MarcForrest.com

Category: Crypto

How to Buy and Stake Terra LUNA in South Africa
I’ve always been a fan of exciting blockchain projects so when I stumbled across a new network called Terra, and the token it offers called Luna, I had to do more digging after having a brief read about it.
Below is some more info about the project from CoinMarketCap
What Is Terra (LUNA)

Terra is a blockchain protocol that uses fiat-pegged stablecoins to power price-stable global payments systems. According to its white paper, Terra combines the price stability and wide adoption of fiat currencies with the censorship-resistance of Bitcoin (BTC) and offers fast and affordable settlements.

Development on Terra began in January 2018, and its mainnet officially launched in April 2019. As of September 2020, it offers stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar, South Korean won, Mongolian tugrik and the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights basket of currencies — and it intends to roll out additional options.

Terra's native token, LUNA, is used to stabilize the price of the protocol's stablecoins. LUNA holders are also able to submit and vote on governance proposals.

So I started looking into how I could get my hands on some Luna tokens in South Africa. None of the popular exchanges like VALR & LUNO list Luna on their exchanges, so you would need to buy on an international exchange like Binance.

First you need to deposit ZAR into VALR or LUNO to enable you to buy Bitcoin. Once you have bought your Bitcoin you will need to transfer it to an exchange that supports Luna
I prefer using Binance as an international exchange as it has hundreds of coins & tokens to purchase or trade (eg Wave and XRP)
Once you have setup your Binance account you can go to the LUNA/BTC Trading page. They also offer a LUNA/BNB, LUNA/USDT, LUNA//BUSD & LUNA/EUR pairs
Once you have your LUNA safely tucked away on Binance, you can opt to leave it there and just keep accumulating, or there is another option called staking.
Staking is the process of actively participating in transaction validation (similar to mining) on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. On these blockchains, anyone with a minimum-required balance of a specific cryptocurrency can validate transactions and earn Staking rewards.
To stake your LUNA, you will need to move it out of Binance onto the Terra Network Blockchain. This may sound a bit daunting, but I promise it’s pretty easy
First off, you will need to create a Terra Wallet. This is done using the Terra Station software. You do not need to sign up or give any details as this is a completely decentralized exchange. Make sure you save your keywords when signing up to the new wallet. You will need these in the future should you wish to restore your Wallet
You can download the Chrome Extension (which I find the easiest to use or download the actual software)
You can go to https://station.terra.money/ website, where you can connect a Terra Wallet. To do this click on Connect in the top left hand side of the page.
Once you have created your wallet, you will see it in the top left of your page (instead of the Connect Button)
The address format is always in the format of “terraxxxxx”
You will need to copy this address and keep it handy while you log into Binance
You will need to go to the Withdraw section of your LUNA wallet in Binance. You can do this by clicking Wallet->Spot and then search for your LUNA coins
In the address section paste your address you copied in Step 7
You need to leave the Memo Section empty. You may get an error after clicking submit, but you can ignore that. I have seen a few people say the transfer did not come through when they put a Memo in.
After a few minutes you should get a notification in your Terra Station console that the coins are there and are available. From here there are a couple of things you can do. I mentioned earlier about Staking. There are a number of Validators you can stake your LUNA with.
Click on the Staking Menu item on the left, and then select your preffered Validator. There are hundreds and each one gives a brief explanation of why you should choose them

Once you have staked your LUNA, you will start receveing rewards. Based on the number of LUNA you have staked and the time you have left them with the Validator, your rewards can be pretty good!

While LUNA is still a fairly new project there is loads of potential for this platform. There is a lot of additional project such as Mirror & Anchor which all offer various benefits
April 15, 2021
How to withdraw ZAR from Binance in South Africa

Following the recent announcement from the South African Binance team, the ability to withdraw from your ZAR wallet was finally enabled today at 6am.

