Bitcoin to Pounds, or BTC to GBP has become a pair of great interest, representing the king of cryptocurrencies against British Pounds Sterling. Over the past 5 years, the value of BTC to GBP has risen dramatically from under £150 in 2015, to more than £7300 this year.
A 5 year return on a single BTC to GBP would represent a £7150 uplift in value, or a staggering 4800% gain. Whilst the price of Bitcoin to pounds has stabilised somewhat over the past year or so, it is still an area of interest for the many who are looking for a speculative trade.
There is also a school of thought that Bitcoin represents another hedge against the major fiat currencies. This hedge has typically been the reserve of Gold over the preceding century, but there are many that argue that cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin in particular have more relevance in todays’ digital world.
1 BTC to GBP
If you are looking to trade in Bitcoin, or to understand the value of an existing holding, the price of 1 BTC to GBP would be a great place to start.
1 BTC to GBP at the time of writing is around £7300 but that needn’t mean that you need a minimum of £7300 to start trading Bitcoin. You can actually buy or trade fractions of Bitcoins rather than in full increments, helping to keep the initial outlay required to a more manageable level.
Buying or Trading BTC to GBP
There are some simple differences between the the different options you have to profit from Bitcoin price movement. We will try to simplify this as much as possible below based on the typical goals of our community. Take a look below at the different goals, see which one meets your particular need, then find the way you need to acquire Bitcoin.
- Believe the price is going to rise. Want to buy and hold Bitcoin indefinitely.
You can do this with one of the crypto exchanges, or a broker that facilitates holdings without leverage.
Exchange – Binance, Crypto Broker – eToro
2. Believe the price is going to rise. Want to use leverage to maximise returns with minimal capital outlay.
You will need a broker that provides crypto CFD trading such as those below. You can use leverage usually of 1:2 if you are based in Europe, or up to 1:200 if you are not European based.
1:2 leverage – eToro , 1:200 leverage – Stormgain
3. Believe the price is going to drop. Already hold Bitcoin.
Sell existing holding, wait until the price has reached the level you feel is the bottom, look to buy back in and reduce your average purchase price.
4. Believe the price is going to drop. Want to profit from the drop in price, do not hold Bitcoin to Pounds at the moment.
Open a trading account with a CFD broker, ‘sell’ BTC to GBP and profit from drops in value. This is a rather unique way of being able to benefit from drops in value of an asset, without ever having to own the underlying product. If this is new to you, feel free to check out our article surrounding introduction to CFDs.
Crypto brokers including etoro, libertex and iqoption can provide crypto CFDs covering BTC.
5. Uncertain about the future price movements. Want to hedge existing holdings.
There are various ways to do this, either from trading options on BTC, using your existing holdings to generate an income (like a savings account), or trade CFDs against your holding to manage risk exposure.
Options Trading Broker, Deribit – Crypto income broker, Crypto.com – Crypto Broker, eToro
6. Uncertain about the future price movements but think it will be volatile. Want to profit from the volatility but minimise risk capital.
You will likely be best served with an options trading broker. This will allow you to profit from big movements in price if you call the direction correctly, but also enable you to minimise your exposure to the options premium. Effectively allowing you to decide later whether you want to move forward with your trade whilst you see how the market moves. If options trading is new to you, see our guide on what is options trading.
So, if you know the type of platform you need to use to buy or trade Bitcoin, let’s now take a little look at some of the minimum deposits needed to get involved.
Bitcoin minimum deposit – start from £200 but what can that buy you?
The minimum deposit to make a Bitcoin trade is different from broker to broker. There are some good options available with brokers providing minimum deposits in the region of £200. What can you do actually with £200 when trading or buying BTC to GBP you ask?
0.01 BTC to GBP – This would equate to somewhere in the region of £73 per 0.01 of BTC traded at today’s price. Take the current BTC to GBP price from the live chart at the top of the article and divide by 100.
0.05 BTC to GBP – The would require a minimum deposit of around £365 in order to make this sized trade. If you are using leverage of 1:2, the actual minimum amount required in your account would be £365 divided by 2, £182.50.
If you are able to make a minimum deposit up to £500, you will have a few more options open to you in terms of the numbers of brokers but in reality, how much BTC to GBP can you get for your money? Anywhere up to around 0.1 BTC to GBP would be within reach if you are using a lever of 1:2.
0.1 BTC to GBP – In order to buy 0.1 BTC to GBP you would need to deposit in region of £730 into your trading account. Again, if you are using leverage and have 1:2 available to you, that amount can be divided by 2. Net minimum deposit needed c. £365.
1 BTC to GBP – There are not many brokers that will require you to open trades with 1 BTC as minimum but in the event you are looking to get hold of an entire Bitcoin, you will need either £7300 or £3650 (if you are using the 1:2 lever available to EU CFD trades).
As a comparison, for non European based traders who can find leverage of up to 1:200, there would be the option to trade the power of 1 BTC to GBP for as little as £36.50. You can see, there is a staggering difference when using high levers for your trades but any minor move in the wrong direction would immediately wipe out a deposit of that size if you are not careful. We suggest it is always best to veer on the side of caution when trading an asset that has the potential for the rather wild daily swings that can be seen on the BTC to GBP pair.