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Buying bitcoin is easier than it sounds. All you need to do is sign up with an easy to use crypto service, enter your personal details and verify your identity, add funds, and buy your bitcoin. Some of our top pick crypto services are Bitpanda, MoonPay and Coinbase, and these are explained below.
Bitcoin is by far the largest cryptocurrency in the world. It’s the coin that created the industry. But how do you buy and invest in bitcoin in the UK?
It’s super simple to purchase bitcoin, but can be confusing if you’re new to crypto and investing in general. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with where and how to buy bitcoin in the UK, plus everything you need to know about bitcoin too.
Let’s get right to it. The best place to buy bitcoin is with a cryptocurrency exchange – they’re built for everybody to use, from beginners, all the way to experienced traders.
Here’s the best places to purchase bitcoin in the UK:
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker, particularly in Europe, where it’s one of the largest crypto platforms, and still growing. There’s over 7,000,000 customers worldwide, and was founded in 2014 in Europe (Austria), which is old for crypto!
You might have heard of them as they’ve sponsored PSG, AC Milan and Bayern Munich football teams, alongside the Davis Cup tennis tournament and the World Padel Tour.
Bitpanda is suited to pretty much every type of crypto investor, from those just getting started and looking to buy and hold assets such as bitcoin, all the way to advanced traders looking for a secure and reliable platform.
Trading is available 24/7, and there’s industry leading security to ensure your account and crypto are secure.
For beginners, it’s accessible, and there’s a wide range of help articles to get started and learn about investing and the platform itself. And you can get started with just £10.
Fees wise, it’s reasonable. There’s no fees to deposit or withdraw money, or to hold crypto within your account. You’ll pay a fee when you buy or sell crypto, and this ranges from 0.99% to 2.49% depending on which crypto you are buying (lower for the more popular coins such as bitcoin).
You can earn rewards on your crypto too (called staking), all within the Bitpanda platform.
The customer support is good, with a large help centre that covers most common questions and a support ticket system where you can email in for specific issues, with great service and feedback.
Overall, it’s a great platform, and well worth checking out.
Account fee: free
Dealing fee: from 0.99% to 2.49% per trade
Currency conversion fee: n/a
Deposit or withdrawal fees: n/a
MoonPay is a super popular and easy way to buy and sell crypto, with the crypto arriving directly in your own crypto wallet, after using a payment method such as a bank transfer or debit card (they’ll help you set up a crypto wallet too).
There’s a great range of coins available, it's reliable, secure, and an excellent option for beginners (and those more experienced).
MoonPay isn’t your typical crypto exchange (where you buy, sell and trade crypto), or crypto wallet (where you can store your crypto), it’s actually neither of those in the traditional sense, but has become super popular as a way of buying crypto directly with your local currency (like Pounds) and exchanging one crypto for another, but not via a complicated and confusing trading platform (like most crypto exchanges), instead it’s all handled in a seamless way, using your own wallet by easily connecting to MoonPay.
It’s very popular (and for good reason). There’s over 35 million people using MoonPay worldwide, and they’ve processed over $8 billion in transactions. That’s a lot. You can also purchase crypto using MoonPay in over 180 countries and local currencies, and there’s a huge range of payment options available (e.g. bank transfer, debit card, PayPal).
With MoonPay, you open an account, and then buy or sell cryptocurrencies directly from your own crypto wallet, or your MoonPay wallet (they set up for you), buying through your MoonPay account. This means that you have all the security of holding your own crypto (often recommended in the crypto world, instead of a 3rd party), whilst also benefiting from MoonPay’s security and reliability when buying or selling crypto.
It really couldn’t be easier. If you want to, you can set up your own wallet, such as with Trezor or Ledger (which are hardware wallets that secure your crypto in your home with a real physical device), or when using MoonPay, they’ll set you up with your own digital wallet to store your crypto.
There’s no complicated decisions or interfaces, all you need to do is essentially verify who you are, decide which crypto you want (e.g. bitcoin) and then either send money from your bank account to your MoonPay balance, which is handled for you through MoonPay, or you can buy directly with your bank account, and the crypto you buy will turn up in your wallet.
