“Assuming the fact that the vendor that I want to purchase from wants these $300 dollar worth in bitcoins, then does it matter at what rate I am purchasing it?”
Definitely and very much so and be sure about it and it is mostly because there, in fact, does not exist such a thing as “$ 300 (or whatever other number) dollars worth in bitcoin” and that’s even though I do know very well that there are a lot of people who talk about it as if there is such thing. however, instead of that there is such an thing as an “exchange rate” between these 2 (dollars and bitcoins), just exactly as there is an exchange rate between any other currency (because bicoin is also a currency exactly like dollar, but it is crypto currency) and like for example between the dollars and euros or between dollars and Canadian dollars and so on. and exactly as whatever currency exchange rates are different, here they might be different. What I am trying to say is that the rate between euros and dollars is approximately 1 euro = 1.11738 dollar(from current search on google) but I am sure that you can find places with rate of 1.05 or 1.20. it all depends. Again, the same goes here, the exchange rates is depending on where you are exchanging dollars for the bitcoins. Again, exactly as in anything else, the major bitcoin exchanges are going to generally agree fairly closely on the exchange rates, hwoever there is going to be some (but typically it is a small) variation in the rate from exchange to exchange (like in the example with euros and dollars, the exact rate is 1.11 (from google) but it can vary around from 1.05 (or maybe even below) to about 1.20 (or maybe even more), as you can see, with some small variation) and so on. you are able to go to a variety of places on the internet in order to find out the exact current exchange rate at each exchange or you can easily search up an average exchange rate among a lot of exchanges. There is a good site online that you can search for it and see, coin desk dot com, that’s the place where you can search up for this information, quite sure you’re going to like it.
When there’s a vendor that it is telling you that the price it is $ 300 dollars and they want to be paid this in bitcoins then they are letting you to select the exchange rate you can use. Therefore, as long as you are going to be anywhere close to the current average (of course, a big difference would make the vendor not to want to do business with you), then most likely the vendor would have nothing to object to the exchange rate that you are using. or you could let the vendor use an exchange rate that he wants, but of course, you need to agree with that exchange rate which, obviously, should be close to the average. Very well, when this is happening personally to me then I am simply using the exchange rate that the google is giving me and as I did with euro dollars exchange, the same I do here, I am writing bitcoin to dollar exchange rate and you get the average. Currently I see that the rate between the bitcoin and dollar the google is giving me is approximately $602.00 per 1 bitcoin. Very well, if we are going to use your example of $ 300 dollars worth and the exact rate that google gave me right now, this means that you are going to pay the vendor US $300 then you would send around 300/602.00 = 0.49833 bitcoins to the vendor
Very well, now, as much as it does seem to me, you do not own any bitcoins so far, so you are obviously going to need to get some of them first. In case you are going to purchase the bitcoins from the vendor who wants say 600 USD per bitcoin then this is going to cost you approximately $ 600 *0.49833 which is approximately 298,998 (obviously, plus any fees there). so well, you are going to have gotten your first “$300 dollars in bitcoins” as you said for even less than $300, well done I would say!
However, on the other hand, in case you are going to purchase from a vendor that is going to want an exchange of $1000 for one bitcoin then this is going to cost you $ 1000 * 0.49833 and this is $498.33 which means that your $ 300 worth in bitcoins as you said is going to cost you nearly $ 500 now, oh yeah plus fees which might be over $500. Generally, you would pay some kind of a premium when you are purchasing bitcoins, however you are going to want to avoid those very large premiums. In general, as with any other currency, you are going to want to purchase the bitcoins the cheaply as it is possible and obviously conversely, to sell them the most expensive as it is possible when you would need to sell them converted in dollars. again, exactly as it goes with anything else – you buy low and sell high.
In your specific case, it is very likely that the $ 602 per one bitcoin vendor it is selling at or near the current market price. I would agree with a $ 610, but I doubt that I would agree with more. the example of $ 1000 per bitcoin vendor is selling at a very significant (which is more than 60%) premium which is a lot. you can purchase for more than $ 610 only in case there’s a real need to do so (like for example only that specific vendor has that specific thing that you are searching for). but general rule of thumb, do not pay a higher premium that you should.
And yeah, something else, one very important thing is that bitcoin prices (I am talking about exchange rates) can be very and very volatile and daily change. This is, VERY important to remember and to act accordingly. Looking back, we can say that bitcoin has seen a growth from $10 to $1500 few years back nearly overnight and a downside to $1500 to $500 with the same speed. It is obvious that this has been back in the days when it was by far not as stable as it is now which means that there are nearly no chances that bitcoin (but again, not impossible) would change in rate so much now, but it is still much more volatile than, say dollar. For example, in the last month, the average exchange rate has been as low as $568 per one bitcoin and it has been as high as about $628 per one bitcoin (this data is recorded online and you can search for this info and see it yourself). This is a change of 60$ in only one single month. What I am trying to say is that in case you plan to purchase and to hold down bitcoins then you’ve got to expect that the value of those holding are going to go up and down and you never know when they would go up and when down. unless you are going to get prepared for this thing to happen then I think that it is most likely much better to only purchasing a little bit more bitcoins than you would need for whatever you are going to be purchasing for $300 worth of bitcoins. You also get an extra 5% (0.51555 btc instead of only 0.49833 btc). In fact, there are going to be 3 reasons to purchase “a little bit more” than that. the first reason is that you need to pay a small fee every single time when you are transferring bitcoins from one place to another place. The second reason is that even if you decide to tumble your coins then even so, you are going to need to pay a whatever fee for this service either and the third and last one is that the exchange rate may even change between the time that you are purchasing your bitcoins and you might get lucky enough if the price comes down for a bitcoin and when you send $300 you are getting more bitcoins than you have expected and planned, but if the prices are getting up then you would end up with fewer. So, it is obvious that in the end you may need some extra amounts in order to handle with any of those specific scenarios.
And yeah, I’ve nearly clicked on “save” but then I thought to warn you about this… you (or anybody else) should not use the exchange rate that I have written above due to the fact that these are the exchanges on the current time, however they might as well be very different in the time you would want to send the bitcoins. That is why you need to search for the current exchange rate at the time that you are sending the bitcoins to the vendor or purchasing the bitcoins. I can nearly guarantee that it is going to be different from the data that I have provided above because it is always fluctuating like that. like for example, a week ago it has been $611 per bitcoin, now, as I said, it is about $602, who knows what’s going to be the price in another week, not saying in a month. So take care what you’re doing and how you are operating with bitcoin. In the end, it is not that hard to understand it, but you’ve got to learn, research and so on. but I am sure that in the end you only would win if you do learn and research.