Binance offers a number of ZAR pairs, including BTC/ZAR, BNB/ZAR, ETH/ZAR and USDT/ZAR among others.
We decided to give the withdrawal process ago this morning to see the process of withdrawing funds to a South African bank account.

The most important thing to check before staring to withdraw from your account is to ensure you are fully verified. This means you have to ensure you have verified your basic ID & Address info on your Binance profile before attempting your withdrawal.
You can access this information in your Binance Profile by going to Basic Info (Identification)

Once you are verified, you need to make sure you have ZAR in your wallet to withdraw of course. You can trade any of the pairs above to ZAR. We decided to trade some of our BNB to ZAR for this experiment

Now that we have ZAR in our wallet, it’s time to start the withdrawal process by clicking on the “Withdraw” option in your Wallet.

This should take you to the Fiat withdrawal screen. You’ll notice you can only withdraw to ZAR here as your account is registered & verified in South Africa

On the next screen you will be able to select your Withdrawal amount. You will notice the fee says 0.00 ZAR and you only have the option of Bank Transfer for your payment method

On the next screen you will be able to put in your bank details with account number, name & branch code. They don’t ask for the Bank Name though. You also have the ability to save the bank details for your next withdrawal.

There is also a notification confirming the R7.50 fee for each withdrawal.

Once you click the Submit button, you are required to put in your 2FA code. If you don’t have 2FA enabled on your account, then I suggest you stop reading this now, and go add it to your Binance account!

After your 2FA code is accepted you are sent a confirmation email which you have to approve before the deposit will affect. The link in the mail is only valid for 30 minutes, so make sure you don’t leave it too long.

Payment is done from a Standard Bank account, so if you are with another bank, it could take a day or two to show in your bank account.

Once you are done clicking on the link it logs back into your account and gives you a success screen.

I did notice however that the amount I requested to withdraw and the amount in the confirmation email were the same, and doesn’t reflect the R7.50 charge. Once the money lands in our account we will be able to see if they deducted that charge. We bank with FNB, so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow (Fri 10 April).

The whole process was pretty smooth and seamless, and once the account is verified it should be a breeze to do a quick withdrawal from your Binance account.

[Cross posted on https://sacrypto.co.za/zar-withdrawals-go-live-on-binance-sa-demo/]

April 13, 2020
Instant P2P Virgin Money SPOT app using Blockchain Technology – Get R30 for FREE!!

Sign up with my referral code marcfilsl you will get an instant R30 into your SPOT wallet.

The team at Virgin Money recently updated their popular Peer To Peer (P2P) money sending app, Virgin Money Spot, using Blockchain technology to record transactions between users.

The app allows users to send and receive money between each other through a virtual wallet, and now also allows payment to Merchants. Users can add debit & credit cards to top up their accounts, and withdraw funds to their bank accounts via EFT.

The new version of the app has been built on Distributed Ledger Technology (Blockchain) because of its inherent safety and speed. When modelling the new platform for the app, Virgin Money’s product development team referenced the South African Reserve Bank’s “Project Khokha”.

“All Spot transactions are recorded in our Blockchain ledger, which means they are tamper-proof. So, Spot is not only mobile, convenient and instant, it’s also secure,” said Virgin Money SA CEO, Andre Hugo.

Spot has seen exponential growth in the past month, said Hugo. The number of Spot customers has grown by 900% in the last 22 days, with P2P payments and group pay increasing by 265%.

This growth has been bolstered through an incentive system that allows users to receive R30 for each user they sign up, as well as sending the recipient R30.

The app is available for both & , and if you sign up with my referral code marcfilsl you will get an instant R30 into your SPOT wallet.

October 23, 2018
SA Crypto Summit Durban – 25th May (FREE TICKETS!!)

I have previously posted about the SA Crypto Community a while back, but over the last 8 months the community has grown into a massive community and following with over 1500 people across 3 community groups.

So this Friday we will be hosting our first ever SA Crypto Summit in Durban at the Gateway Hotel.