Minimum deposit: £20
Customer service: excellent
Customer feedback: customers love how easy it is, it’s security and it’s reliability
Account fee: free
Dealing fee: from 0% to 4.5% per trade
Coinbase is very well established, trustworthy and by far the most popular crypto exchange across the world to buy bitcoin. It’s pretty much the ‘go-to’ place for everyone in crypto (and for good reason).
It’s easy to use, with a great mobile app and website, and a wide range of coins to buy, hold and trade.
It’s great for advanced traders too, with pretty much every feature you’d want to help you trade.
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.
Bitcoin can be purchased on pretty much every crypto exchange out there. It’s the most popular coin, although ethereum is catching it fast! (here’s how to buy ethereum in the UK).
We’ll explain what bitcoin is, in terms of the network and the coin below. But first, here's the best way to buy bitcoin:
Simply pick a cryptocurrency exchange from our recommended exchanges above (they’re some of the most popular exchanges in the UK). Then just register an account – you’ll need to prove your ID, deposit some cash, and then you’re all set, search for bitcoin (it should be pretty easy to find being the biggest crypto currency) and buy it!
It’s all simple to do, the hardest bit is picking the right crypto exchange (and we've made that easy to do too).
By the way, all our top picks are free to sign up, so you can sign up to all of them and give them a try if you like (and see which one you prefer). You’ll only pay fees when you actually buy bitcoin (and if you’re selling bitcoin).
They all have excellent user experience too (how it feels to use). We only show our top picks to our readers.
Note: exchanges are often called centralised exchanges (CEX) as they are real companies (in fact they’re some of the biggest companies in the world). There’s also decentralised exchanges (DEX), which are exchanges that actually run on the blockchain (more on that later) – and not recommended for beginners.
It’s not really possible to buy bitcoin and crypto without paying fees. Pretty much every exchange or place to buy will charge fees as they are operating a business. However fees do vary across exchanges. Let’s run through the cheapest way to buy bitcoin…
The cheapest way to buy bitcoin in the UK is to use a crypto exchange with low fees.
Often, advanced crypto exchanges have lower fees, but they’re fairly complicated to use if you’re completely new to crypto and investing in general. But here’s where to find advanced crypto exchanges.
Alternatively, you can use our top exchanges above, which are much more friendly to beginners and perfect for buying bitcoin occasionally, rather than trading regularly (and still low cost).
As you’re probably already aware, bitcoin is a volatile asset, meaning its price changes all the time, and sometimes by quite a bit in a short space of time. It’s definitely a wild ride when you invest in bitcoin and crypto in general. That said, over the past decade its value has grown significantly (though remember, past performance doesn’t guarantee future results).
Here’s how much one bitcoin is to buy in Pounds (GBP):
Although generally the price of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are represented in Dollars (USD), and here’s how much it is in USD:
By the way, BTC is the ‘ticker’ for bitcoin on exchanges, so if it says 'purchase BTC' on a trading platform, it’s the same as purchasing bitcoin. And in the above prices, you’ll see BTCGBP and BTCUSD – that’s the trading pair. So for BTCGBP you are trading BTC for GBP.
Yes. Almost every exchange (which is where you buy and sell bitcoin and crypto), will let you deposit and buy bitcoin with Pounds (GBP), this includes all our top picks above.
There’s a few payment methods too:
When you’re ready to sell your bitcoin (if you ever want to), it can be super easy to do. It’s the same process but in reverse! Simply log into your crypto account (crypto exchange) and sell – the exchange will take care of everything and you’ll have Pounds back in your account.
You can then withdraw this back to your bank account if you want to. There might be some small withdrawal fees, but this isn’t very common.
If you made a large profit on your bitcoin, you might have to pay tax. More on that below.
Bitcoin is a new digital currency, an evolution of current currencies, you can use it in the same way as British Pounds (GBP) or US Dollars (USD), except it’s only found online, it’s a digital currency. And, it’s not backed by any government, it’s a global currency, designed for everyone.
It was invented in 2008 by an anonymous person (or most likely a group of people), who used the name Satoshi Nakamoto.
However, it’s different to British Pounds, US Dollars and all local currencies, in almost every way. The key differences are:
These concepts make it the perfect form of money (more on this below), and is why it has gained huge popularity in recent years. Particularly with those who believe central banks across the world are mismanaging their country’s finances (we won’t get into it here, but almost every country is significantly in debt, and inflation is at record levels).
