Would you like to use the polygon network to buy your first NFT on opeansea.io or just use uniswap.org to swap some USDT to your favourite coin? But you have no MATIC, the native coin of polygon in the wallet to pay for the first SWAP transaction? How can you quick and cheap transfer some fund from your binance, kraken or coinbase account to your MetaMask wallet, even if the exchanges do not allow withdrawal to the polygon network or it costs a fortune?
I had the same situation and I have spent hours to get some MATIC in my MetaMask wallet just to sign and pay the necessary fee to swap. I was totally frustrated because it was not as easy as it was presented in some youtube videos.
Since the beginning of October 2021 polygon just increased the minimum gas fee to 0.001 MATIC per transaction, and in January 2022 it was increased again to an equivalent of $0.1 – $0.5, which is way higher that faucets drop to your account, so something else is necessary.
To start the whole process be sure to have enough funds on your binance, kraken, coinbase account, which is 3 USD for the complete withdrawal process, and USD which equals to 5 MATIC, ca. 20 USD in total (January 2022).
If you are familiar with exchanges, SWAPs and bridges, you are going to need to do following steps to get the first few MATICs on your polygon wallet address in MetaMask:
- Sign up for a CoinEx account. CoinEx can be used without KYC process to deposit, change and withdraw USDT or any other crypto.
- If you have a Binance, coinbase or kraken account, change your fund to the amount of USDT you want to change to MATIC later on CoinEx. As I earlier mentiond, ca. 20 USD in total.
- Go to your new CoinEx account, under Assets / Spot / Deposit, choose USDT as the coin you want to deposit.
- Choose the TRC20 network, copy paste the USDT deposit address.
- Go to the Withdrawal page of your binance, kraken or coinbase account.
- Choose the USDT coin to be withdrawn on the TRX (TRC20) network.
- Copy the CoinEx deposit address. Confirm the transaction, wait a few minutes, and the USDT will be on your CoinEx account.
- On the CoinEx website exchange your USDT to MATIC under Exchange.
- Withdraw the MATIC to your polygon wallet address.
- Go to your CoinEx account, under Assets / Spot / Withdraw, choose MATIC as the coin you want to withdraw on the polygon network.
- Fee will be 0.01 MATIC, minimum withdrawal is 4 MATIC.
- Copy your polygon wallet address from MetaMask and confirm the withdrawal. After a few minutes you have your MATIC in your polygon wallet and you can start to use the network.
What if the MATIC Withdrawal on CoinEx does not work?
You can still use a bit more complicated system. You have to split up 50-50% the transferred USDT on CoinEx, so in CoinEx change ca. 10 USDT to BNB and withdraw the BNB to your BSC (Binance Smart Chain) wallet in MetaMask.
The other 10 USDT must be transferred to your BSC (Binance Smart Chain) wallet in MetaMask. For USDT you can use BSC, too. After that follow the steps in this tutorial (How to bridge Polygon with other blockchains?).
You can use KuCoin too, because KuCoin allowes MATIC withdrawal to a polygon address, too.
Links to the exchanges you may use: