This short Coinbase review will help you get a better understanding of a few things. Is it a scam or a legit company? Is it for you? Are there better alternatives out there? Ok, without any more delay, let´s jump into the review!

Company: Coinbase

Website: www.coinbase.com

Owner: Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam (Founders)

Price: Free to join

Who is it for: people looking to buy/sell Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin

Overall rating:  (3.5 / 5)

Coinbase Review – About The Company

Coinbase is an online platform that you can use to either buy, sell or store the cryptos Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. It was founded by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam in 2012. At the moment the platform is available to use for 32 countries and got some other impressive numbers. The exchange is often referred to as one of the easiest to use and therefore suitable for crypto beginners who want to start their investing journey.

However, they took a pretty big hit to their reputation just recently (in February 2018) and their clients are not very happy at the moment… More on that further down in the review.

 

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How do you use it?

To get started using Coinbase is very simple, it works in 4 steps basically.

1. Fill out the signup form
2. Go through the verification process (upload your ID or driver license, etc)
3. Connect your credit or debit card and connect your bank account
4. You can now start to buy or sell cryptos.

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What about the fees?

You always want to be aware of the fees associated with using a service like this, what you want is transparency, the last thing you want is to be surprised with so-called hidden fees. So, are Coinbase transparent? Are their fees competitive with their competitors?

First, let´s us see what they write on their website about this subject (see exact excerpt below):

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”).

If you want to go through the whole text on their fees you can read it all on their fee page (opens in new window)

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Is Coinbase wallet safe to store your investment on?

You should NEVER store your coins on an exchange platform, as then you are not in full control and it will ALWAYS involve a risk of your coins getting stolen if the exchange gets hacked for example. Instead, you should store your coins in a cold storage, that you have full control over yourself.

You could store a little of your cryptos on exchanges, coins that you plan to spend.

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Some bad news for Coinbase (and their users) (February 2018)

In February 2018 Coinbase received a pretty major hit on it´s (until then) very good reputation. Many of its users got charged with “surprise fees” multiple times.

This issue has not yet been resolved and Coinbase have both blamed Visa for this but also later admitted that the problem occurred due to a “bug in their system”

Let´s see what will happen with this issue…

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Is Coinbase a scam?

So, that might lead to the question if Coinbase is a scam? Have to say no on that, it is not a scam. You need to keep in mind that no system is bulletproof, and anything digital can involve bugs. It has been online since 2012 and got real verified owners and also had a very good reputation until this major incident occurred…

If they are a good option for you to use right now is another question though, and not really something I would recommend for the moment.

**If you are looking for a similar (easy to use) option then you might want to have a look at this option instead.

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What do the big review and rating sites have to say?

As mentioned above, it might not be a good time for you to start using the services of Coinbase right now, it is easy to understand why when you look at what some of the most trusted and well-known review and rating sites online currently rated the Coinbase company:

Below are a few testimonials from its users:

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)

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Overall score from the biggest reviews and rating sites:

BitTrust

Overall score: (1.6 / 5) (out of 471 reviews]

Trustpilot

Overall score: (1 / 5) (out of 971 reviews]

Trustlink

Overall score: N/A

Ripoff Report

Nr of complaints: 27

Pissed consumer

Nr of reports: 3

The conclusion from this:

Well, as you can see their reputation is far from good at the moment and you are (most likely) better of going with another option for your crypto investments.

==> Click here for my #1 recommendation

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The pros and cons of Coinbase

It is always a good idea to compare a company’s good sides against its bad sides, as always we provide some obvious points for you to make this an easier job for you to do, below you got the pros and cons of Coinbase:

The good

• Easy to use
• Good reputation (until just recently)

The bad

• Have charged their customers multiple times lately with “hidden/extra fees”
• Their support seems to be lacking a lot (at least for the moment)

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Conclusion and the verdict on Coinbase: 

 

Overall rating: (3.5 / 5)

Well, I think that sums up the overall picture of this company right now, it is not a good time to start using it is, to say the least, and I can absolutely not recommend it, at least not right now.

The rating 3,5 out of 5 stars is a pretty “nice one” and the reason for it is that I both believe and hope that they will sort the problem that they have been experiencing lately and also due to the good reputation they had before this “incident” occurred. The super low overall scores on the big review and rating sites are not really fair from a bigger perspective I would have to say, but right now it is what it is…

As always the choice is up to you of course but I would look on other alternatives if I was you, there are many places for you to buy cryptos, if you are looking for an easy to use alternative then the absolute best one I can recommend is Coinmama. It is also absolutely free to join and very user-friendly. Click the link below to read our review on that one if you are interested in knowing more about them:

Click here to read about my #1 recommendation on an alternative

Hope you found this short review on Coinbase to be helpful, you should now have a better understanding if it is something for you to start using or not. If you have used any of their services please share your experience in the comment section 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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I wish you success!

John

Founder of: King Cryptos