Coinbase is a popular exchange among newcomers and experienced crypto-traders alike.
CoinBase is one of the few exchanges that allows you to purchase with a credit card, allowing one-click, and even automated purchases instantly.
As soon as your account is set up and your credit card has been added and confirmed, you can buy bitcoin with a credit card in just a few clicks of the mouse, and the Bitcoin will immediately appear in your Coinbase wallet.
What is Coinbase great for?
Coinbase is great for credit card purchases (although recently, some credit card companies have banned cryptocurrency purchases)
Another big advantage of Coinbase is its security. They are very strict with their customer signup policy, meaning that they are very unlikely to be shut down by the US government because of money-laundering or any other such schemes. In addition, Coinbase stores all of your cryptocurrency purchases in cold storage wallets so that they are unhackable.
Some disadvantages of Coinbase
Coinbase is very limited. Currently, they only allow purchase of 3 cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC). If you want to buy any other cryptos, you need to sign up on a second exchange – and one that is typically more advanced.
Late in 2017, there was some info floating around the internet that Coinbase was going to start allowing purchases of Ripple (XRP), and that caused the Ripple price to spike. Coinbase came out with an official statement that said they aren’t planning on adding any new cryptocurrencies to their system in the near future.
If you wish to do complex limit, stop-limit, or other such orders, Coinbase doesn’t allow it. They do, however, have a sister-exchange called GDax that can handle all of that – and GDax uses your same Coinbase account so you can save time on not needing to sign up and be approved on a new exchange.
Another limitation of Coinbase is that it is only available in select countries. Currently, they are available in Canada, United States, UK, many countries in Europe, Australia, and Singapore. For a full list of supported countries on Coinbase go here
Coinbase is reportedly signing up 10s of 1000s of new users each day, so signup and approval make take up to a few weeks in some cases.
When signing up on Coinbase you’ll need to provide multiple pieces of photo ID as Coinbase adheres to anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer rules. If you’re looking for anonymous or semi-anonymous Bitcoin, Coinbase won’t work.