Saturday, August 19, 2017

How to Convert from NMR (Numeraire) to BTC (Bitcoin): Step-by-Step Guide


If you have earned some NMR (Numeraire) from the Numerai competition, you might be wondering how to convert it to cash. I don’t believe there’s a direct way (yet) to convert NMR to cash as of the writing of this post, but what you can do instead is converting NMR to BTC and then to cash.

Below is a write up of my notes on converting NMR to BTC using Bittrex.com and works as of August 20, 2017.

1.       Sign up for a Bittrex.com account. Make sure you spell Bittrex correctly because there are slightly misspelled websites that tries to steal log in credentials.


2.       After signing up for a Bittrex account, go through its verification process. The withdraw limits varies with the levels of your verification. See here for more information: https://support.bittrex.com/hc/en-us/articles/231701788-Verification-Withdraw-Limits-and-Troubleshooting.



3.       To transfer your NMR to Bittrex, you need to create an NMR address on Bittrex. Go to Wallets (menu option on the top). Search for NMR. Click the “+”. Follow the instruction to create an NMR address.



4.       Once you have created your Bittrex NMR address, you can now transfer NMR from the Numer.ai website. Go to Numer.ai’s Balances page, and enter your Bittrex NMR address, the amount of NMR to transfer, and your password. 

Numer.ai provides a link to track your transaction after you submit the withdraw.




5.       For this write up, I transferred 10 NMR to Bittrex. It took about 20 minutes for the process to complete (i.e., to go from pending deposit to available deposit). There are no fees for the transfer. (Thanks Numer.ai)


6.       After the NMR becomes available, go to (B)Markets to trade the NMR for BTCs (or other currencies). Click on the “NMR” link to trade in that market. (https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-NMR)



7.       To convert NMR to BTC, you sell NMR for BTC. Go to the “Sell Numeraire” section to enter an order.


One way (and there are many ways) to sell is to hit “max” and select the “bid” price, and hit the “Sell Numeraire” button to sell. At the time of this post, the commission is 0.25%. (I.e., 0.04159245*0.0025=0.000103981125). For the example below, I am entering a sell order for 5NMR at the ask price. 

You can also click on the down arrow under the bid side of the order book, to fill whatever the order is on top of the order book


8.       You can track your orders in the Open Orders section.



9.       To transfer from Bittrex, you will need the BTC address of the entity you are transferring to. You can create a paper wallet (https://www.coindesk.com/information/paper-wallet-tutorial/) or use something like electrum (https://electrum.org). If you plan to convert from BTC to cash, find a service similar to Coinbase (https://www.coinbase.com ) to do so.

10.   To check your balance and transfer BTC, go to Wallets. Here I use the “Hide zero balances” option and clear out the prior “Search” value of NMR. 


11.   To transfer the BTC, click the “-“ and fill in the details. Review Step 2 regarding the daily withdraw limits. When you proceed with the withdraw, Bittrex will email you to verify the transaction. You need to use the link in the email to continue the withdraw process.


12.   And that’s about it for the NMR to BTC process. Good luck in your future Numer.ai competitions!