Quick Summary of Coinbase
Coinbase is one of the best crypto exchanges in the world.
Between its choice of coins, security measures, and trading features – Coinbase has everything you need to purchase cryptocurrency.
Coinbase has continually kept up with the times and is accessible in most countries in the world.
Coinbase hosts 70 million users throughout 100 countries. They have billions of crypto assets and have one of the highest trading volumes of all crypto exchanges.
When purchasing cryptocurrency on Coinbase with your preferred payment method (bank account transfer, Visa, credit card, PayPal etc.), you pay a 0.5% fee. Those looking to spend a lot of money and trade a lot should sign up for Coinbase Pro, which will mitigate these transaction fees.
If you are going to make a large purchase or do a lot of crypto trading, you should consider signing up for Coinbase Pro, as Coinbase pro fees are lower than using the Coinbase platform without it.
Coinbase in More Detail
Coinbase is completely safe and legit in 2022.
Coinbase keeps the majority of its assets (between 90% – 98%) in a cold wallet. User funds would be extremely difficult to steal. Not to mention they have a longstanding track record of keeping user funds safe and secure. They invest a lot of money into cyber security measures, so we expect having a Coinbase account or Coinbase wallet to be safe moving forward.
Coinbase offers a wide range of cryptocurrencies to buy: for example, Coinbase has over 100 more than the exchange Robin Hood. Binance and Coinbase have the most coins to choose from out of all of the centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
Community voting: a fun aspect of Coinbase is how they will list coins on their exchange as voted for by the community. So, if a coin is gaining popularity rapidly, the Coinbase community will pressure Coinbase into adding the coin so all Coinbase users can buy it!
Insurance policies: your personal holdings are fully insured on Coinbase. They have a sophisticated criminal insurance policy which will keep user funds safe.
Usability: setting up and maintaining your Coinbase account is pretty straightforward. Other exchanges make you jump through hoops to get set up. Coinbase accounts aren’t too tricky to set up and get going.
Trading experience: Coinbase gives you the choice of two different trading platforms. One is the original Coinbase platform, which is straightforward and allows you to buy crypto with your fiat currency.
Coinbase fees can be a little bit pricier compared to a few of the other main cryptocurrency exchange options out there… However, Coinbase Pro helps to negate some of these fees.
Coinbase Pro used to be “GDAX”. Coinbase Pro is for the more advanced traders. With Coinbase Pro you can enjoy more advanced charting functions, swap between cryptocurrencies, and make market/limit/stop orders. For those looking to simply buy and hold, Coinbase Pro isn’t totally necessary.
Another cool feature is Coinbase Earn: Coinbase Earn is a novel way to earn as you learn. You follow along with their video series of classes and tests, learning all about cryptocurrency, trading and more. By investing your time in the classes, you can earn some coins for doing so. Obviously, it’s not a whole lot, but it’s better than nothing!
More Coinbase Features
Minimum trade: the minimum amount of money you can use to buy crypto on Coinbase is $2. This is low and fairly standard. Some exchanges give you no minimum, some exchanges require you to invest at least $20, some $50, some $100 etc. – so, $2 is relatively low.
Transaction fees: there are two factors to consider when calculating Coinbase fees.
- Firstly, there is a spread charge of about 0.5% for any crypto purchases. Market fluctuations determine how close to 0.5% that figure stays.
- The second factor is Coinbase’s fee. This fee is calculated by the value of your first purchase and the method you made your fiat purchase.
Variety of Cryptocurrencies
The US can buy over 150 different cryptocurrencies. This is more than most platforms. Some coins aren’t available to buy in some countries.
They allow a lot of crypto-to-crypto trading pairs. For example, you could use your Bitcoin to trade for Dogecoin or Polkadot. You can also use stable coins to buy various cryptocurrencies. So, you could trade USDT for Ether, for example.
Crypto Wallet and Securities:
Coinbase says that its holdings are protected by crime insurance. Coinbase also says that only 2% of all customer funds are held online in a “hot” environment (meaning they are connected to the internet and could potentially be breached). The rest of the funds are supposedly held in cold storage – meaning they are offline and cannot be breached. Coinbase claims that any loss of customer funds will be paid out by their insurers.
However, should you personally get hacked (get hacked locally or scammed, or lose your password etc.), Coinbase is not liable to protect your losses.
Make sure to take responsibility for your personal finance. Obviously, this means keeping your login details.
