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How & where to buy Cardano (ADA) in Australia

Cardano wants to be the “internet of blockchains”, and its cryptocurrency is known as ADA. Use this page to discover how and where to buy ADA in Australia right now.

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Updated: Aug 2, 2022

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This beginners’ guide explains what Cardano is and how to buy ADA in Australia. We explain the history of the project and expand on what makes its technology unique so you can decide if you want to get involved.

What are the best Australian exchanges to buy ADA?

The options below are our top-rated crypto brokers. Sign up by following the links in the table, or read on to learn more about Cardano first.

How to buy ADA online – step-by-step guide

Step 1. Find an exchange

The best way to buy Cardano in Australia is via a reliable cryptocurrency exchange. These platforms are effectively online marketplaces for crypto tokens, where you can buy and sell coins from users all over the world.

There can be local restrictions on where you can access a crypto exchange from, but Australia is quite crypto-friendly. You can sign up with many exchanges from the Australia; our favourite is Binance:

Binance: One of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance supports hundreds of coins. You can buy many of them with AUD, so you don’t even need to exchange into another currency first. Join Binance today >

Once you have chosen a platform, it is time to sign up for an account. Financial regulations mean that exchanges must comply with Australian Securities Investment Commission (ASIC) rules and you will need to verify your identity before you can make a trade. Be aware that you have to provide some form of photo ID along with your contact details.

Once you’re verified, you need to deposit AUD into your account. You can do this via any major credit or debit card, or use a bank transfer.

Step 3. Purchase

Log into your exchange account and search for ADA. Choose the AUD/ADA pair and decide how much you want to spend. You can decide whether to execute the trade instantly, or put it in a queue so that it executes when the price hits a certain level. Either way, once the deal goes through you will own some Cardano coins and you can find them in the wallet section of your account.

Step 4. (Optional) Get a suitable wallet

Wallets are a way of storing your coins securely and independent from the exchange you use. You don’t have to use a wallet, if you’re interested in short term trading or just holding a few ADA coins, you can leave them in your exchange account.

If you plan on holding ADA for the long term or just want some extra security, a wallet might be the way to go. There are quite a few options out there depending on your exact needs, but here are two of the top ones to think about first:

Freewallet: An online cryptocurrency wallet, you can use Freewallet through your browser or by downloading its mobile app. Sign up for Freewallet today >
Ledger Nano S: One of the most popular hardware wallets around, the Nano S stores your coins completely offline. That means that your coins are protected even if you connected to a virus-infected computer. Get a Ledger Nano S now >

How to trade Cardano

Step 1. Find a broker

A crypto broker is the cheapest, easiest, and safest way to trade Cardano. You want to find a platform that charges low trading fees and basic analysis tools, so you can identify patterns in the price and capitalise on them.

To be able to operate in Australia, financial brokers have to be registered with the Australian Securities Investment Commission (ASIC). You should make sure any broker you choose is registered before you sign up.

Here is our favourite crypto broker in Australia:

eToro: The most popular cryptocurrency broker around. It offers all sorts of trading options on crypto, as well as on things like stocks, commodities, and forex. Join eToro today >

Step 2. Deposit money

When you’ve chosen your broker you need to create an account and make your first deposit. Minimum deposits normally start from as little as A$10 and you can transfer the money via a bank transfer or using a credit or debit card.

Step 3. Decide how you’d like to trade

Each trader bases buy and sell decisions on a specific strategy. Each strategy uses an indicator, or set of indicators, as signals for when to make a trade. Read about trading indicators to understand how they work and follow other traders to see them in action; eToro offers a great CopyTrader function that allows you to follow experienced traders very easily.

Whichever one you pick, with each trade you’re effectively predicting whether the value of your cryptocurrency will go up or down. Take a ‘long’ (buy) position if you think the Cardano price is going to rise, or a ‘short’ (sell) position if you expect it to fall.

Step 4. Start trading

If you’re a complete beginner, it’s worth setting up a demo account with your broker before you start trading ADA for real. This will give you a good feel for the way trading works as it can take a while to get used to the way cryptocurrency values fluctuate. As you’ll see, cryptocurrencies are highly volatile and difficult to predict so it’s easy to win and lose money quickly.

In Australia you can use CFDs to trade Cardano. CFDs are available through lots of brokers and let you easily buy or sell depending on where you think its price is headed. One thing to note is that with CFDs you do not actually own any ADA and are simply placing a bet on its short term price movements.

Still undecided?

To help you decide whether to invest in ADA, we’ve summarised the pros and cons of doing so below. Use this information and the final questions underneath to influence your final choice.

Pros

If you own ADA you can earn rewards just by holding it in a wallet
It’s very open about new developments and what Cardano is trying to achieve
All new updates are based on rigorous scientific research and peer-reviewed papers
Along with the science, Cardano is backed by famous names in the crypto world

Cons

There is a lot of competition to be the blockchain platform that achieves mass appeal
Some danger of ‘double-spending’ as its possible a transaction could be approved twice

Here are three more questions to consider before you decide to invest in Cardano.

1. Is now a good time to buy Cardano?

Whether now is the right time to invest depends on your goals. For a long term investor, you want to think about whether you believe Cardano can be the platform to lead blockchain technology towards mass adoption. There’s a lot of competition to be that platform, but ADA does offer unique benefits, like its vigorous academic approach.

Alternatively, for short-term traders, overall growth might be less important. You might want to look at the current ADA price and decide whether it represents a good opportunity. Whatever your outlook, it’s a good idea to check out the latest Cardano analysis to stay on top of anything that might affect your investing decisions. You can find all the latest market analysis below:

2. What problem does Cardano solve, and what are the coin’s investment prospects?

Cardano makes cryptocurrencies and blockchain realistic technologies for use in the real world. It does this by creating a platform focused on scalability and interoperability, which can process fast transactions and facilitates interactions between apps, cryptocurrencies, and mainstream institutions.

ADA’s prospects depends on how well Cardano can scale up its platform. A lot of its work is promising, not least because it’s created a central treasury that offers grants to developers whose ideas are the most popular – as voted on by ADA token holders. That should put it in a good spot to react to the latest demands.

Despite its good work, the challenge for Cardano is the same as for many other ‘third gen’ blockchain platforms: there are a lot of them. Bitcoin and Ethereum dominated the first two generations in part because there was much less competition, Cardano has to battle with a mass of alternatives competing for the same space. You can follow the latest news from all these cryptocurrencies below:

3. Do you want to hold Cardano for the long term?

ADA could be a good long term investment if you want to support the platform or stake your coins to earn rewards. It has a lot of competition muscling in on the same field, but it benefits from good name recognition and some big-name backers. Here are a couple of final things to think.

Considerations for a long term investment strategy

If you want to hold Cardano to speculate on long-term price increases, you can acquire ADA coins through an exchange. Simply find one, sign up, and get involved. Then, you can store your coins in a crypto wallet for added security.

Considerations for a short term trading strategy

Short-term traders don’t need to worry about long-term growth or the future of the blockchain space. If you want to trade in the short term, the most important thing is to sign up for a broker with cheap trading fees. Once you’ve done that, you might want to use our guide to short term trading to help you try to predict ADA’s market moves.

Get started with ADA