How to Buy Aptos (APT)

Beginner’s Guide

What Is Aptos?

Aptos is a Layer 1 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain that employs a novel smart contract programming language called Move, a Rust-based programming language that was independently developed by Meta (formerly Facebook)’s Diem blockchain engineers.

Aptos’s vision is a blockchain that brings mainstream adoption to web3 and empowers an ecosystem of DApps to solve real-world user problems.

The PoS blockchain can achieve a theoretical transaction throughput of over 150,000 transactions per second (tps) through parallel execution.

In March 2022, Aptos raised $200 million in a seed round led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Other crypto heavyweights like Tiger Global and Multicoin Capital took part in the funding round. Fast forward to July, the startup raised another $150 million in a Series A round led by Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto.

Two months later, Binance Labs made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount in Aptos, bringing its valuation to $4 billion in September.

On Oct. 18, 2022, Aptos announced the mainnet launch, while the Aptos genesis occurred on Oct. 12, 2022.

How to Buy Aptos Summary

Get a Aptos wallet (e.g. Ledger, Trezor , Exodus, Guarda, AtomicWallet)
Find an exchange that sells Aptos (e.g. Crypto.com, Binance , Coinbase , Bitfinex , Kucoin)
Deposit money and make the trade
Withdraw the Aptos to your wallet

Buying Aptos in 3 Simple Steps

Desctop & Mobile

Aptos Hardware Wallets

The best option for storing any cryptocurrency would be to use a hardware wallet. These are pieces of hardware that store the private key to your coins offline.

Today, there are two leading hardware manufacturers to choose from – Ledger and TREZOR. Both companies have different models of hardware wallets that will get the job done.

If you want deeper insights on specific models, you can read my Ledger Nano X review or my TREZOR Model T review.

Aptos Software Wallets

Hardware wallets cost money, so if you’re not sure how serious you are about cryptocurrencies and just want to get a taste of what they feel like, perhaps you would be better off starting with a software wallet.

Payment methods:

Credit/debit card

Buy Aptos through Crypto.com

Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency exchange company based in Singapore. As of May 2022, the company reportedly had 50 million customers and 4,000 employees. The exchange issues a token, Cronos. The company was initially founded in Hong Kong by Bobby Bao, Gary Or, Kris Marszalek, and Rafael Melo in 2016 as “Monaco”. In 2018, the company was renamed as Crypto.com following a purchase of a domain owned by cryptography researcher and professor Matt Blaze. Domain sellers valued the domain at US$5–10 million.

Buy Aptos through Binance

Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange which is the largest exchange in the world in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. It was founded in 2017 and is registered in the Cayman Islands. Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high frequency trading software.

Buy Aptos through Coinbase

Coinbase is a convenient and cheap way to buy Ethereum and the platform is open to 200+ countries). Coinbase will sell you CRO for a variable fee that depends on your payment method (credit cards have a higher fee than wire transfers), order size and market volatility. Here’s how you buy Ethereum on Coinbase: Open a Coinbase account Add your payment method (Credit card or bank account) Go to “Buy/Sell” and select the amount of Ethereum you desire Click “Buy Cronos”

Buy Aptos through Bitfinex

Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc registered in the British Virgin Islands.Their customers’ money has been stolen or lost in several incidents, and they have been unable to secure normal banking relationships. Bitfinex was founded in December 2012 as a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange, offering digital asset trading services to users around the world. Bitfinex initially started as a P2P margin lending platform for Bitcoin and later added support for more cryptocurrencies.

Buy Aptos through Kucoin

Kucoin is a global cryptocurrency exchange for numerous digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Launched in September 2017, KuCoin has grown into one of the most popular crypto exchanges and already has over 8 million registered users from 700+ countries and regions. According to Alexa traffic ranking, KuCoin’s monthly unique ranking is in the top 5 globally. Known as the “People’s Exchange”, KuCoin operates in Seychelles, providing users with multi-language and 24/7 customer service. Meanwhile, KuCoin has established local communities all over the world in South Korea, Japan, Spain, Italy, Vietnam, Turkey, Russia, India, and other regions, providing users with the most local services. Currently, 1 out of every 4 crypto holders in the world is with KuCoin.

Step 3 – Withdraw Your Aptos (APT)

As Aptos (APT) is a relatively new cryptocurrency, it may not yet be listed on major cryptocurrency exchanges. However, if you have acquired APT through an exchange, you may be able to withdraw it by following these general steps:

Log in to your account on the exchange where your APT is held.
Navigate to the “Withdraw” or “Send” section of the exchange.
Select APT as the cryptocurrency you want to withdraw.
Enter the wallet address where you want to send your APT. Make sure to double-check the address to ensure that it is correct, as sending APT to the wrong address can result in a loss of funds.
Enter the amount of APT you want to withdraw. Be sure to check the withdrawal fee, as this will be subtracted from your total withdrawal amount.
Review and confirm the transaction details, including the withdrawal address and the amount of APT being withdrawn.
Complete any two-factor authentication or other security steps required by the exchange.
Submit the withdrawal request.