Bitcoin’s supply cannot be altered by central banks (governments), such as to increase the money supply, which happens with local currencies, such as Pounds and Dollars.
With a fixed supply, there is no inflation, and your money retains its value forever (inflation causes your money to be worth less).
However, it’s worth noting that bitcoin is volatile and the price of bitcoin currently fluctuates while it’s still young and adoption is growing, so although it has trended upwards in value, the price can fall.
And you can send payments instantly across the world, in seconds, for zero or almost-zero cost, directly to the person or business you want to send to. This removes the need for a middle-man (or middle-men) who often charge high fees (often hidden fees), can take a long-time to transfer the money, and can effectively block and freeze your money and accounts if they choose.
Bitcoin gives the control of your money back to you, and makes fee-taking middlemen redundant, saving you money.
Now you might be thinking, well it’s just internet money that was easily created. Well, it’s actually an incredible feat of engineering and innovation, solving technical problems that were previously thought impossible (some parts that make it impossible to hack).
The innovation is something called a blockchain, which Bitcoin is built on. And this technology has spawned a whole new asset class, called cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin source code (the digital code written to create it) is completely open source, which means anyone can read it, copy it and build their own blockchains. Pretty cool right?
Let’s run through what a blockchain is.
A blockchain is a system that stores information as a permanent record, such as money (bitcoin) transactions, in the order they happened. Using a method that makes it impossible to cheat, or hack.
It’s similar to your bank statement with all of your transactions, but instead of the bank producing the statement, and only viewable by you and the bank, a blockchain permanently records every transaction made, and is publicly available for anyone to view. Almost immediately.
It seems a simple concept right? And how is that a breakthrough in technology? Well, the genius is the fact you cannot cheat the system, and that the system runs without any central control. It is decentralised…
Meaning it runs across the world, there’s no government control, so it’s available for everyone to use, whatever country they are in, and can never be shut down, and transactions can never be altered.
Bitcoin stays online and processes transactions thanks to a large network of miners. A miner is someone who uses a computer, specifically for the Bitcoin network, and their computer simply connects to the internet and processes transactions. As there are over 1 million Bitcoin miners spread across the world, it is impossible to shut the network down.
As a thank you for supporting the network, miners are rewarded with a portion of bitcoin every 10 minutes, when a batch of transactions is processed, called a block. However, they don’t all get the reward, it is effectively a lottery for who gets it. This reward incentivises the miners to keep the network running.
In order to process transactions on the Bitcoin network, miners are needed to verify and confirm that transactions did happen and in a specific order – then they are then permanently recorded on the blockchain.
Miners do this by using computers dedicated to mining that solve a complex maths problem each time a new ‘block’ is produced – a block stores a batch of transactions every 10 minutes, and is where the name blockchain comes from (a never-ending chain of blocks).
The first computer to solve the maths problem gets to ‘mine’ the block, which is confirming and adding the next block to the blockchain, and they’ll be rewarded a portion of bitcoin as a reward.
Miners are essential to the security of the network, and keeping the network decentralised, which means spread out across the world and therefore never able to be shut down.
Bitcoin itself is neither good nor bad for the environment, it is entirely digital and you could think of it as it ‘lives’ on the internet, just like everything else you use on the internet and your computer, along with your phone and things like that.
However, to process transactions (and protect the network), you have to mine bitcoin. And this can use a fair bit of energy. And it’s this where it gets bad press.
But the reality is that using energy in itself is not bad for the environment. Everything uses energy. It depends where the energy comes from that depends on if it harms the environment or not.
Bitcoin miners actually use lots of renewable and green energy (a huge majority). Because green energy is much cheaper than using coal or fossil fuels, and bitcoin miners are often mining for a profit – so it makes much more commercial sense to use green energy, such as solar and wind.
So, overall bitcoin is not bad for the environment, it just depends on the source of the power. Traditional systems, such as the current banking system and even things like gaming consume energy in much greater quantities, and the majority of energy used for those is fossil fuels.
Yes. You can legally buy bitcoin in the UK, and it’s legal to use the Bitcoin technology (blockchain) and the coin (currency) to make payments and money transfers. You can spend it however you like, or trade it, or just hold on to it.
