Key Advantages of Coinbase
- Regulated under US law.
- One of the few exchanges available for US citizens.
- Maintains an insurance policy against theft or hacks.
Key Features and Functions
One point to note is that Coinbase only offers spot trading, unlike other exchanges which offer other products such as derivatives, futures trading etc.
The Exchange is split into several categories catering for different types of users. Coinbase is for retail users, Coinbase Pro for individual professional traders and Coinbase Prime for institutional clients. This distinction is because they each have different functions to cater for the user. By way of example the main difference between Coinbase and Coinbase Pro are that Coinbase Pro offers charting tools, real-time order books, among other tools to help the advanced trader make most out of the Exchange. Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Prime both offer cheaper transaction fees and more supported cryptocurrencies. However they are still substantially fewer than other Exchanges out there.
Despite only offering spot trading, Coinbase does have its own suite of products to assist users in getting started. For example it has its own wallet, and allows users to earn cryptocurrencies by participating in their courses.
History of Coinbase
Coinbase was launched in October 2012 and is based in the United States. Their headquarters are located in San Francisco, California. It is also becoming widely used in Europe where it has an operating license. It currently has over 30 million users and over USD$150 billion being traded on the Exchange.
The Exchange has currently expanded to over 100 countries across the globe.
Supported Countries
Coinbase is available in over 100 countries. Most notably the US, which a lot of Exchanges cannot support due to regulatory issues. However whilst Coinbase says it is “available” in some countries, it may not offer the full set of services i.e. being able to “convert” between different cryptocurrencies, and to “buy and “sell” the same. Check here for the services available for your specific country.
Supported Cryptocurrencies
Unfortunately, Coinbase has very few listed cryptocurrencies. Also, the availability to buy, sell, send and receive a particular cryptocurrency depends on (a) whether you are using Coinbase or Coinbase Pro; and (b) your location.
Coinbase is looking to add support for 18 new digital assets including Aave, Aragon, Arweave, Bancor, COMP, DigiByte, Horizen, Livepeer, NuCypher, Numeraire, KEEP, Origin Protocol, Ren, Render, Siacoin, SKALE, Synthetix, & VeChain. However there is no official timeframe as to when these cryptocurrencies would be added, if at all.
On 17th July 2020, and in a complete surprise to cryptocurrency enthusiasts, Coinbase veered off the above list of cryptocurrencies and listed Algorand ($ALGO). Now, users can buy, sell, convert, send, receive or store $ALGO in all Coinbase supported regions.
This made Algorand fans and people go wild and since the listing, prices for $ALGO shot up 30% since the announcement and was even trading at $0.367 at its peak.
We can see that Coinbase is actively trying hard to list more cryptocurrencies, which is something they really need to work on since they lag behind their competitors in this respect. So unless we see more listings in the future, we will be keeping our score of 3.5/5 for cryptocurrency support…for now.
Payment Methods
Coinbase provides a variety of payment methods and most importantly, allows traders to pay in their local currency. However there are regional restrictions for payment methods. Below is a helpful list of the accepted payment methods for various countries.
- Bank deposit: Europe, US, UK
- Debit card: Available for most countries including Australia, Canada, Chile, Europe, Mexico, UK, US.
- Credit card: Australia, Singapore
- Paypal: Canada, Europe (most countries), US and UK
Deposit and Withdrawal Fees
There are no fees for deposits onto Coinbase. As for withdrawals, Coinbase will only charge you the relevant bank transfer/wire or network fees required for sending your funds to you.
Trading Fees
Coinbase charges different fees depending on whether you are on Coinbase, Coinbase Pro or Coinbase Prime. Fees are cheaper for the latter 2 due to the larger volume by these traders.
Coinbase charges 2 sets of fees for cryptocurrency purchases and sales: a Spread Fee (around 0.5%) for each trade and a Coinbase Fee which is the greater of (a) a flat fee, the amount of which depends on the amount of the transaction; and (b) a variable percentage fee depending on your region, product feature and payment method.
Here are the flat fees charged by Coinbase:
| Total Transaction Amount | Transaction Fee (USD, EUR, GBP) |
| Less than $10 | $0.99, €0,99, £0,99 |
| More than $10, Less than $25 | $1.49, €1,49, £1,49 |
| More than $25, Less than $50 | $1.99, €1,99, £1,99 |
| More than $50, Less than $200 | $2.99, €2,99, £2,99 |
