This post will go hand-in-hand with our How to find a 100X gem post if you haven’t already read that, you can access it HERE.

The 2020/2021 bull market is in full swing and a lot of new folks are coming to the crypto arena looking to get in on the digital gold rush. A lot of exchanges like Binance and Coinbase are heavily crowded and have a lot of traffic. The act of listing a coin on one of these exchanges can send its price soaring and remove a lot of the potential upside.

If a project goes from $100 million market cap (supply of tokens x price) and up to $500 million market cap because it is listed on one of these tier 1 exchanges.

Can you see how hard it would be for that project to do another 5 x from here? Going from $500 million to $2.5 billion requires a lot more time, investment and output than a coin going from $100 million to $500 million.

So what if you can catch it at $5 million market cap? (!) That’s right… there is a way, people. But I hate to break it to you, it isn’t through centralised exchanges (CEX) like Binance and Coinbase, by then it may be too late for a 10 or even 100X…

Just tell me where to get these gems… NOW

Well, like with everything in cryptocurrency, there is a decentralised rogue brother where the established rules don’t fly. This is true for exchanges too. Decentralised exchanges (DEX) are the stomping ground for degenerate high-risk/high reward players in the crypto world.

Why are they high risk? The projects are in their infancy, the use of open-source software and projects being direct copies of their predecessors with minimal modifications and there is the R-word… Rug pulls.

Rug pulls, are, as the name suggests, when the developers of a project, quite literally, pull the rug from beneath you. Making away with your easily earned funds, usually through enticing you in with ridiculously high-seeming payoffs and a thriving community which are overly bullish on the project.

I will do an article on how to spot a rug pull so put the notifications on so you are first to know!

DEX are, for the best part, a wonderful place. It feels like what cryptocurrency should be like. People trading directly with smart contracts and in some instances directly from person-to-person, as opposed to waiting for a clunky order book on CEX.

DEX are permissionless due to their very nature. Anyone can list a coin on there making it free to trade (if the liquidity or demand is there). So this leads to true early developers or early adopters of the coin heading there to trade their tokens.

You may have heard of Uniswap. This is a DEX built on Ethereum. Ethereum, as you may know by now, is undergoing some high gas fees due to congestion of the network. This is causing transaction fees to be commonly over $50, which unless you are ballin’ or an idiot, will not seem attractive.

Cue, Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Binance released the BSC to compete against ETH in the DeFi and DEX arena. The fees as you can imagine are unnoticeable compared to ETH, think $0.10, as opposed to $50. The transactions are faster and the gold rush is causing more and more projects to be launched on BSC as opposed to Ethereum.

Since January 2021, me and a few other friends at blocmates have seen over 30X, 20X and a few 5X returns on projects like Beefy Finance, AUTO and BHC. All on BSC.

Pancake swap is the main DEX on BSC with Bakery Swap being its main competition. Uniswap and Sushiswap are their ETH competitors, respectively.

Check out each of these projects as they are still to be listed on tier 1 exchanges themselves.

ARE YOU GOING TO SHUT UP AND TELL ME HOW?

Right, here we go, strap in. 

*Channelling my inner Neil Buchanan*, You will need:

• A smartphone

• A Laptop

• Binance account (Click here if you don’t have one)

• MetaMask wallet installed on Chrome web browser

• Some BNB (you can buy through Binance)

First, load up your Binance account with BNB. This is going to be the currency you use on the BSC.

You can do this by buying crypto on your Binance account. So if you deposit GBP then convert this to BNB. You can see our How to Buy Crypto in our blogmates HERE.

Next, install the MetaMask web3 browser on Google Chrome. –

This is a wallet where you can send, receive and transact from. Sign up to MetaMask and make sure you write down and safely store your seed phrase. This will allow you to get into your MetaMask if it is lost or stolen. 

Did you write it down? Okay, cool.

If you take a look at the top of the screen on MetaMask, it says Ethereum Mainnet. MetaMask is, by default, configured to transact with ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain.

As we mentioned above, we don’t want to use the Ethereum blockchain as the fees are too high at the minute. So we need to configure the MetaMask wallet to work on the BSC.

So, go to the top, click ‘add custom chain’.

