How and Where to Buy Sapien (SPN) – Detailed Guide

What is SPN?

What is Sapien?

Sapien is an Ethereum-based social network built for humans. Launched as an undergraduate project by Ankit Bhatia & Rob Giometti at UC Berkeley in 2017, Sapien is building a decentralized, private social network built on a foundation of independent, self-governing communities called Tribes which all participate in the SPN token economy.

The company is established on a principle of “Humans First,” which means Sapien will stand by these pledges:

  • Data sovereignty: as a social network, Sapien knows that privacy is paramount and will never collect personal data without consent
  • Self-governance: Sapien commits to give communities the tools they need to guide and protect their communities, so it will always be people who moderate and promote content, never an exploitable algorithm
  • Humanity: Sapien is built by humans for humans, not trolls or bots, and the platform aims to make it incredibly hard for malicious users or content to spread across the network

Sapien aims to build the first Web3 social network for mainstream users by building a familiar social user interface and experience and abstracting away the complexities of blockchain by implementing instant, gasless transactions for the end-user and by reinventing the wallet experience to be simpler and more intuitive.

Sapien aligns its business model with the best interests of its users, so its primary source of revenue is the nominal fees it applies to Charges and Rewards.

While Sapien was originally founded in the United States by Ankit & Rob, the team itself has grown to a team of 20, globally distributed across 10 countries.

What is the SPN token and how does it work?

The SPN token is an ERC20-compliant utility token that can be used to reward and recognize valuable contributions to the communities, subscribe or purchase access to content shared by creators, and to engage in social-powered e-commerce. With the SPN token, Sapien aims to democratize the power inherent to social media - social, economic, political, technological - by decentralizing the platform controls all the way down to community leaders, rather than a boardroom and a handful of executives.

Charging

One feature that separates Sapien from other social platforms is that content sorting is governed by a system of “Charges,” which are tokenized boosts users can give to posts and comments as a reward for their quality. Charges boost the presence of posts in user feeds and reward the post creator/commenter with SPN tokens within 24 hours of the Charge being given. This process gives monetary weight to the liking system commonly employed on social platforms and will enable creators to directly connect with and receive compensation from their audiences.

Staking

Sapien operates on a proof-of-value protocol. Users can stake their SPN tokens using the Sapien smart contract, which progressively unlocks the tokens over the course of a calendar year. Sapien employs a “Stake Rank” system which determines the platform fees charges to users at the points of Charging and collecting rewards, with the user staking more tokens than anyone else receiving the lowest fees and fees being assigned according to Stake Rank.

SPN was first tradable on 6th Aug, 2018. It has a total supply of 500,000,000. As of right now SPN has a market capitalization of USD $unknown. The current price of SPN is $0.0126 and is ranked 842 on Coinmarketcap and has recently surged 148.05 percent at the time of writing.

SPN has been listed on a number of crypto exchanges, unlike other main cryptocurrencies, it cannot be directly purchased with fiats money. However, You can still easily buy this coin by first buying Ethereum from any fiat-to-crypto exchanges and then transfer to the exchange that offers to trade this coin, in this guide article we will walk you through in detail the steps to buy SPN.

Step 1: Register on Fiat-to-Crypto Exchange

You will have to first buy one of the major cryptocurrencies, in this case, Ethereum (ETH). In this article we will walk you through in details two of the most commonly-used fiat-to-crypto exchanges, Uphold.com and Coinbase. Both exchanges have their own fee policies and other features that we will go through in detail. It is recommended that you try both of them and figure out the one that suits you best.

uphold

Suitable for US traders

Select Fiat-to-Crypto Exchange for details:

SPN

Being one of the most popular and convenient fiat-to-crypto exchanges, UpHold has the following advantages:

  • Easy to buy and trade among multiple assets, more than 50 and still adding
  • Currently more than 7M users worldwide
  • You can apply for UpHold Debit card where you can spend the crypto assets on your account like a normal debit card! (US only but will be in the UK later)
  • Easy to use mobile app where you can withdraw fund to a bank or any other altcoin exchanges easily
  • No hidden fees and any other account fees
  • There are limited buy/sell orders for more advanced users
  • You can easily set up recurring deposits for Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) if you intend to hold cryptos long term
  • USDT, which is one of the most popular USD-backed stablecoins (basically a crypto that is backed by real fiat money so they are less volatile and can be treated almost as the fiat money it's pegged with) is available, this is more convenient if the altcoin you intend to buy has only USDT trading pairs on the altcoin exchange so you don't have to go through another currency conversion while you buy the altcoin.
Show Details Steps ▾
SPN

Type your email and click 'Next'. Make sure you provide your real name as UpHold will need it for account and identity verification. Choose a strong password so that your account isn't vulnerable to hackers.

