How to buy Floki — the meme token inspired by Elon Musk's dog

How to buy Floki
How to buy Floki (Image credit: Floki Inu)

This is not financial advice. This is for educational purposes only. Please note that cryptocurrency is a highly volatile asset class; only invest what you can afford to lose.

"How to buy Floki" is a question that's suddenly cropping up among daredevil meme-token investors who believe Floki could be the next Dogecoin or Shiba Inu. The creators of Floki were inspired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk's dog whose name is — you guessed it — Floki! 

According to Floki's white paper (a document that outlines a token's mission and other important information), the developers claim that the Floki team is working on three projects: an NFT gaming metaverse, an NFT marketplace and an education platform called Floki Inuversity. Can the Floki creators manifest these plans into reality? That still remains to be seen.

How to buy Floki

In order to purchase Floki, you need to acquire a stablecoin called Tether (USDT). A stablecoin is designed to match the value of fiat (e.g. the US dollar). As such, Tether will typically always hover at around $1; hence the name "stablecoin." You cannot buy Floki directly with fiat.

The crypto-trading platform we'll be using to acquire USDT is Gate.io, which you can use to buy Floki. Once you're all signed up with Gate.io, here's how to buy Floki.

1. Go to Buy Crypto > Credit Card.

2. Under Currently Purchased, select USDT from the dropdown menu.

3. Under the Buy with Fiat Currency Field, type in how much USDT you'd like to buy (which should align with how much Floki you'd like to purchase).

How to buy Floki

How to buy Floki (Image credit: Future)

4. Click on a service provider. Click around between Simplex, advcash and others to determine which has the cheapest fees. (Another way you can get USDT is to purchase it from Coinbase and deposit it into Gate.io, which may be a cheaper option. Here is an excellent tutorial on how to do this).

5. Once you've selected your provider, tick the disclaimer, select Purchase and follow the prompts to complete the transaction.

6. Now that you have USDT, you can trade it for Floki by going to Trade.

How to buy Floki

How to buy Floki (Image credit: Future)

7. Type in "Floki" into the search bar and click on Floki_USDT

Note: The Gate.io interface is intimidating, but don't worry, I'll walk you through it. What's tricky about Gate.io is that it doesn't do market orders. In other words, it doesn't allow you to immediately buy at market price. Instead, you'll have to set a price you'd like to buy Floki at, and when it does hit that price, the order will go through. If you don't want to wait too long to initiate the transaction, follow the next steps.

8. Scroll down to the "Buy Floki" section and click on the downward arrow next to "Price USDT/Floki." Select Last Price +1%.

How to buy Floki

How to buy Floki (Image credit: Future)

9. Click on "100%" (this ensures that all your USDT gets swapped into Floki).

10. Click on Buy (USDT - Floki). Once Floki hits the set price, you'll acquire the tokens. You should get an email from Gate.io when this happens.

This is the best way to buy Floki; it circumvents Ethereum's ridiculously high gas fees.

How to buy Floki in New York and other crypto-unfriendly regions

You can purchase Floki on Uniswap. First, you must get Ethereum from Coinbase, deposit it into your Metamask wallet (here's a great tutorial on how to deposit ETH into Metamask from Coinbase), and buy Floki on Uniswap. The downside of this method, however, is you'll have to pay something called a gas fee, which can be high.

1. Once you've deposited Ethereum into Metamask, go to Uniswap and click Launch App.

2. Click on Connect Wallet followed by Metamask. Follow the prompts to connect your Metamask wallet to Uniswap.

3. Click on Select Token and type in Floki Inu (Make sure you choose Floki Inu as there are other Floki's, and make sure its contract address matches these numbers: 0x43f11c02439e2736800433b4594994Bd43Cd066D). Two results will pop up. Click the one that says CoinGecko. Click Import. 

4. Next, tap on the gear icon and set the slippage tolerance to 4%.

How to buy Floki

How to buy Floki (Image credit: Future)

5. Tap on the grayed-out zeros and type in how much ETH you'd like to trade for Floki. If you want all of it traded, simply copy the number next to Balance.

How to buy Floki

How to buy Floki (Image credit: Future)

6. Once you're ready, click on Swap to execute the trade and get your Floki tokens.

If the gas fee is too high, I'd strongly suggest waiting and purchasing during the wee hours of the day. Gas fees tend to be lower when there are less people crowding the Ethereum network.

As always, make sure to practice responsible investing. Cryptocurrency, especially meme tokens, are a volatile asset class. Only invest what you can endure losing.

Kimberly Gedeon

Kimberly Gedeon, holding a Master's degree in International Journalism, launched her career as a journalist for MadameNoire's business beat in 2013. She loved translating stuffy stories about the economy, personal finance and investing into digestible, easy-to-understand, entertaining stories for young women of color. During her time on the business beat, she discovered her passion for tech as she dove into articles about tech entrepreneurship, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and the latest tablets. After eight years of freelancing, dabbling in a myriad of beats, she's finally found a home at Laptop Mag that accepts her as the crypto-addicted, virtual reality-loving, investing-focused, tech-fascinated nerd she is. Woot!