The time it takes for your APT to arrive in your wallet can vary depending on network congestion and other factors. Once your APT has been sent to your wallet, you should see the transaction appear in your wallet’s transaction history.

OVERVIEW

Who Are the Founders of Aptos?

Aptos is the brainchild of Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, both former employees of Meta. Mo, who is the current CEO of the company, is a founder with years of multinational financial services and blockchain/crypto experience. According to his LinkedIn profile, he specializes in scaling products and has experience in the private equity and venture capital markets.

Ching, on the other hand, is the CTO of Aptos. He is a software engineer and was one of the principal software engineers at Meta.

The duo worked together on the Diem blockchain project at Meta. Shaikh and Ching decided to join forces to create Aptos Labs when the Diem project was discontinued in January 2022. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that Aptos employs some of the technicalities of Diem.

Other members of the Aptos team include researchers, designers, and engineers from Diem.

What Makes Aptos Unique?

For a start, the Aptos team claims that its network can process over 150,000 tps. By comparison, Ethereum’s mainnet tps is around 12 to 15.

This high transaction throughput is possible through a parallel execution engine (Block-STM) — a byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) PoS consensus mechanism. For context, most blockchains execute transactions sequentially, which means that a single failed transaction or high demand on the network could hold up the entire chain.

In the case of Aptos, all transactions are processed simultaneously and validated afterward. Failed transactions are either re-executed or aborted, thanks to the blockchain’s software transactional memory libraries, which spot and manage conflicts.

Aptos is built using Move, a new smart contract programming language that claims to offer advantages to Solidity, the EVM-based programming language. This includes blockchain commands that can be easily verified, modification of private key and modular design of Aptos.

New use cases can be realized through Aptos’ upgradeability and configurability, while horizontal throughput scalability — through the natively-implemented sharding feature — provides a better user experience.

How Much Aptos is in Circulation?

APT is the native currency of the Aptos blockchain. It has an initial total supply of 1 billion and at the time of writing, its circulating supply is 130 million APT.

The distribution is as follows: Community (51.02%); Core Contributors (19.00%); Foundation (16.50%); Investors (13.48%).

Under the Community allocation, around 80% are held by the Aptos Foundation and the remaining by Aptos Labs. This will be used to support community growth and Aptos Foundation initiatives, and the remainder will be unlocked monthly over the next ten years.

Investors and core contributors are subjected to a four-year vesting schedule from mainnet launch. The Aptos team announced a token airdrop of 20 million APT tokens to early testnet users on Oct. 19, 2022.

Aptos Mainnet Launch

As already mentioned, despite raising millions of dollars from investors, Aptos did not launch its mainnet until October 2022. Prior to the mainnet launch, its testnet campaign called “Aptos Incentivized Testnet (AIT)” was running since May.

The testnet was divided into four stages – AIT1, AIT2, AIT3, and AIT4. The aim of the campaign was to invite and incentivize developers, node operators, and auditors to launch applications and stress-test the network, ahead of the mainnet launch.

On September 9, 2022, the network completed its AIT3 campaign, paving a way for the final testnet. Through the series of testnets, Aptos onboarded over 100 projects, including Solrise Finance, PayMagic, Pontem Network, and MartianDAO.

On Oct. 18, 2022, Aptos went live with its mainnet launch, making it the first blockchain to debut on Move technology. At the time this content was published, the mainnet was using the latest version of AptosBFT (version 4), which leverages a Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) consensus protocol. However, the company is already working on AptosBFT (version 5).

What Is Aptos Bridge?

On-chain user application protocol called LayerZero Labs launched the Aptos Bridge on October 19, 2022.

The blockchain bridge will allow users to transfer Ethereum, USDC, and USDT from Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, and Optimism to Aptos.

How Is the Aptos Network Secured?

Aptos uses two consensus protocols – Proof-of-Stake and AptosBFT.

AptosBFT is quite similar to DiemBFT, originally developed for Diem. “BFT ” means ‘Byzantine Fault-Tolerant,’ and a network is said to be Byzantine fault-tolerant if it can continue to operate normally even if some of its members go offline or turn malicious.

AptosBFT is a custom-made consensus algorithm based on the HotStuff protocol. While there are a lot of background technicalities around how the protocol secures the network, the algorithm analyzes the on-chain state and automatically updates leader rotations to adjust for non-responsive validators without human intervention.