in Wealthfront
because that platform is automated but for the purposes of today's demo I've moved about
1000 bucks to my SoFi invest account.
So if you haven't yet set up your crypto investing account you can click the create new account
button and there will be an option for your crypto account and you can go ahead and follow
the prompts and set that up.
But once you have done that you'll see this individual crypto investing option and if
we click on that you can see that at the moment I have $0.00 in there.
So if we click the add cash button I'm going to move another $1000 into my SoFi crypto
account and the great thing is you can pull this money right from your SoFi money accounts
which just allows the transfer to happen way faster.
So this probably goes without saying but buying into the entire SoFi ecosystem is really awesome
for a number of reasons.
Alright so now that we've opened our crypto account and funded it, we're now going to
click on the search icon and select crypto at the top of the screen.
Now this is where things have changed a lot recently and one of the first big updates
I wanted to show you.
So when this first launched I believe they only had five crypto's available to purchase
and when I made my original review I think they had just added a handful of others but
at the time of recording this video they have just shy of 30 crypto's available for purchase
including the big names like Bitcoin and ethereum as well as several lesser known coins like
chain link, cardano, and of course doge coin which I guess isn't necessarily a lesser known
coin at this point.
Unfortunately no shiba inu for the time being but I wouldn't be surprised if this is something
that they are frantically working on adding.
So from here buying crypto currencies is pretty self explanatory but you're going to select
the one that you are interested in buying so in this case let's say I want to buy some
cardono.
So I can click the buy now button type in either the dollar amounts or the number of
cardano coins that I would like to purchase click review and then you can click the buy
button at the bottom of the screen and there you go you just purchased your first cryptocurrency.
Now I do want to let you know that SoFi is going to charge a 1.25% fee on all crypto
purchases and I'll be completely honest with you...that is kind of high.
Now keep in mind that even the largest trading platforms like Coinbase do still charge a
fee with the option to get things like Coinbase pro in order to reduce those fees but again
the point of something like this is to just dip your toe in the water, get familiar with
the space and hopefully have some fun without risking a ton of money.
So I know 1.25% sounds like a lot but actually if you look at many of the competitors in
this space, their fees are going to be right around that and unfortunately that just seems
to be the standard with many crypto platforms although there certainly are ones that will
not charge a fee.
Okay so if we go back out to the discovery page and scroll over on the collections section,
there's another interesting tab called companies holding Bitcoin and this is just something
that I found to be really interesting because this is actually going to show you a list
of publicly traded company stocks that have significant Bitcoin holdings so if you truly
believe in the system and the blockchain and you want to invest in mainstream companies
that are investing in Bitcoin then this is a really easy way to do that.
So obviously we all know that Tesla is heavily invested in Bitcoin so you can literally just
click on that and right from there you can now not only purchase you’re cryptocurrencies
but you can also purchase stock of companies that are buying cryptocurrencies.
Pretty cool if you ask me.
Alright but going all the way back out to the main menu now the most unique part about
the whole SoFi ecosystem at the moment is the ability to buy crypto's with your SoFi
credit card rewards points.
Now allow me to clarify.
I am not saying that you are buying crypto's with your SoFi credit card...that is a horrible
idea...I hope that that is not even possible and I would never suggest anything like that
in a million years.
Bt what I am saying is the cash back that you get with your SoFi credit card is given
to you in the form of points and those points can be redeemed for crypto's.
So if we go to the credit card tab which is at the bottom of the screen in the middle
there's two important things I'll point out.
First of all I have a balance of $4 that must be paid off immediately so let's just go ahead
and take care of that before it even shows up on my statement and now that I'm debt free
I want to draw your attention to the points button towards the top of the screen.
So you can earn points in a number of ways with the sofa credit card and that's not the
topic of today's video but as you can see I currently have over 300 points in here so
if I click the redeem button it's going to give me a few different redemption options
one of which being crypto investing so I can selec, that click next, type in how many points
I would like to redeem and then it's going to allow me to pick what crypto I would like
to invest this money in.
So in the case of SoFi, one point is worth one penny therefore my 300 plus points is
worth a little over $3 meaning this is literally going to take cash back from my credit card
and invest that cash back directly into cryptocurrencies and I think that is so cool and unique.
Alright the last thing I want to show you that I have talked about before but I think
is really important is if you go back to the investing tab and scroll all the way to the
bottom there's a section called SoFi learn and under that there's actually an article
titled what is cryptocurrency and if you made it to this point in the video then I have
a feeling that you already know most of this stuff but this is a really great resource
that gives you a brief history on a number of popular crypto's and also gives you links
to a ton of other really great articles from SoFi.
So I get that SoFi learn might not be the most exciting thing in the world but I do
feel that staying well informed especially with something like crypto currencies is so
important because things can change very quickly as we have all learned.
So there you go in a matter of minutes you can literally go from having no steak in crypto's
to opening your account, funding it, and investing in your first cryptocurrency right from your
smartphone.
Now obviously I'm aware there are a million different crypto platforms to choose from
and truthfully SoFi probably isn't the best just because it's limited in terms of what
crypto's you can buy.
But I would again argue that it all goes back to the SoFi ecosystem and how fast and easy
it is to transfer funds, buy cryptocurrencies, and even use your SoFi credit card rewards
points to purchase crypto's.
So if you're going head first into crypto and putting a lot of money into it then no
this is probably not the platform for you.
But if you have that fear of missing out and you just want to dip your toe in the water
and you're already a SoFi customer then this is probably the easiest way to get started
but as always I'm just a guy on the Internet and I don't know anything so do your own research
and find a platform that is going to work best for you and your financial goals.
So I'd love to know what you think of the SoFi crypto platform down in the comments
section below and what crypto currencies you are currently keeping your eye on or would
like to see SoFi add to their platform.
As always if you did get value out of this content and you want to help support me the
easiest way to do that is actually by checking out some of my favorite financial tools down
in the description below many of which will give you some free money when you sign up
including one offer from the POINT cash back debit card that will currently give you $100
when you open an account and make your first purchase so definitely check that out using
the link down in the description below.
Be sure to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel for more content like this
in the future and of course thank you so much for your time I really do appreciate it.
Take it easy and I'll see you in the next one!