How to Buy Cosmos (ATOM) - Beginner's Guide 2024

How to Buy Cosmos

You can purchase Cosmos online using a cryptocurrency exchange. This is the easiest way to buy and sell cryptocurrencies—all you need is a computer or mobile device. See below for our top picks of platforms that offer Cosmos and simple steps to buy Cosmos.

1. Choose a platform

Before you can get your hands on ATOM, you’ll need to sign up with a cryptocurrency exchange that offers it. Each platform has its own pros and cons and not all of them are regulated. We’ve shortlisted some of the best-regulated platforms later in this guide, but also listed our top recommendations below to help you get started right away.

2. Create and fund your account 

In order to create an account with your chosen platform, you will need to provide some personal information. Once you’ve filled in the registration form, you may have to provide documentation such as a photo ID before your account can be verified. After that, you can make a deposit with one of the supported payment methods, such as credit or debit card.

3. Buy Cosmos instantly

Now you can search for the trading pair for ATOM and your local currency. Enter how much ATOM you wish to purchase in a buy order. If you make it a market order, the purchase will happen straight away. A limit order, on the other hand, will execute automatically in the future once your specified price has been reached.

What Is Cosmos ATOM?

Cosmos is an ecosystem of apps and services with the Cosmos Hub blockchain at the centre. The project aims to tackle some of the obstacles to blockchain adoption, such as cost, speed, scalability, interoperability, and the difficulty of development.

Previously, blockchains were fragmented and unable to communicate with each other, but Cosmos introduced the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC), which allows assets and data to be freely exchanged across separate, decentralised blockchains. This makes different blockchains interoperable and allows for the creation of cross-chain applications.

The Cosmos SDK makes it easier for developers to build applications that interact with the Cosmos Hub. These applications also benefit from the efficiency of the blockchain, which can handle thousands of transactions per second with fees of just $0.01.

Cosmos Hub’s efficiency is thanks to its Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, which involves its native ATOM cryptocurrency being staked to secure the Cosmos network. ATOM is also used for paying transaction fees and voting in protocol governance.

Ways to Invest in Cosmos

Different investors may have different goals and levels of experience, which can affect the way they prefer to invest. Some may have long-term plans while others may have short-term ones. Both of these options have their benefits, though, as we shall explore below.

Buy Cosmos and hold

As the name suggests, the buy and hold strategy requires that you buy ATOM and hold onto it over a period of time. This is the easiest strategy to follow as no particular skills are needed. It also doesn’t take up much of your time, but still has the potential to be profitable.

One of the benefits of holding ATOM is that you can easily stake it to earn rewards from transaction fees and inflation. Staking ATOM also gives you the right to vote on proposals that affect the Cosmos network.

Best Cosmos wallets

When holding onto tokens over a long period of time, it may be preferable to store them in your own private wallet. This ensures that you have total ownership of your ATOM and can provide better security.

The crypto wallet type that provides the best security is hardware wallets such as Trezor, BitBox, and Ledger. They are often USB sticks and have to be paid for. Another option is software wallets, which are a bit less secure but tend to be free and easier to use.

Trade Cosmos

Cosmos also lends itself to trading as its price volatility means traders can buy and sell the token quickly to generate more frequent profits. Finding the best times to buy and sell cosmos, however, requires careful analysis, so trading strategies are best for those with more time and skill.

You will want your tokens to be easily accessible if you are trading with them regularly, so a private wallet could prove inconvenient. Traders often prefer to use the web wallet provided by their trading platform. If you’re looking to trade Cosmos then it might be wise to consider a combination of both a private wallet or hardware wallet and a web wallet.

Payment methods you can use to buy Cosmos

Debit or credit: Because debit cards are easy to use and have minimal costs, they’re a popular method of payment for buying cryptocurrency. Check the fees before using a credit card since they might be expensive. You may use your credit or debit card to convert your fiat dollars into ATOM at most reputable exchanges and brokers.

Bank transfer: Most major currencies can be deposited by bank transfer at reputable crypto exchanges. Compared to other methods of depositing, this process might take a few days to complete.

PayPal: Using PayPal, you can pay for goods and services online and send and receive money securely. Once you link your bank account, credit card, or debit card to your PayPal account, you may use it to buy goods and services on partner platforms. You may use PayPal to fund your account at some of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges.

Other cryptocurrencies: Some exchanges allow you to trade ATOM for other tokens. It is not uncommon for major exchanges to allow users to switch between tokens and cryptos. Two methods exist for exchanging cryptocurrency: through a broker or an exchange. Decentralised exchanges allow users to trade one token for another, for as Ethereum to ATOM.

Buying vs Trading Cosmos

They might sound similar, but buying and trading Cosmos will involve completely different strategies and approaches. Conventional advice implies that buying and holding cryptocurrency is the safest bet for beginners. That’s because your investment has the potential to go up over time, especially if you pick a promising project. The trick here is to hold your cryptocurrency despite market volatility.

