Today we review Coinbase for you. What is Coinbase? A scam or a legit exchange for you? Is it the best place to buy bitcoins or are there better alternatives out there? Are their fees the lowest? These are some of the main questions this short review will answer!
Product: Coinbase
Website: www.coinbase.com
Owner: Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam (Founders)
Price: Free to join (fees apply)
Who is it for: People looking to buy Bitcoins
Overall rating: 
P.S.
Before we continue with the review I think it is important to say that you should first of all never invest more money than you can afford to lose into Bitcoins or anything else. Stick to that rule of thumb and you should be ok. Another thing is that you should always review and compare different options against each other before making any decisions. They can differ a lot in fees for example and the last thing you want is so-called “hidden fees”.
Click here if you want to see our top 3 list of recommended places to buy
Ok, with that being said, let´s continue with the review on Coinbase!
What is Coinbase about?
Coinbase was founded in 2012 by Fred Ehrsam and Brian Armstrong. It is an online platform where you can both buy, sell, transfer and store cryptocurrency. The platform is very beginner friendly, in other words, simple to understand and use, and they are currently available in 32 countries. Their numbers are pretty impressive and you can easily say that they are one of the most popular platforms to use to buy cryptos. During the years they have exchanged over 50 Billion dollars and served over 10 million clients.
The company has over the years often been referred to as one of the best and safest platform to buy Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin on but is that really the case?
How does it work?
The process of getting started and use the platform cannot be more simple. It basically works in 3 steps:
- First of all, you have to sign up
- Second, you connect your bank account, debit card or credit card
- Third, you start buying cryptocurrency
Fees
Before buying cryptocurrency you might (normally) want to be aware of what kind of fees that are associated with your purchase. Are Coinbase fees competitive compared to other popular exchanges? Let´s have a look on that, below are the fees that are mentioned on their website:
In general, Coinbase does not charge a fee to use our Hosted Digital Currency Wallet service. Transfers of virtual currency to an address off the Coinbase platform may incur network transaction fees, such as bitcoin miner’s fees, which Coinbase may pass through to you. Any such transfer fees will be disclosed to you at the time of the transaction.
Your exchange rate for buying or selling digital currency through our Conversion Service is calculated as the market rate of the digital currency on Coinbase’s GDAX platform, plus a spread between 0 to 200 basis points determined by the size of your transaction, market volatility and length of time using Coinbase (“Exchange Rate”). In rare circumstances, the market rate from GDAX may not be available due to outages or scheduled maintenance. In order to provide you with uninterrupted services at such time, we may derive market pricing data from unaffiliated digital currency exchanges. Exchange rates quoted in these circumstances are subject to spread exceeding 100 basis points. The final exchange rate will be quoted to you before you complete your transaction.
We may charge fees (“Conversion Fees”) to use the Conversion Service, which vary based on your location, payment method, and other circumstances. In some cases we may charge an additional fee on transfers to and from your bank account.
We will always notify you of Conversion Fees and any other service fees that apply to each transaction in the aggregate, in two instances: (1) immediately before you confirm each transaction and (2) in the receipt we issue to you immediately after each transaction has processed. Unless otherwise disclosed to you at the time of your transaction, the Conversion Fees you pay is calculated by one of two methods:
Method 1:
The greater of:
(a) Minimum fee — a flat fee that applies to conversion transactions under $200, and which is disclosed before you execute the transaction.
(b)Percentage fee — a variable fee determined by region, product feature and payment type.
Method 2:
Percentage fee – 1% variable fee based on the amount of your transaction but subject to a minimum fee of $1.00 and a maximum fee of $50 (“Variable Fee”) and, depending on the region, product feature and payment type identified below, a fixed rate percentage of 2.49% (“fixed fee”).
To see more detailed you can visit the Coinbase fees page by clicking here (opens in new window)
Is it safe to store your coins on Coinbase with their wallet?
Short answer, no, it is not safe and you should never store your coins (at least not if it is an amount that would be painful to lose) on any exchange. For maximum security, you should store your coins in a hardware wallet that YOU control, and nobody else. With control, I mean that you own your “keys” and nobody else.
Some unpleasant news (February 2018)
Coinbase received a pretty hard strike recently when a lot of their clients have experiencing erroneous credit card charges multiple times, Coinbase has blamed Visa for this and say they are working with Visa on this to find a solution. There have also been claims that there is a bug in their system and that is why this has happened. Coinbase has admitted that this problem has occurred and their reputation has taken a pretty big hit.
Is Coinbase a scam?
So, is Coinbase a scam? No, of course not. It is just that they have some pretty serious issues right now at the moment until this “event” occurred there haven´t been those much complaints at all. However, right now their reputation on the most well known and trusted review and rating sites doesn´t look very good at all… Below are just a few of the MANY negative testimonials that can be found online:
To read all of the complaints on the BitTrust website, click here (opens in new window)
To see all of the testimonials on the Trustpilot site, click here (opens in new window)
As you can see there is some pretty negative stuff to be read on Coinbase right now, and it might not be the time to choose them as your purchase option right now…
We take a look at how their overall score looks like right now look below:
Other reviews and ratings
BitTrust
Overall score: 
Trustpilot
Overall score: 
Trustlink
Overall score: N/A
Ripoff Report
Nr of complaints: 27
Yelp
Overall score: N/A
Pissed consumer
Nr of reports: 3
The pros and cons
A good idea before you do business with any company it can be good to compare their positive sides against their negative sides before deciding if it will be the best choice for you. Below I have pointed out some clear ones to make this job easier for you:
The good
- Very easy to use
- Had a very reputation (until just recently)
The bad
- Have been surprising their customers lately with “surprise hidden/extra fees”
- Their support seems to be nonexistent
check out another (just as user-friendly) option with lower fees click here <==
Conclusion and verdict on Coinbase:
Overall rating:
It is impossible to recommend Coinbase right now, his can of course change in the future and hopefully it does. However, right now the rating 2,5 out of 5 feels like a pretty fair one. This can also change to an either higher or a lower one as I will make sure to update this review when any “news” comes up on the company.
Click here to see a list of my top 3 recommended places for you to buy at right now
I hope you found this short review on Coinbase to be helpful and now you should have a better understanding of if it is something for you and if it is a scam or not. If you have used their service please share your experience below as it can help others. Also, if you got any other questions about this review I will be more than happy to answer them below.
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To your success!
John
Founder of: $tart Make $top Waste
