Summary
Coinbase earns its place as one of the UK’s most popular crypto exchanges with its slick and interfaces, more than 9,000 tradable assets and great user experience.
Review
Coinbase makes trading convenient via its core platform, even for newcomers. The trade-off on this convenience is that trades come with higher fees – in some cases as high as 15% on smaller trades.
However, there’s a premium version of the platform called Coinbase Pro that charges 0.60% in fees on transactions worth up to $10,000 (£8,800).
There are lower fees to be found on other exchanges, but Coinbase has a great reputation for security, storing most of its customers’ assets offline to protect against hackers, and a range of educational resources for beginners to learn from.
Fees explained
The core Coinbase platform (not Coinbase Pro) charges a spread fee equivalent to 0.50% of your transaction. This pays the difference between what Coinbase pays for crypto and what it sells it for.
Next there’s the Coinbase Fee, which varies depending on the size of your trade, the fiat currency you pay in and your payment method.
In the UK, that means 99p on transactions up to £10, £1.49 on transactions between £10.01 and £25, £1.99 on transactions between £25.01 and £50 and £2.99 on transactions of between £50.01 and £200.
Fees on transactions over £200 are related to your payment method and are percentage based. Bank transfers attract a 1.49% fee and debit cards carry a 3.99% fee.
Notable features
Coinbase offers a free integrated wallet in which to store the public and private keys you need to make trades, but also allows you to store your keys in third party wallets. Private keys are secured with strong AES-256 encryption.
Users can secure their accounts with two-factor authentication and fingerprint access. If the platform itself falls prey to cyber attacks, Coinbase has crime insurance that will protect a portion of your assets.
Coinbase’s Learn programme allows users to earn rewards for completing short training courses. The 10-minute lessons pay between $1 (88p) and $5 (£4.41) worth of the asset the user is learning about.
Users can also earn rewards for staking certain proof-of-stake coins, though Coinbase takes a 25% cut of staking profits as a fee.
Coinbase Pro includes more advanced, market-tracking charts to help users make decisions on where to invest their money.
