A Very Cost Effective Way to buy NANO (XRB — RaiBlocks) with USD

How to buy Nano (XRB) with USD, formerly RaiBlocks

4 min readFeb 5, 2018

Currently, there is no way to buy NANO directly with USD without first buying another cryptocurrency. This quick tutorial will show you how to go from USD to NANO in the most cost-effective way starting from Coinbase.

Disclaimer: Using the Coinbase link will net you and I both an extra $10 of BTC if you happen to purchase $100. The Binance link is also an affiliate link.

Let’s Get Started

Create a Coinbase account if you don’t already have one.
Connect your bank account to avoid credit card transaction fees.
If you don’t want to wait, you can immediately buy funds with a credit or debit card (Visa/Mastercard).
Create a Binance account if you don’t already have one. This is where we will end up acquiring NANO.
Login to GDAX with your Coinbase account. GDAX is simply Coinbase’s exchange. The reason we are using GDAX is that it is free to transfer funds out of, whereas in Coinbase, there incurs a fee. It’s also free to transfer funds from Coinbase into GDAX, so don’t worry there.
Confirm your identity on GDAX with something as simple as a picture of the front and back of your license. The process can also be completed on Coinbase here. It took about 24 hours for my identity to be verified. Once again, if this is too long, please refer to my other guide for the quickest method. That guide is written for XRP, but the steps are the same.
If you get rejected instantly a few times, try using the mobile app. That helped for me.
If GDAX identity confirmation is taking some time, go ahead and transfer funds from your bank to buy Ethereum (ETH) so we’ll be ready to go once you are confirmed. Purchase the USD amount you want to invest into NANO, we are only using Ethereum to exchange for NANO.

Once Everything Has Been Set Up…

We’re good to go. The flow of funds looks like this:

USD -> Coinbase -> ETH -> GDAX -> Binance -> NANO

I know it looks a bit daunting, but trust me — it isn’t and wont take but 15 minutes or so (depending on transfer speeds). Plus, I’ll walk you through the whole process myself. Okay, here we go!

Go to this page on GDAX to deposit your ETH from Coinbase.

2. Press the DEPOSIT button as shown above, and press the Coinbase Account tab, selecting ETH Wallet as the source.

3. Press the Deposit funds button and confirm the deposit.

4. Navigate to this page on Binance. Search ETH and press the Deposit button.

5. Copy your ETH Deposit Address and go back to this same page on GDAX. Press the WITHDRAW button this time.

6. Navigate to the ETH Address tab and paste in your ETH Deposit Account from Binance into the DESTINATION field, and press the (MAX) button to populate the amount for you.

7. Press Withdraw funds and wait for the ETH to transfer to Binance. You can check on the status within Binance here, once they are transferred they will appear.

8. Once they are in Binance, navigate to this page.