The UK has actually committed to becoming a global cryptoasset technology hub, in an attempt to become a world leader in crypto and blockchain technology.
If you make a profit on your bitcoin, and want to cash in, you might be liable for Capital Gains Tax (CGT), which is 18% or 24% of your profits (depending on your income). However, you’ll only pay this if you make over £3,000 in profit each year, in total across all of your investment earnings. (We cover bitcoin and tax below.)
It’s perfectly safe to buy bitcoin if you use any of our crypto top picks. We don’t suggest using one you haven’t been recommended – not all exchanges are safe.
In the UK, crypto exchanges need to be authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which regulates financial services. Meaning they have to adhere to strict rules and regulations about protecting their customers' money and crypto.
However, you are not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) – which protects you up to £85,000 if something were to go wrong with a company holding your money (such as going out of business). This is just for regular investing and things like pensions.
However, that doesn’t mean crypto exchanges themselves are unsafe. In fact, they have their own protections in place.
There’s bank grade security, and they have their own insurance, which pays out if something happens to the company. And, most of the crypto on exchanges are actually held in ‘cold storage’, which means they’re in wallets that have never touched the internet, and so cannot be hacked or compromised.
No, money laundering and Bitcoin is a myth. Transactions on the Bitcoin network are completely transparent (that’s actually one of the best things about it). So it’s near impossible to hide transactions).
Plus, in order to send bitcoin to a bank account it would require you to register and verify your identity with a crypto exchange, so the authorities would be able to find out who you are if you had bad intentions.
It is far simpler to use the traditional banking system to launder money. In fact, almost all of the big banks have been found processing money-laundering transactions. Recently, the FCA fined Barclays £42 million for poor handling of financial crimes that lead to money laundering.
What’s the difference between Bitcoin, bitcoin and BTC?
In order to store and access your bitcoin on the Bitcoin network (the blockchain), you’ll need a bitcoin wallet. This is a way for you to interact with the network and send and receive bitcoin. It’s like a mini bank account on the blockchain, and inside is your money.
Having said that, you don’t actually need a wallet to buy bitcoin with some of our top crypto exchanges above, they’ll hold your bitcoin for you – and you can access it whenever you like when you log into your account with the exchange.
However, if you want to store your bitcoin yourself, you’ll need a wallet, and then after you’ve bought your bitcoin, you can send it from the exchange to your wallet. Here’s where to find the right bitcoin wallet for you.
The safest wallet to get is a hardware wallet, which is a real device that you need to use to make transactions. This is also called an offline wallet.
Bear in mind, with your own bitcoin wallet, you’ll be responsible for the security of it. You will be given a private key, instead of a username and password, and this is the only way to recover your wallet if you need to. Make sure you look after your private keys! (A private key can also be called a seed phrase, which is a more readable version of the key).
Familiar with traditional investing? If you just want bitcoin, it’s often better to buy it yourself, as it should work out cheaper and you have control over your own crypto (a type of asset).
However, there are some options to invest in bitcoin via traditional investments, such as exchange-traded funds (ETF). You can normally find these on investment platforms (if they are offered to UK customers).
Bitcoin can be an immensely profitable investment for years to come. And that’s probably got you thinking about taxes right?
Well, in the UK, you’ll have to pay Capital Gains Tax on bitcoin and crypto profits. Damn!
Crypto works just the same as any other investment you might have.
Well, unless your investments are within a Stocks & Shares ISA, Lifetime ISA or personal pension – we won’t go into those investment accounts now, but basically all your profits are tax-free!
Unfortunately, you can’t hold bitcoin within any of those accounts – holding bitcoin is treated exactly the same as a General Investment Account (GIA), with no-tax free benefits.
That means you’ll pay Capital Gains Tax on your profits when it comes time to sell your bitcoin. However, there is good news – every tax year (April 6th to April 5th the following year), you get an annual allowance of £3,000 before you have to pay any Capital Gains Tax. Whoop!
After that, you’ll pay either 18% or 24% tax depending on how much income you earn that tax year – so things like your salary. It’s a bit confusing right?!
