I Can’t DCA Into Coins Without Clicking Buttons

For the past few months, I’ve done my best to dollar-cost average (DCA) into Bitcoin and Ethereum. Every two weeks, I’ll take a fixed percentage of my paycheck and manually send it to Newton. Then, based on a daily “recurring buy” order that I’ve set up in-app, Newton will gradually swap my fiat for cryptocurrency.

When I feel like I’ve loaded up on enough BTC and ETH in-app, I will execute transfers from Newton to various self-custodial wallets to take my coins off the centralized exchange. Even if these hot wallets are technically doxed, nobody can access them but me.

While I’ve managed to DCA into various coins on a consistent basis, I’ve come across three main problems with the entire workflow.

1. Every payday, I need to remember to send money from my fiat checking account to my Newton trading account. Right now, I can’t automate this step in the process as the only funding alternatives are one-time e-transfers and wire transfers. This is quite standard across all of the country’s large crypto exchanges.

2. Once I’ve accumulated enough coins, I need to manually send them from Newton to various self-custodial wallets. My ETH is sent to two MetaMask wallets, and my BTC is sent to a Trust Wallet and Ledger Wallet. Intuitively, CEXs don’t want to make it too easy for users to transfer tokens to wallets outside of their scope, as it goes against their core business model.

3. Not only does this process of DCA’ing take time, but I am also incurring fees every step of the way. While Newton advertises “appallingly low fees”, their spread on purchases is around 2.5%. On $10,000 I am effectively paying $250 just to convert CAD to ETH and BTC, and this doesnt include the cost of transfering my coins off of the CEX.

Could there be a better way?

Fantasizing About a “Set It and Forget It” Crypto Onramp

What if you could configure an application to withdraw fiat from your bank account and convert it to BTC and ETH slowly over time? And what if this application could not only save you time, but also optimize for fees and gas along the way?

Instead of having to remember to transfer funds to Newton every payday, I want this application to do it for me at a rate lower than 2.5%. And instead of having to transfer coins from Newton to a handful of self-custodial wallets, I want this application to do it for me, at periods where demand for blockspace is at its lowest.

By connecting several fintech and crypto infrastructure providers together, I think we can make it happen. More soon.