Sessions include:
Intro to Breakout Trading – by Eddie Meek

Why Bitcoin, and not just Blockchain, will change the world – by James Preston

All You Need to Know About Mining Crypto – by Luke Venediger

Panel Discussion and Q&A (Various key Crypto influencers)

A cash bar will be available throughout the night, and there will be tons of giveaways on the night!

Standard Tickets – R150 & VIP (Crowdfund tickets) – R600

You can get your tickets on the Quicket Website. Seats are limited as well!!

I have 6 tickets to give away to anyone in Durbs that would like to attend. It’s going to be an awesome evening and if you interested in Crypto, or just want to learn a bit more, then come along. All you need to do is enter the promo code “iguy” on the Quicket Website and you will be able to check out your free ticket!

May 21, 2018
How to invest in the Firelotto ICO Blockchain Crypto Lottery (FLOT Token)

I came across a new ICO doing the round this morning, called , which is “Blockchain Crypto Lottery” a looks really exciting. For those of you that don’t know what an ICO is, it stands for Initial Coin Offering, and allows you to buy a part of a project/company with Cryptocurrency (Usually ETH or BTC)
You are usually issued with a token of sorts, which you can then keep or sell at a later stage. Most of the time these tokens get listed on an exchange like or , and as demand increase so does your initial investment

So I have “invested” in 2 ICO’s so far. The first one was for a company called , which is an influencer platform, with over 350,000 influencers and they launched an ICO to help pay their influencer quicker. I will be doing a separate blog post on that in the near future.

Then today I came across another ICO that looks pretty exciting. It’s called , and is basically an Ethereum based blockchain lotto. The system allows you to buy lotto tickets using your ETH, and then payouts are made almost instantly. The lotto market is HUGE and even bigger online.

The ICO allows you to buy a Token called a FLOT. This allows you to be part of the platform, but more importantly it allows you to a share of the revenue to collected. So 10% of all ETH received for the Lotto sales is distributed among the token holders. This means you will continually receive a payback from the lotto sales. Another great feature they have recently implemented is 15% referral fee for all new token holder sign ups. Also a nice simple way to make some extra $. You can read the full Whitepaper (a document explaining what the whole project is about) here -> https://firelotto.io/whitepaper_en.pdf

The biggest thing for me though was that they actually have a working product that is launched and is generating revenue. Generally ICO’s are sold before products are launched and you are basically putting your money into something that isn’t there. So that is a big plus! The results of the Lotto’s are also transparent and stored on the blockchain. The code is also publicly available making it very transparent.

will offer three lottery draws: 4/20 (4 picks from 20 possible numbers), 5/36 and 6/45. For the largest 6/45 lottery, the jackpot has a fixed minimum amount of 3,000 ETH (currently worth over $2 million). As with typical lotteries, if the main prize is not won, it will roll over to the next draw, increasing in size each roll over until being won

This video gives you a bit more info about what is about

Investing in the ICO is pretty simple. You sign up on the investors page, and you will be presented with a buy page. The minimum buy in for the Pre-ICO stage is 500 FLOT and depending on the cost of the FLOT, you can either pay with Ethereum or Bitcoin. Once the transaction has been processed on the Blockchain, the FLOT will appear on your Dashboard. You will also be able to send your FLOT to a ERC-20 compatible wallet once the ICO is completed. That way it will be stored in your Ethereum wallet.

I really think this ICO is gonna be a goodie. The fact that you get rewarded back for the purchases, could have a very profound long term reward. They also have a Telegram group, Twitter & Facebook profile, where you can ask all the questions about the token.

If you keen on looking at check out the site here -> (this is my affiliate link, or the direct URL is https://firelotto.io/

Disclaimer: The info provide above is not intended to be financial advice and is something I am sharing. It is completely up to you to do your own research if you wish to find out more about something. Some of the links in the post are affiliate links, which help pay back some of the costs for the site. If you have any specific questions, you can get in touch with me on my Contact Page

January 13, 2018