How do I exchange bitcoin for euros?
There are three main ways you can cash out your bitcoin to euro:
Exchange: You would need to create an account at one of the many exchanges (e.g. kraken, bitstamp) and there you would have a new bitcoin wallet to transfer your bitcoin. After your bitcoin have arrived to your new wallet you will be able to sell them and transfer the fiat amount (money/ currency in euro) to your bank account. The benefits are that you can use this for day trading. WARNING: Exchanges always hold your private key and therefore if the exchange is hacked your bitcoin could all be permanently inaccessible for you. Fees: It is very hard to determine the fees because it depends on many different cost positions like: deposit fee, trade fee, withdrawal fee and some “hidden costs” like the different trading price at that moment of trade between the exchanges. My experience is that the fees are around 0.35–0.45%.
Payout service: There are a few services that will accept bitcoin for fiat (EUR, USD, CNY) this means you send them your bitcoin from your wallet of choice and they will transfer the amount (minus a fee 0.5%) to your account (or any other bank account of your choosing e.g.: to your Landlords to pay for rent). This is very easy to use and i have had good experiences with Bitwala, they charge 0.5% and there is no risk of hackers taking your bitcoin. The money was on my account after 1–2 day(s).
Bitcoin debit card prepaid card: The third option is to get your hands on a bitcoin card, these are either from VISA or MasterCard and are very useful because you can use them worldwide to pay on the go or online. There are two different types of bitcoin cards: Debit-Cards and Prepaid-Cards. Prepaid-Cards are topped up with bitcoin (the service provider exchanges your bitcoin and top-ups your card with the amount in e.g. EUR, USD, GBP.) The benefits are that you know how much money you have on your card at all times, because the card is in EUR and your funds are not in bitcoin anymore. This can be good or bad depending on the rise or fall of the bitcoin price. But if you want to buy a new laptop you don’t want to stand at the cashier and not have enough money because the bitcoin price dropped. I personally use Bitwala because their card is in EUR and i live Germany. They also offer a mobile app to keep track of all bitcoin transactions. The second option is a bitcoin Debit-Card, these cards are connected to your bitcoin wallet and the service provider has direct access to your funds so that they can extract the needed amount from your wallet at the same moment you buy pay something. This is very comfortable but WARNING: The service provides need to have your private key for this card type and they could be hacked, this could result in losing all your bitcoin. There is a second negative aspect i experienced and that is that you don’t have access to the full amount of your funds. In my case i could only access around 90% of my bitcoin that i had in my wallet. I hope this gives you an overview of the options that you currently have to cash out or sell your bitcoin to euro.