In the corresponding boxes fill in these fields:

Network Name: Smart Chain

New RPC URL: https://bsc-dataseed.binance.org/

ChainID: 56

Symbol: BNB

Block Explorer URL: https://bscscan.com

Once you fill this in you should select the newly made Binance Smart Chain instead of Ethereum. I repeat. You need to ensure you are on the Binance Smart Chain and NOT Ethereum. If you send funds to Ethereum you may lose your investments. Check and double-check. 

Did you check you are on Binance Smart Chain? Okay, cool.

Once you are on the smart chain on your MetaMask. Click the address at the top to copy the address. This is the address you will receive your BNB from Binance on.

Go to Binance and click ‘withdraw’ on BNB. Select the BSC(BEP20) to withdraw your BNB to MetaMask. Again, ensure you have clicked BSC and BEP20 or you will potentially lose your funds.

Paste your MetaMask address into the recipient’s address in Binance. Select BSC and send the desired amount of BNB to your MetaMask. You may find it easier to do this using your phone (Binance) and MetaMask (browser).

This should take less than a minute to receive BNB into your MetaMask.

TIP- As you are now using the BSC all transactions will use BNB to pay for fees. Always keep at least 0.01 BNB if you wish to trade, stake or transact on BNB. These will pay for the fees. 

Let get those coins! This walkthrough will go through:

How to buy Crow Finance using pancake swap and MetaMask.

Open Pancake Swap and click trade, then exchange.

Connect your MetaMask using ‘connect wallet’ at the top left on Pancake Swap.

BNB should be in the top box.

A lot of coins will be able to freely trade if you open the bottom box you can select them by typing in the coin name.

Although, some coins may need to be searched for with this extra step.

With Crow finance, as it is now, we need to use www.bscscan.com to find its address.

Go to BSCscan and type in ‘CROW’.

You should see a drop-down box and the contracts for Crow Finance there.

Click on Crow Finance and copy the contract address.

Paste the long contract address into the bottom box on pancake swap. This should be detected as Crow. Select Add for future use.

Now you can type in the top box, how much BNB you want to swap for Crow.
Remember to keep at least 0.01BNB for trading on BSC/Pancake swap.

Click the settings button (cog).

Ensure you change the slippage to 3.1% using the cog at the top on pancake swap this is only for crow finance.

Click approve trade and MetaMask will ask you to approve and then confirm the transaction, giving you a gas fee in BNB. Haha

Note – Whenever you see the words ‘ETH’ whilst you are using the newly configured Binance Smart Chain on MetaMask, forget it and imagine it says BNB. All transactions are using BNB on the Binance smart chain, it is just leftover text from the Ethereum main net which is the default on MetaMask.

The final step is to go to your MetaMask, click add a custom token. 

Paste the Crow address you got from BSCscan and it should detect Crow. Now you should see your newly bought Crow tokens in your MetaMask wallet.

You are now a fully competent DEX trader well done! It wasn’t that hard, was it?

This process is the same if you want to use Uniswap or Sushiswap to get ERC-20 tokens which are built on Ethereum. But what do you need to remember? That is correct, switch to Ethereum main net if you want to purchase ERC-20/ETH built tokens using DEX and MetaMask.

Just remember to switch back to the smart chain when you come back to the smart-side and avoid those high ETH gas fees.

I will write a full article on how you can earn more rewards by staking your tokens in DeFi protocols like Beefy Finance, Pancake Swap pools, Auto Finance or even Crow itself.

Want access to our portfolio? Patreon link HERE.

Free to join Telegram community HERE

Now you are competent at sending, receiving and trading on a DEX using MetaMask, you could consider donating to our MetaMask address in BNB. It helps to support the channel by allowing us to focus more on generating content for you to be able to become more and more crypto-competent. It is a big help. 

Our BSC – MetaMask address is

0xe94B661E5BEb281D39954A7FCe5D1f17F01f02AE

You can use this same procedure to buy any tokens on BSC. Use pancake swap or bakery swap as the DEX and connect your MetaMask.

If you are still unsure after this join our telegram and ask the group what they think. We are an open bunch, no hostility in there. Everyone is welcome.

Get in touch with us via the Telegram if you need any further information, we are here to help, no strings attached. As always DYOR before any purchase.

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