Trading crypto is a whole different can of worms. Most aren’t patient enough to hold their investment for a period of months, let alone years. As a result, many attempt to trade their ATOM and other cryptocurrencies for short-term gains. Predicting the market is notoriously difficult, even for experienced investors. Below, we’ve outlined a few of the fundamentals related to trading Cosmos.

How to Trade Cosmos

When trading Cosmos, it’s important to consider the fundamentals of what’s called technical analysis. This process involves studying price charts that indicate a cryptocurrency’s upward and downward trends. There are many aspects involved in technical analysis, some of which are advanced and others quite simple to understand. When conducting technical analysis for the first time, consider the following:

• Review the recent price action: Take a look at the recent trends in price that impact ATOM. When looking at charts, you can change the timeframe to review trends over the past day, months, weeks and years. This is an essential part of understanding how the coin has performed over the short and long term.

• Conduct a technical analysis: A simple way for beginners to conduct a technical analysis is to look for highs and lows. A popular maxim in cryptocurrency trading is ‘buy low, sell high.’ If you see a coin has gone up in price over a short period of time, it could be a good time to buy. But that trend could easily reverse. It can often be more profitable to buy a coin when it’s at a low point and hope it goes up.
  

• Types of trading (day trading, swing trading): Day trading is one of the riskiest forms of cryptocurrency trading. It involves moving around cryptocurrencies trying to ‘beat’ the market by predicting sudden changes. Day traders often swing trade and sell one cryptocurrency while it dips and buy another as it rises. While these strategies are high risk, they can also be high reward.
  

• Understanding support and resistance: When a negative price movement appears to have levelled out and gained stability over a period of time, that is considered ‘support’ in technical analysis. “Resistance” refers to a price point at which an asset’s upward price movement is unable to break. When formulating a trading strategy for Cosmos, keep these aspects in mind.
  

• Downtrends and uptrends: A downtrend is simply when a coin’s price movement decreases consistently over a period of time. Conversely, an uptrend describes a coin with a consistent gain of price movement. These indicators are useful in basic technical analysis to make a decision about the best time to buy.

What to consider before buying Cosmos

Before purchasing Cosmos, make sure you understand the utility and functionality of the coin. Doing your own research will be crucial in determining whether it’s worth investing. You don’t have to be an expert at technical analysis to do some basic observations of price movements by looking at charts.  

Also consider that you shouldn’t invest more than you can afford to lose. While Cosmos is a promising project, there are no guarantees in the wild world of cryptocurrency investing. But doing good research, conducting some form of technical analysis, and learning about the team behind the coin will help you make a decision with confidence.

What Features Does Cosmos Have?

Cosmos works by linking multiple blockchain projects together onto a single network that facilitates cross-chain compatibility. As cryptocurrency has evolved, multiple blockchains like Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain have come into prominence. And while it’s good to have a competitive ecosystem of chains, these independent networks will need the ability to communicate with each other despite their different protocols.

That’s where a project like Cosmos shines. Their Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol is used to link Cosmos apps and services. With this technology, you’ll be able to freely move assets and data between different blockchains.

The goal of Cosmos is to make it simple for developers to create blockchains and to tear down boundaries between them to trade with one other. Their stated objective is to build an Internet of Blockchains and decentralised network of blockchains that connect with each other.

Will Buying Cosmos Make Me Money?

It’s impossible to predict whether Cosmos or any cryptocurrency will turn profitable. But given the development of numerous blockchain projects in recent years, it’s clear that projects like Cosmos will platy an important role in connecting them.

When trying to determine if Cosmos will make you money, consider your long and short term goals as an investor. What long-term prospects does the coin have? Are there any indicators to suggest it could gain rapidly in price over the short term? If you’re willing to wait and hold your crypto for the long term, a project like Cosmos could likely become profitable. But as blockchain technology is still emerging and hasn’t enjoyed widespread adoption, massive short term gains may be unlikely.

Should I Buy Cosmos Now?

You will have to make this decision for yourself once you have read all the available information. The supply of ATOM is subject to inflation, which could potentially lead to the depreciation of the token over the long term. However, this is to incentivise staking, which could counteract inflation and drive demand.

A further source of demand is the fact that ATOM is needed to pay transaction fees. There are already more than 250 apps and services built on Cosmos, and as the ecosystem grows, the increasing number of people using and building on Cosmos could be positive for ATOM price.

The planned growth for Cosmos includes a number of exciting features. Upcoming additions to the ecosystem include interchain accounts, liquidity pools, a decentralised exchange, and wrapped Bitcoin and Ethereum.

These developments may just be the start, however. Cosmos’ efficient consensus, developer-friendly tools, and pioneering interoperability could see it become a vibrant and essential part of the ever-growing blockchain industry.