So, if you pay the basic rate of Income Tax (20%), which is if you earn less than £50,270 per year, you’ll pay 18% in Capital Gains Tax. And if you earn over £50,270 per year (a higher rate (40%) or additional rate taxpayer (45%)), you’ll pay 24% Capital Gains Tax.
Remember this is only when you sell bitcoin, if you hold it for years, you don’t need to worry about tax until you sell – and it’s only on the profits.
No. Believe it or not, bitcoin isn’t really anonymous, and it’s rarely used by criminals or for financial crime in general. Don’t believe everything you read!
In order to buy bitcoin you’ll need to verify your identity on an exchange. So that’s either using your passport or driving licence.
Sending bitcoin from an exchange to any bitcoin address is relatively anonymous, as all the transactions are sent and received from the exchange itself, rather than your personal address. So, publicly, no one can see your personal transactions, however the exchange will know.
Yep! Just head over to one of our top crypto platforms above, get your account set up, it only takes a few minutes, and after you deposit your cash and click buy, you’ll have some bitcoin.
With traditional investments, such as public companies (who have shares on stock exchanges), they have something called market capitalisation figure, to figure out how much the company is worth.
It’s the total amount of shares a company has (called shares outstanding) multiplied by the share price. So, if there’s 100 shares of a company, and the price is £1 per share, the market cap is £100.
With bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, you can use the same calculation to work out its market cap too – and therefore have a valuation for the whole project or coin. It’s a great way to see which coins are the biggest too.
In crypto, there’s also something called the ‘fully diluted market cap’ (FDMC), which is instead of using all the coins that are tradeable, it’s ‘circulating supply’, you use all the coins in existence, its maximum supply, and some of which may be locked away but enter the market at some point in the future.
No! Bitcoin cash is not Bitcoin. They are completely different. It’s a long and technical story, but in the earlier days of bitcoin there was a bit of an argument between bitcoin developers on how to improve the number of transactions a Bitcoin block on the Bitcoin blockchain can store (in order to make transactions faster).
And this resulted in a ‘hard fork’ where a new version of bitcoin was made, called Bitcoin Cash – and it’s the version where more transactions can take place within a block. Whether or not it’s a good idea or not, it’s not the real bitcoin and you should generally ignore it. Make sure all your bitcoin purchases only say ‘bitcoin’.
Fiat currency is just another name for real-world currencies such as Pounds (GBP), Dollars (USD), and any other currency in the world.
Cryptocurrencies are often called digital currencies (or digital assets), as they’re completely online, and don’t have paper and coin like fiat currencies.
A bitcoin ATM is a real ATM machine, just like a cash machine, where you can purchase bitcoin with cash which will be sent to your own crypto wallet.
It’s very rare to find one where you can sell bitcoin for cash. They aren’t very popular in the UK although they are legal. The transaction fees are often very expensive and can be as high as 25%.
It’s often better to buy bitcoin online by using a crypto exchange account to buy and sell bitcoin (trade bitcoin).
There we have it – how to buy bitcoin in the UK – it’s the same process to sell bitcoin too. As a reminder of where to buy bitcoin, scroll up or click top crypto platforms.
And we’ve also shared lots of information on bitcoin itself and pretty much everything you need to know. We hope you found it useful.
There’s lots more to crypto however, and it’s being developed all the time. But the best way to learn more is to get involved, buy a little bit, and see where it takes you!
You can also learn more on the official Bitcoin website too, and if you’re a bit more technical, the original Bitcoin whitepaper.
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.
We’d love to hear from you, and it will help others too.
Edward Savage is a leading expert on money, with a background of 8 years working in financial services in London, has a business, accounting and finance degree, runs an investing community, and teaches people about money. He writes about all aspects of personal finance, including pensions, investing, mortgages and insurance.
This article was written, reviewed and fact checked by the expert team at Nuts About Money. You’re in safe hands. Learn more.
We're experts in all things crypto, with several years of combined experience writing and talking about crypto, blockchain and investing. We’ve lived the ups and downs of the bull and bear markets, and know our bitcoin from our blockchains, and are keen to see how the industry grows.
More than 8 years of combined experience researching and writing about crypto
Qualified team (APFS - Advanced Diploma in Financial Planning)
A wide range of crypto exchanges and companies researched and reviewed, and a transparent review process
We follow a strict editorial code to ensure you get the best information possible
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.