How to Buy Decentraland (MANA) - A Beginner’s Guide

Below let's explore how to use a cryptocurrency broker to access financial instruments attached to MANA. It's vital to select the right broker to avoid getting scammed. This means you will have to check the reputation of the broker, what security measures they have in place to protect your funds, the usability of the platform, and so on. Popular brokers include eToro, Plus500, Skilling and many more.

1. Register with the Broker

The first step is registering with a broker of your choice. Visit the broker's official website and sign up by entering your name, phone number, email address and setting a strong password. It's easy to be tempted to use pseudonyms for this process. However, this can cause issues when it comes to verifying your account so ensure you use official names as they appear on your official documents.

2. Verify your Identity (KYC Process)

Once you sign in, it's time to verify your account to be allowed to interact with various financial instruments offered on the platform. This involves uploading a photo of your national ID or passport and a selfie. Or the platform will request for a video call to verify if it's you on the document submitted. You will also have to submit a utility bill to verify your residence, such as a water bill or electric bill that isn't more than six months old.

3. Deposit Funds with your Preferred Payment Method

With your account verified, it's time to fund your account and trade. Go to the deposit tab and select the preferred mode according to the available options. The speed and cost will vary depending on the mode; therefore, it's good to consider these factors before settling on one mode.

4. Open a Position to Long/Short MANA

Opening a long position involves choosing the size of your trade. This can be 100 MANA tokens. Then select the leverage you wish to use. Enter the price you would like to enter the long position. When the price gets there, your order will execute. 

Sometimes, based on your analysis, you might realise the price of MANA is about to drop. This can allow you to short the asset by opening a CFD trade and then waiting for the price to drop before closing the CFD trade. Here you will get to keep the price difference as your profit. Brokers will allow you to short MANA with leverage and make potentially higher profits.

5. Close your position

If you take a long position, once the price goes up to a level you feel confident to sell, you can close your position, and the tokens will be sold, thus keeping the profit. You could also make use of automated settings such as a Stop-loss or Take-profit order that close your position when a predetermined target price is reached. 

How To Buy MANA with an Exchange

As is the case with brokers, you have to invest some time to select an exchange to buy MANA tokens. The platform you choose should have an excellent reputation such as great security and easily usable by individuals of all skill levels. Below let's see the steps you need to take to purchase MANA on an exchange of your choice.

1. Set up a MANA Wallet

This has to be the first step you need to take since you will be dealing with the actual asset. Wallets allow you to hold private keys that offer access to your tokens on their network. When it comes to cryptocurrency wallets, you have two options; hardware and software wallets. Software wallets are applications that allow you to hold your private keys that can be used to access your coins on your PC or smartphone. In contrast, hardware wallets are physical devices that resemble USB flash drives that allow users to store their private keys offline using applications. They are more secure than software wallets since they aren't connected to the internet most of the time. However, the wallet you choose will depend on how often you need to access your coins and the amount you hold. Software wallets are easily accessible and convenient for trading cryptocurrency and regular transactions, whereas hardware wallets such as Ledger Nano are convenient for long-term holders and those who own many tokens.

2. Choose and Join an Exchange that sells MANA

Based on your research, go ahead and join the exchange of your choice. This involves visiting the exchange's official website and signing up by entering your name, email address, phone number and setting a strong password. Then proceed to verify your account to be allowed to use the exchange. The process resembles what you will experience on brokers. This has been explained in the section above.

3. Choose Your Payment Methods to Buy MANA

Top platforms will offer a variety of payment modes to buy MANA tokens. Select the mode you feel most comfortable with and proceed to make the purchase. Remember, various modes will attract different fees. And the speed at which the transaction will be processed will differ.

4. Place an Order to Buy MANA

Go to the buy tab and select MANA and then proceed to purchase the token using any of the payment modes supported on the platform of your choice. For example, on Binance, you need to click on the coin symbol, select the appropriate pair and then enter the amount you would like to spend or the number of coins you would like to purchase, enter the necessary details, and complete the process.

