How to transfer cryptocurrencies from Uphold to Kraken

Photo by Dmitry Demidko on Unsplash

When you want to start your cryptocurrency journey one of the first choices yo have to make: Where to do I want to buy (and possibly sell) cryptocurrencies? Amongst many other exchange Kraken and Uphold are very popular. You may find yourself in the situation, that you have cryptos in Uphold (e.g. BAT from using the Brave Browser) and you want to transfer them in the most cost and time efficient way. The second paragraph will briefly talk about fees and transfer possibilities of Uphold and the third will show ho I have done the transfer.

Uphold divides it’s currencies in four different tiers, which can see on: https://uphold.com/en/transparency: Tier 1 and Tier 2 are non-crypto currencies. Tier 4 are cryptocurrencies that you can buy and sell on Uphold but without the possibility to withdraw or send them. Only Tier 3 offers you cryptocurrencies, that you can withdraw or send. That means you have to swap any Tier 4 currency from Uphold in to a Tier 1–3 currencies if you want to transfer or withdraw it. So I further looked into the Tier 3 currencies and compared their deposit fees on kraken (most other exchanges will have similar fees) and calculated the cost in USD (02/18/21):

• Basic Attention Token BAT: Setup Fee 6 BAT ( 3.6 $) + each transfer 4 BAT ( 2.4$)
• Bitcoin BTC: minimum fee each transfer 0.0001 BTC (5.2 $)
• Litecoin LTC: minimum fee each transfer 0.0001 LTC (0.023$)

You can do your own comparison by visiting https://www.kraken.com/u/funding (requires a kraken account), entering the currency of your choice in the search field and click and “deposit”

Fig. 1: Create a cryptocurrency deposit in kraken

How I made the transfer:

1. Login into kraken.com
2. Go to the kraken funding page: https://www.kraken.com/u/funding
3. Create a deposit for Litecoin (see Fig. 1)
4. Acknowlegde the Terms
5. Generate a new address for Litecoin (see Fig. 2)
6. Login into my Uphold Account: https://wallet.uphold.com/
7. Buy the amount of Litecoin I want to transfer
8. Switch back to the Old Uphold Layout (Fig. 3)
9. If haven’t already: Enable 2 factor authentication
10. Click “View all Cards”
11. Select “Litecoin”
12. Select “send to cryptocurrency or utility token”
13. Select “Litecoin”
14. Enter the amount of Litecoin you want to transfer (Fig. 5)
15. Copy the new address from kraken and paste it into Uphold
16. Confirm the transaction and you are good to go

Fig. 2: Generate a new address for Litecoin

Fig. 3: Switch to classic view

Fig. 4: Selection for sending cryptocurrencies

Fig. 5: Example sending summary