Apps and Usage
The mobile apps for Coinbase are highly rated. Many of their users operate from the IOS and Android apps. Thankfully, the mobile apps include many of the same features as the desktop site. You can create and access your Coinbase wallet from your phone. Some cryptocurrency exchanges are hard to use on the mobile app.
Customer Support
Coinbase’s customer support is not the best. They have many customers and a massive organization to operate, so it is understandable to a degree. Customer support is an expensive part of any business, especially one the size of Coinbase. It costs a huge amount of resources to try and solve people’s problems all day and night.
The options available are email and Twitter support, as well as arranging a phone call. Obviously, an instant messaging service and an open phone line would be ideal, but that’s what they give you.
Should you think your account has been compromised, you can use the Coinbase locking feature. You call the automated phone system and they lock your account for you.
To mitigate their slight lack of customer support, Coinbase does have a large educational content library. Still, we’ve all been there scratching our heads trying to figure out some new software. You can get better customer support at other exchanges, but this could be at the cost of one of Coinbase’s many features.
If you take Coinbase, and compare it with Binance, Coinbase is probably better in terms of speed and quality of response.
You can contact Coinbase Pro customer service if you are a Pro member.
Should you Use Coinbase?
Ultimately, this is going to come down to your personal preference.
If you are an experienced trader who wants a wide variety of crypto coins to buy – Coinbase could be a perfect choice.
Coinbase is a good platform for beginners too. It’s a cryptocurrency exchange that provides education for users and doesn’t just leave you in the dark. Most crypto brokerage services lack good customer support as well as educational material. Coinbase at least has good educational content and investment advice for your cryptocurrency investing.
If trading fees are your only consideration, perhaps you’ll want to scour the market for a cheaper option with lower fees. Coinbase certainly has high fees compared to some other platforms if you are looking to save money as a primary goal. Coinbase compares relatively well overall in terms of fees, but there are cheaper cryptocurrency exchanges out there for fees.
Coinbase Pro users have Coinbase charges pretty low, but not everyone wants to commit to Coinbase pro accounts. Also, be wary of exchanges that seem like they have no fees, but hit you with extra fees later down the line. Or, perhaps their spread fee is higher than usual and where they collect their money from you.
Coinbase offers when signing up can be more attractive than other cryptocurrency exchanges. You can earn some free crypto assets simply by signing up. There’s also the prospect of earning on your crypto holdings when you invite other users through your affiliate link. Some exchanges are stingy in their rewards, but Coinbase is quite fruitful, and it helps that Coinbase is a trusted name when signing people up.
Coinbase Card
The Coinbase card is a decent benefit of Coinbase. Not even all the major exchanges have their own card you can use yet. It saves you only having a visa debit card – you can have a crypto card too! You can now go into shops and spend crypto! Using your digital assets to earn crypto rewards, spend in shops, save with etc. is a blessing. You incur some fees from Coinbase, but you avoid other fees that exist with the banks anyway.
Coinbase Usability
In terms of usability, the Coinbase app is pretty easy to use. The desktop Coinbase platform is smooth to use. The Coinbase website is easy to navigate. The mobile app is fine to use also. Some other cryptocurrency exchanges can be extremely frustrating to use on their mobile app. Coinbase users should have a fine experience operating their Coinbase accounts from any of these platforms.
Your personal account will come with a Coinbase wallet to keep your account and private keys safe. However, remember, it is your responsibility to keep your private keys safe. Crypto isn’t like having bank accounts. YOU must look after the keys to your wallet, or “bank”! This is the beauty and curse of decentralization.
As ever, do your own research and see what you think is best for you. If you think Coinbase isn’t right for you, you can always pivot to another exchange! Hopefully this Coinbase review helps you in making your decision!
Coinbase Review 2022
Overall, we believe Coinbase to be a strong exchange for users of all skills and experience levels.
You can do everything you need there.
We recommend our readers get into decentralized exchanges too, not JUST centralized exchanges (for many reasons you can read about on this site). But yes, Coinbase is a good first place to onramp fiat money from your bank account and buy some crypto!
This entire post was written in 2022. There’s a lot of outdated information on the internet about Coinbase, simply because they’ve been operating for so long.
Don’t be fooled, and make sure you have up to date information on the crypto exchange you decide to use. Coinbase offers for signing up listed in this post are all valid up to the current day. Always make sure to double-check crypto rewards, fees, promos and so on before committing.
