How to Buy Cardano ADA in Canada

“Cardano (ADA) is a decentralized application platform looking to bring positive global change through an academic approach to development.”

Cardano was founded in 2017 by its creator Charles Hoskinson, a co-founder of Ethereum. The goal of Cardano is to create a society that is more secure, transparent, and fair. The project plans on accomplishing this through its proof-of-stake protocol, which can host smart contract functionality. As the primary token of Cardano, ADA is used to pay fees on the platform and plays a critical role in Cardano’s governance process.

If you are wondering how to buy ADA in Canada, Netcoins is a publicly-traded, fully regulated crypto trading platform based in Canada. With 0% funding fees, free cash withdrawals, and live customer support service seven days a week, we make it simple for Canadians to buy ADA and other cryptocurrencies.

Video Tutorial: How to Buy Cardano with Netcoins

Why Buy Cardano (ADA)?

At its core, Cardano aims to accomplish similar things to Ethereum functionality but with greater efficiency and functionality. One example of this is smart contracts, which have the potential to remove reliance on large financial institutions. Some areas of emphasis for Cardano include transaction costs, token supply, and transaction speeds. Through its developed proof-of-stake protocol, Cardano can achieve faster and cheaper transactions than most cryptocurrency blockchains. This sets them up well for scalability as the network grows. 

Additionally, Cardano has a supply cap of 45 billion ADA tokens that can exist at any point in time. This removes inflation risk, which usually reduces the value of your tokens over the long run. 

As the native cryptocurrency of Cardano, ADA is heavily tied to the project’s growth and success, which is one of the main reasons ADA saw nearly 10x price appreciation throughout 2021. Looking into the future, an investment into Cardano could be an investment into a project that could potentially be a serious competitor to Ethereum through its quicker and cheaper blockchain network.

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What Makes Cardano Stand Out?

Cardano’s technology is advancing at rapid speed. There are plenty of reasons why the massive blockchain ecosystem their building stands out. Here are only four examples.

ADA is a Green Cryptocurrency. Cardano’s scientific approach is the main reason its blockchain is considered one of the most environmentally friendly in the world. Since Cardano uses staking rather than mining (which Bitcoin uses) to process transactions, the platform is believed to use energy much more efficiently to process transactions.

ADA has optimal efficiency. Cardano’s existing proof-of-stake protocol makes it more efficient than Ethereum at this moment in time. Once Ethereum transitions to Ethereum 2.0, it will be more competitive with Cardano’s existing blockchain. However, Cardano’s head start puts them in an optimal position to compete with Ethereum as the cryptocurrency market grows.

There is a max supply of ADA. Cardano has a supply cap of 45 billion ADA tokens that can exist at any point in time. This removes inflation risk which usually can reduce the value of your tokens over the long run.

Why are Investors Excited about Cardano?

ADA’s direct relationship to Cardano through staking, governance, and staking makes its success very closely tied to the success of the Cardano blockchain. However, before considering ADA as an investment, there are several important factors to understand. 

Like all cryptocurrencies, ADA’s price may be influenced by the crypto market’s general direction, which tends to be volatile. However, looking beyond short-term price movements, there are several things on the horizon for Cardano to be excited about. 

With the recent rollout of smart contracts, the Carano development team is now focusing on the Basho upgrade, which will add side chains to help ease pressure on the main chain. In simple terms, this upgrade will help increase Cardano’s capacity, preparing for growth to come. Cardano’s academic approach to development and solid foundation compared to Ethereum makes it an investment worth considering into the future.

What Can You Do With ADA?

As a digital currency, ADA can be used by anyone worldwide as a secure exchange of value. However, as the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano network, the token carries several direct functionalities concerning Cardano. 

ADA’s primary function is to be used as payment for network fees and to act as a governance token. Importantly, ADA holders are entitled to a stake in the Cardano network. Storing your ADA in a wallet allows you to earn rewards in the form of yield, a way to earn passive income as you hold your tokens for the long run. 

The Cardano blockchain is growing with new DEFI projects every day, and also has it’s fair share of Cardano meme tokens.

Daedalus is Cardano’s official desktop wallet created by the Cardano development team. You can use it to stake your ADA tokens or participate in network governance through voting power you receive, depending on the value of your ADA held.

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How Much ADA Can I Buy?

ADA, like other cryptocurrencies, is highly divisible. You can buy a whole ADA coin or fractions of it. When opting to buy ADA, a platform like Netcoins allows you to buy whatever dollar amount of ADA coins you’d like. Buying ADA in regular intervals (like days, weeks or months) is known as dollar-cost averaging and can be a great way to average the price you buy at. All of these options are available on Netcoins, Canada’s first publicly-owned, fully regulated cryptocurrency exchange.

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How Do I Store My ADA?

You can buy ADA from crypto trading platforms, like Netcoins, and leave your ADA coins inside the platform. However, there are much safer options to storing your ADA as leaving them in exchanges can expose them to certain risks like hacking and theft.

The safest option to keeping your ADA secure is to transfer them into a Cardano wallet. A Cardano wallet is a type of digital wallet that is used to send and receive ADA, similar to a Google wallet or a physical wallet.

There are four different types of Cardano wallets: hardware wallets, desktop wallets, mobile wallets and web wallets.

Hardware wallets look like a USB device. They are considered to be offline wallets because they’re not connected to the internet. The fact they’re offline makes them more difficult to find and to hack. As such, they’re typically considered the safest option to store your ADA.

Desktop wallets on the other hand are programs that store your ADA on your computer’s hard drive. Cardano’s official desktop crypto wallet was created by the Cardano team and is called Daedalus. By downloading and installing the Daedalus wallet, you may get access to the complete Cardano blockchain. In technical terms, it is a complete node wallet 

Finally, a web wallet is an online service that sends and stores your ADA on your behalf anywhere, anytime. Similar to checking your email. 

Desktop, mobile and web wallets are all connected to the internet (and referred to as “hot wallets”). Like mentioned earlier, they are more susceptible to potential risks. On the other hand, hardware wallets (or “cold wallets”) are considered safer options as they are not connected to the internet. 

This is why it’s often advised that Canadians pull out their ADA from crypto trading platforms and send them directly to a hardware wallet. Only in this way, are they in full possession of their ADA and can keep them secure.

What is Daedalus?

Cardano’s official desktop crypto wallet was created by the Cardano team and is called Daedalus. By downloading and installing the Daedalus wallet, you may get access to the complete Cardano blockchain. In technical terms, it is a complete node wallet

This post is for informational purposes only. For proper financial advice, we recommend you speak to a financial advisor.