5. Safely Storing Your MANA in a Wallet

Once the tokens reflect on your account balance, it's time to safely store them by transferring them to the wallet you acquired at the start of this process. If you intend to use the tokens often, you can go for software wallets. On the other hand, if you intend to hold onto them for long, go for hardware wallets.

Should you Buy or Trade MANA?

The answer to this question lies in your investment strategy, whether it's long-term or short-term. Buying and holding MANA tokens is associated with a long-term investment. It is easier than trading the asset, especially for beginners, since there isn't much required to buy and hold the asset other than signing up on an exchange, making the purchase, and transferring the tokens to a private wallet. On the other hand, if you choose to trade, which is associated with short-term investing, you have to educate yourself on how to go about it; otherwise, you will likely lose your money. You need to be aware of the many moving parts to make trading profitable, such as conducting technical and fundamental analysis. Also, you have to watch out for events that are likely to influence the asset's price and adjust your trading strategy accordingly. 

What's the Difference Between a MANA Exchange and a Broker?

An exchange is a platform that allows users to access the actual MANA asset. They came about to help users buy and sell the tokens with ease. Most exchanges are centralised, but this trend is changing with the rise of decentralised exchanges (DEXs) that operate peer-to-peer with no intermediaries. Exchanges differ from brokers in that they offer users access to the actual asset, whereas brokers provide you with financial instruments attached to the actual assets. 

One such instrument is CFDs, a derivative product representing a contract between the trader and a broker. They allow users to speculate on the price of MANA with potentially high returns due to leverage that increases your exposure within the market. A broker will act as an intermediary and help place trades for you. Some of the instruments you can trade using a broker include forex, commodities, precious metals, indices and crypto.

If you opt to use an exchange, it means you need access to the actual asset. This means you need a wallet to store your tokens to be safe. However, since you are dealing with derivatives on brokers, there is no need for a wallet.

MANA: Long Vs. Short Term Investment

There are two ways to invest in MANA; as a short-term or long-term investor. Short-term investors will use active trading strategies to make regular profits from the MANA market. These include day trading, trend trading, swing trading, and scalping. These strategies vary in the number of days you let the trade play out, but it's mostly within a day and a few weeks or months. It can be highly profitable if you know what you are doing since the crypto market is highly volatile, offering opportunities to profit every day. However, you need to educate yourself on conducting technical and fundamental analysis to predict the market with a higher degree of accuracy. Also, learn risk management to protect your investment. Investing in a reputable trading course should help you here. Also, you can use brokers to make the most of the volatile MANA price. 

There are a few ways to protect your investment as a short-term investor. For example, suppose you expect the price of MANA to drop. In that case, you can borrow the token using a broker and sell it immediately and then wait for the price to drop significantly before repurchasing the coins and repaying your debt. 

What you get to keep is the price difference since the coins will be a lot cheaper. This strategy is known as shorting and works well in a bear market. It's more of a short-term investment strategy and will take weeks and even months.

If you want to minimise the risks of handling a volatile asset such as MANA, you can hedge your positions. This involves opening trading positions in opposite directions to cover the losses that might arise from another position. For this purpose, you can use CFDs, shorting, and futures to hedge your MANA investment. By doing this, you can secure your capital by guaranteeing your initial trading position doesn't result in financial losses. You also get to manage your risk and maximize your profit potential with limited downside.

On the other hand, the long-term investment, just like the name, involves buying MANA and holding onto the token for an extended period which can be years. You need to be a true believer in the project. Invest time to research what the project is all about, its problems, and if there is a chance, it will experience higher adoption with time. Once you identify the project is solid, then buy the tokens and transfer them to a private wallet where you get to keep your private keys.

3 Tip to Buy MANA

Below are three things you need to pay attention to when buying MANA. These can make or break your experience.