SPN

You will receive a confirmation email. Open it and click on the link within. You will then be required to provide a valid mobile number to set up two-factor authentication (2FA), it is an extra layer to the security of your account and it is highly recommended that you keep this feature turned on.

SPN

Follow the next step to finish your identity verification. These steps are a bit daunting especially when you are waiting to buy an asset but just like any other financial institutions, UpHold is regulated in most countries such as the US, the UK and the EU. You can take this as a trade-off to using a trusted platform to make your first crypto purchase. Good news is that the whole so-called Know-Your-Customers (KYC) process is now fully automated and it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to finish.

Step 2: Buy ETH with fiat money

SPN

Once you finished the KYC process. You will be asked to add a payment method. Here you can either choose to provide a credit/debit card or use a bank transfer. You may be charged higher fees depending on your credit card company and the volatile prices when using cards but you will also make an instant purchase. While a bank transfer will be cheaper but slower, depending on the country of your residence, some countries will offer instant cash deposit with low fees.

SPN

Now you are all set, on the 'Transact' screen under the 'From' field, select your fiat currency, and then on the 'To' field choose Ethereum, click preview to review your transaction and the click confirm if everything looks good... and congrats! You've just made your first crypto purchase.

Step 3: Transfer ETH to an Altcoin Exchange

But we are not done yet, since SPN is an altcoin we need to transfer our ETH to an exchange that SPN can be traded. Below is a list of exchanges that offers to trade SPN in various market pairs, head to their websites and register for an account.

Once finished you will then need to deposit ETH to the exchange from UpHold. After the deposit is confirmed you may then purchase SPN from the exchange view.

Exchange
Market Pair
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SPN/ETH

Last Step: Store SPN securely in hardware wallets

Ledger Nano S

Ledger Nano S

  • Easy to set up and friendly interface
  • Can be used on desktops and laptops
  • Lightweight and Portable
  • Support most blockchains and wide range of (ERC-20/BEP-20) tokens
  • Multiple languages available
  • Built by a well-established company found in 2014 with great chip security
  • Affordable price
Ledger Nano X

Ledger Nano X

  • More powerful secure element chip (ST33) than Ledger Nano S
  • Can be used on desktop or laptop, or even smartphone and tablet through Bluetooth integration
  • Lightweight and Portable with built-in rechargeable battery
  • Larger screen
  • More storage space than Ledger Nano S
  • Support most blockchains and wide range of (ERC-20/BEP-20) tokens
  • Multiple languages available
  • Built by a well-established company found in 2014 with great chip security
  • Affordable price

If you are planning to keep("hodl" as some may say, basically misspelt "hold" which get popularised over time) your SPN for a considerable long time, you may want to explore ways of keeping it safe, although Binance is one of the safest cryptocurrency exchange there had been hacking incidents and funds were lost. Because of the very nature of the wallets in exchanges, they will be always online("Hot Wallets" as we call them), therefore exposing certain aspects of vulnerabilities. The safest way of storing your coins to date is always putting them into a type of "Cold Wallets", where the wallet will only have access to the blockchain(or simply "go online") when you send out funds, reducing the chances of hacking incidents. A paper wallet is a type of free cold wallet, it's basically an offline-generated pair of public and private address and you will have it written somewhere, and keep it safe. However, it is not durable and is susceptible to various hazards.

Hardware wallet here is definitely a better option of cold wallets. They are usually USB-enabled devices that store the key information of your wallet in a more durable way. They are built with military-level security and their firmware are constantly maintained by their manufacturers and thus extremely safe. Ledger Nano S and Ledger Nano X and are the most popular options in this category, these wallets cost around $50 to $100 depending on the features they are offering. If you are holding your assets these wallets are a good investment in our opinion.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I buy SPN with cash?

There is no direct way to buy SPN with cash. However, you can use marketplaces such as LocalBitcoins to first purchase ETH, and finish the rest of the steps by transferring your ETH to respective AltCoin exchanges.

LocalBitcoins is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange. It is a marketplace where users can buy and sell Bitcoins to and from each other. Users, called traders, create advertisements with the price and the payment method they want to offer. You can choose to buy from sellers from a certain nearby region on the platform. is after all a good place to go to buy Bitcoins when you can't find your desired payment methods anywhere else. But prices are usually higher on this platform and you have to do your due diligence to avoid getting scammed.

Are there any quick ways to buy SPN in Europe?

Yes, in fact, Europe is one of the easiest places to buy cryptos in general. There are even online banks which you can simply open an account and transfer money to exchanges such as Coinbase and Uphold.

Are there any alternative platforms to buy SPN or Bitcoin with credit cards?

Yes. is also a very easy to use platform for buying Bitcoin with credit cards. It is an instant cryptocurrency exchange that allows you to exchange crypto fast and buy it with a bank card. Its user interface is very easy to use and the buying steps are pretty self-explanatory.

Read more on Sapien's fundamentals and current price here.

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