Coinbase Review
Coinbase
Founded in 2012, Coinbase is a San Francisco based virtual exchange platform that allows you to buy and sell the world’s most popular crypto currencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. These also amount to three of the world’s ten biggest crypto currencies.
Coinbase is touted to be one of the world’s premier crypto currency exchanges and wallet platforms. The platform has 7.4 million users in 32 countries and has become a major player in the block chaing market in just a few years.
With its wallet and merchant services provided alongside trading services, Coinbase is pretty much a one-stop shop for all crypto currency market players and provides several direct advantages to crypto currency traders. Notably, the platform will also start trading in Bitcoin Cash from January 2018.
Features
Coinbase is one of the world’s most popular crypto currency exchange platforms, which means that it guarantees high liquidity of assets to its investors. They also benefit from getting access to a good selection of top crypto currency assets.
The platform has an instant buy feature available through which users can trade in crypto currency without any delay. Its website is easy to use for beginners and provides insured Bitcoin deposits to its users.
US customers can choose from a variety of banking methods to buy or deposit crypto currency on Coinbase. These include bank transfers, credit cards, debit cards, and bank wires.
Ease of Use
Coinbase has an active support team, with the names of key support staff listed on the website itself. However, the company’s customer support ratings have been mixed as of late, which only reflects its growing user base. That said, Coinbase also operates a real-time chat feature where it resolves “thousands of customer issues” every day. You can also submit a request or contact the team members through the same.
Security
For the most part, Coinbase is one of the largest and safest Bitcoin exchange platforms, which uses the latest encryption technology to secure its platform. It is backed by industry experts with plenty of experience.
The Coinbase Wallet is considered secure. However, with this comes the fact that the company controls your Bitcoins. It is possible to store larger amounts of Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin in the Coinbase Vault, which is protected by multiple approvers.
It should be noted that it is mandatory for customers to provide essential information including photo ID if they want to increase their weekly limits. A relevant photo ID is also required to make credit card purchases.
Cons
Coinbase does not charge a fee for its wallet service but there is a network fee for transferring crypto currency addresses outside the platform. This network fee is set by the block chain community. For US customers, there is a base rate of 4% for all transactions.
Deposits become available as soon as Coinbase receives payment. However, the time depends on the preferred payment providers, which can vary significantly. For example, purchases made using a USD wallet or credit cards are available instantly, while for a bank transfer, payments are normally cleared within three to five days.
Coinbase has weekly buy and sell limits on all accounts. The limit is based on the user’s account information. This includes verification and purchases made to the account. To increase weekly limits, it is mandatory to verify your account by uploading a photo ID.