Coin Base: Cons and Pros

What is Coin Base?
Coinbase is a secure online bitcoin exchange for buying, selling, sending, receiving, and storing
bitcoin. Coinbase is different from other bitcoin services in several ways.
In my mind, nothing comes close to Coinbase in terms of ease of use and security. You link a bank account to the San Francisco-based start-up, and then send them money to buy Bitcoin at the currently offered price. They wait up to a few days to ensure your transaction clears (Bitcoin is a murky financial area, and they don’t want to risk identity theft or other problems until they have banks on their side), and then give you access to your coins. 30 days after you have a successful transaction, you can add a credit card to your account to enable “instant buys” of up to $1,000 per week. Regular speed buys are allowed at up to $50,000 per week, from a linked bank account.
Their platform is very popular, and justifiably so–it makes owning and managing your coins very simple. They also take excellent security precautions–two-factor authentication on log-in AND on send, keeping the VAST majority (97%!) of their coins in offline storage, and so on. They are an excellent way to enter the Bitcoin ecosystem, and an excellent way to integrate Bitcoin into your business, if you’re so inclined. They also offer the excellent Coinbase Vault program–a system that allows you to place your coins into a very high-security lock, requiring two-factor authentication along with a mandatory waiting period before the coins can be moved.

What aren’t they? They are not an exchange. They aren’t a trading platform. If your goal is to be buying and selling Bitcoin on its swings, you don’t want to be using Coinbase for your day-to-day
trading.

Details:

1. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz
2. Biggest US player, focused on merchant integration
3. Easy platform for buying and selling
4. Good way to get money into the ecosystem
5. High fees and long waits make it unsuited for trading. It’s more like Western Union than
   like Scottrade.

Pros:

1. Easy to use! No harder than PayPal
2. Secure, trustworthy, American
3. Good customer service
4. They pay your transaction fees when you move your Bitcoin around.

Cons:

1. Fees of about 1%
2. Long lag time for initial purchase, and later purchases over 1BTC makes it hard to profit
   from market movement over the short term
3. Slightly higher than market price for purchase
4. Really just not intended to be used for trading.
5. Will occasionally cancel orders for “high-risk behavior

A 1% fee for each transfer from bitcoin to your local currency ($, €, £) or from your local currency
to bitcoin. User is responsible for miner's fee on external transactions less than 0.0003 BTC.
Sending between Coinbase users is always free. Minimum fee of $0.15. Incoming wire fee is $10.
Wire withdrawal fee is $25. For Canadian users, there is a $1 fee on all CAD deposits and
withdrawals. A 3% convenience charge is assessed on purchases using credit and debit cards.

Coin base Account:
If you sign up for the Coinbase program and refer someone you both get $1 worth of free BTC
when they sign up for a Coinbase wallet account bitcoin qt import wallet. To store your Bitcoins
you need a wallet such as this service so this is a great starting point to have in case you need this
digital safe. Coinbase is an international digital wallet that allows you to securely buy, use, and
accept the Bitcoin currency (BTC).

Step 1: Sign up via this Coinbase Link to get $1 worth of free Bitcoin. You will need to add a
phone and verify your bank account.

Step 2: Connect your bank account with Coinbase to start buying and selling Bitcoin.

Step 3: Referral Bonus is paid. The referral bonuses are only paid if the new user verifies the new Coinbase account by adding a phone and verifying a bank account from one of their supported countries. The $1 BTC payout will usually arrive within 10 minutes of completing the account, but it may take longer.