1. Choose the Right Time and Do Your Own Research on MANA

Timing the market is vital, especially for short-term traders. You don't want to get in the market after a major rally, and a correction is around the corner. You will have to learn how to conduct technical and fundamental analysis to make informed trading decisions. If you are a long-term investor, timing the market doesn't matter since the current or short-term price range will not bother you. You believe the project will grow with time. Therefore, you are more than happy to invest in MANA no matter the price and hold your tokens for the long term. Still, you need to do your own research to establish if the project is worth the investment.

2. Comparing Costs to Buy MANA

On different platforms that offer access to MANA tokens, there are costs you are likely to incur. These costs come in the form of fees such as transaction fees, deposits, and withdrawal fees. Transaction fees are associated with network fees for sending tokens and an extra charge for the platform facilitating the buying and selling of MANA. As for deposit fees, these will stem from the payment process you choose to fund your account using. And the withdrawal fees will vary from one platform to another. Brokers will not charge any deposit and withdraw fees but will take commissions on a given bunch of transactions. They will also charge an inactivity fee if you go for long without using your account. It's good to take time to compare the various costs you are likely to encounter using different routes to access MANA and select the path that offers the least costs without compromising the quality of services you receive.

3. Safety and Security when Buying MANA

The safety and security of the platform you choose to buy MANA on should be your top priority. The last thing you want is to lose your investment. It's advisable to use reputable platforms to buy MANA tokens, be it brokers or exchanges since these employ robust security measures to protect user funds. Regulators require these platforms to hold security certificates that show they are safe for investors. They conduct regular security measures to test for weaknesses and fix any issues found. Cryptography and encryption are used to guard against hacks. On a personal level, they will allow the user to safeguard their account by setting a strong password and enabling two-factor authentication (2FA). This can be through Google Authenticator, SMS, or email authentication.

MANA uses cryptography, decentralisation, and consensus mechanism to safeguard its network from bad actors as a digital asset. This helps reduce the chance of a 51% attack.

It's not only centralized exchanges that offer users the chance to buy MANA but decentralized exchanges that operate peer to peer. Most of these rely on a rating basis based on past user experience. The higher the rating based on many trades, the more trustworthy the trader is and vice versa. Here you will have to watch out for yourself since the risk is higher to be scammed by anonymous characters.

What is the Best Payment Method for Buying MANA

Below let's explore many options you can use to purchase MANA today on exchanges and even fund your broker trading account.

• Buy MANA with Cash – Currently, this isn't possible. But on a platform such as Binance, you can access their peer-to-peer platform and buy USDT, BTC, BNB, ETH, or DAI and transfer it to the spot market where you can exchange the tokens for MANA.
• Buy MANA with a Credit Card – Most exchanges will offer this method, and it's pretty convenient if you reside in a country that hasn't restricted the card providers from facilitating crypto transactions. This mode can also be used to fund your broker account.
• Buy MANA with Bank Transfer – You can also use bank transfers to purchase this digital asset; however, note this can be a very slow process as bank transfers can take up to a week.
• Buy MANA with Bitcoin – This is the option that most exchanges will offer. You fund your account with BTC and then proceed to swap the token for MANA. 
• Buy MANA with PayPal – This is another method that you can use to buy this asset. Recently PayPal has begun to support the buying and selling of crypto assets. Also, the payment mode is supported on many platforms that offer this token.

Other Ways to Buy MANA

There are a few other ways you can get your hands on MANA, such as the use of decentralized exchanges. These are peer-to-peer platforms that allow users to trade directly without intermediaries and negotiate on the terms of trade before settling the transaction. Here you have access to local currencies and other localized payment modes, making these platforms ideal for individuals based in areas with strict regulations or less coverage to access crypto assets. Even if you don't find a platform that specifically handles MANA, you can access any other token such as ETH or BTC and transfer it to an exchange that supports MANA before making the swap.