A lot of people have been laughing at me and telling me that none of this crypto stuff is "real money," and others have pressed me about how to access my cryptocurrency money and make it so that I can use it in the real world. Lucklily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) for me, I recently came into a situation where I had to withdraw some of my Steemit earnings and turn it into fiat currency in order to buy a new computer. As I was going through the whole process, I got the idea that it was time for me to make a tutorial post on Steemit about how to do this, should anyone ever need to do it.
I'll go over the process that I went through first, and then towards the end I will go into my personal thoughts on why people should avoid doing this at all costs, unless some situation comes up (like it did with me) where you absolutely need the money. First, I had to wait for a post to reach payout.
Then, I went to my wallet and redeemed my post rewards.
After I had some balance in my Steemit wallet, I then went to Bittrex and went to my Bittrex Wallet, then I typed in SBD into the search field, and then I clicked on the "+" button next to the SBD wallet.
Then, I took the memo that it provided me with and copied it.
After that, I went back to my Steemit Wallet, clicked on the arrow next to the amount in my Steem Backed Dollars, and clicked on Transfer.
From there, I entered "bittrex" in the "To" field, the amount that I wanted to transfer out in the "Amount" field, and I pasted the memo that I copied from the Bittrex window into the "Memo" field.
After clicking Submit, I had to enter my password to confirm the transaction, and then I had to wait a few minutes for my balance to show up in my Bittrex Wallet. Once it did show up, I clicked on the "SBD" link to access the SBD Market.
Once I arrived at the SBD Market, I went to the right side of the Trading section, the Sell Steemdollars section.
Then, because I was in a hurry to exchange my money, I clicked on the "Max" button next to Units to sell off all the SBD I transferred to Bittrex, and I clicked on the "Price" button next to Ask, and I clicked on Ask from the dropdown menu that popped up, in order to sell them at the latest asking price. Then I hit the "- Sell SteemDollars" button to finalize the transaction and place my Sell Order into the marketplace.
After my SBD had been sold for BTC, I then went back to my Bittrex Wallet and once again typed SBD into the search field, and this time I clicked on the "-" button next to the SBD in order to withdraw my BTC balance from Bittrex.
Then, I went to my Bitcoin wallet on Coinbase, clicked on Accounts, clicked on the "Receive" button under my Bitcoin Wallet, and clicked on the "Copy" button next to my BTC Wallet Address to copy it to my clipboard.
Then, I went back to my Bittrex Wallet and pasted the BTC Wallet Address that I copied into the "Address" field, I clicked on the double up arrow button next to the "Quantity" field to send the entire BTC balance of my Bittrex Wallet over, and I clicked on the "Withdrawal" button to finalize the withdrawal and initiate the transaction.
From there, I drove out to my closest Bitcoin ATM and began the quick and easy process of withdrawing my BTC balance (which started out as SBD balance) into USD.
Like I said, the process from here was pretty simple. First, I had to enter my mobile phone number, so that I could get a code to verify my identity.
Then, I entered the code that was texted to my phone.
After that, I clicked on "Sell Bitcoins" to initiate the actual withdrawal process.
Then, I entered the amount that I needed to withdraw in USD.
From there, I had to scan the QR code on the screen with my Bitcoin wallet app, and I entered the exact amount shown on the screen and sent it over.
Once the transaction was sent through, the money was processed and all I had to do was wait for the Bitcoin ATM to dispense my cash.
It dispensed the money bill by bill, and on the screen, kept track of how much was left to dispense as each bill came out.
And just like that, I had cash in hand from what began as Steem Backed Dollars, a cryptocurrency generated as rewards through this amazing online platform that we all know and love as Steemit.com.
All in all, the whole process took about half an hour or so. Pretty quick, pretty simple. Not as instantaneous as most would like, but hey, it still works! And with that money, I was able to buy a new computer and continue on my Steemit journey. I normally would not have withdrawn any of this money, because I believe in reinvesting and keeping the money within the cryptosphere, but my laptop that I had been using just crapped out on me and started giving me way too many problems. It was long overdue for a replacement.
And now, as for my personal opinion on why you should not do any of this unless you absolutely have to. Like I said above, I fully believe in reinvesting Steemit earnings back into the platform as much as possible. This is what we should be doing in order to power up our accounts. I see it as a long-term investment not only into the platform, but into ourselves as well, because the more powered up we are, the more effective we will be as community members here on the STEEM blockchain, and the more we will be able to help our fellow Steemians experience the same kind of success that we have experienced so far.
This platform, this blockchain, is here to stay for the long haul, and will only grow in popularity and use as time goes on and as more and more big influencers like @justin3lau discover it and come on board. If you want to be truly successful when the big Steem boom does happen, now is the time to be powering up as much as possible and making sure you establish yourself as a strong member of the community.
Well, I guess that's it for now, thank you so much for reading! I'm sorry this post got so long, but I really hope someone out there found it helpful. If you did, I hope you will consider resteeming it so that it can help as many people as possible.
Check out some of my other posts!
How to Use Tags to Maximize Visibility for Your Posts and Gain More Upvotes
How The Minnow Support Project Helps You Achieve Your Dreams on Steemit
How I Achieved 200 Followers in My First Month on Steemit
Why I Chose to Invest $100 in Steem
How To Set Up Your Steemit Profile
The Dawn of The Dancing Dreamers
The Dawn of Friendship In a New Age
I'm Just an Island Boy Living in Utah who Loves EDM
!steemitworldmap 40.754539 lat -111.902618 long Salt Lake City, Utah local Steemian! d3scr