Which crypto currency exchange should you use?
Personally, we recommend using a couple different exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase outside of using a cold storage device. The reason for this, is that using both exchanges allows you to diversify your exposure to the crypto markets and help you increase your chances of better returns over time.
The crypto space is full of all sorts of exchanges but for this article post we are going to focus on the two main exchanges that most investors use to buy their crypto currencies. The two main exchanges are Binance and Coinbase. Both exchanges are different in what services they provide.
Our goal is to cover both exchanges and give you a comparison of both, so you can decide which crypto currency exchange best fits your personal interest.
Before we get into details of services and features for both exchanges, it’s important to understand what you’re looking for.
- Are you wanting to buy crypto’s with your fiat currency and acquire ONLY the main cryptos such as BTC, LTC & ETH?
- Do you want to diversify your crypto portfolio more by purchasing more alternative coins?
If you know the answer to these two questions, it will help you decide on which exchange you might want to use. Now that you know the answer to those two questions let’s continue with the first exchange we use and recommend for starters when purchasing cryptos.
The Coinbase crypto exchange
A little history:
Coinbase was created on June 20th, 2012 in San Francisco, CA. by the two Co. Founders Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. The exchange originally was designed with the purpose of helping people to convert fiat currency to BTC, LTC and ETH.
The startup company since its startup phase has seen its market cap increase to a value of around 8 Billion dollars. Coinbase has over 20 million users worldwide and has managed over 150 Billion dollars in currency trades and transactions.
The exchange facilitates the conversion of fiat currencies into cryptos, for over 32 countries and Bitcoin transactions along with storage of cryptos in 190 countries.
Online Crypto Exchange Services:
Coinbase offers you a way to convert your fiat currency into digital crypto currency such as BTC in a matter of minutes. It operates in a real similar way that a broker would operate except for that instead of buying stocks, your purchasing crypto currencies.
All you must do is go to their website and set up an account at http://www.coinbase.com.
Once you have set up an account, you can go into the exchange and link a bank account of your choice. The next step after linking your bank account is to start your first deposit of fiat currency into your account.
This whole process should only take a couple of days, due to the delay from your bank for verification and transferring funds to your account.
Coinbase FEES:
Fees for buying and selling cryptos through Coinbase are rally HIGH compared to some of the other exchanges we have used. It is for this reason that, we only recommend using coinbase.com for starters. Due to its friendly user environment, this website is easy to use and will allow you to get the feel for how a crypto exchange works.
If you are looking for LOWER FEES, the next site you will want to visit is https://pro.coinbase.com or more commonly known as the GDAX exchange. This exchange is owned by Coinbase and provides much lower fees per transaction. This helps the investor, so that when they sell their cryptos for profits, the FEES don’t eat into as much as their profit.
Supported coins on Coinbase websites:
At the present time these are the supported coins that you can buy through Coinbase website exchanges.
Due to stiff competition with Binance, there has been many rumors of Coinbase adding more coins to their exchange soon. If you SUBSCRIBE to our website, we will be sure to keep you up to date if any new coins are released in the future.
Let’s move on to the next exchange which is Binance.
The Binance crypto exchange website
A little history:
Binance means “binary Finance” and has unique history because it was originally founded in China by ChangPeng Zao in 2017. Before Binance was created, ChengPeng Zao founded Fusion systems in 2005 in Shanghai.
The company specialized in building high frequency trading systems for brokers. He then joined blockchain.info in 2013 as the third member of their team. He was also CTO for OKcoin which, is a platform for spot trading between fiat and digital assets.
Although the company was founded in China, they quickly moved their servers and headquarters to Japan to avoid the cryptocurrency ban that China put on cryptos back in September of 2017. In March of 2018 the company expanded operations into Taiwain.
By January of 2018 Binance had established itself as the largest crypto exchange with a BNB market cap of 1.3 billion US dollars. BNB is the crypto currency listed on the exchange. Another wards, it’s not just an exchange, it also has its own crypto currency as well.
Online Crypto Exchange Services:
If you are looking to diversify your crypto holdings and get into more of the alternative cryptos, than Binance is by far the best and easiest way to purchase these cryptos. They don’t accept purchases directly with fiat currencies such as the USD or EURO and that is one of the biggest differences between Binance and Coinbase.
They support just about any coin that is on coinmarket cap, except for ICO’s that are just being released. From our own observation, ICO’s are a very high-risk game, so we like to wait until the ICO’s are listed on Binance before looking at a purchase.
Regarding their services they are very ambitious and OFFER a variety of features, technology and services that we have listed below.
- In the top 10 crypto currency exchanges by volume.
- Has a matching engine capable of 1,400,000 orders/second
- One of the FASTEST exchanges in the world.
- Device coverage for web-based trading, Android, iOS and iOS mobile app, Mobile HTML5, Mac O.S. & PC Windows.
- Multilingual support
- Multi-Tier and multi cluster system architecture.
- TRUST – Binances official crypto wallet
- Stop-Limit function
- 2 Factor Authentication logon technology
The 2 factor authentication is a very secure feature for login purposes. When you first logon to the Binance website you will be asked for a SMS authentication code, which can be either emailed to you or sent via text message to your phone. You have 60 seconds from the time the text is sent to input the correct code to access your account within Binance.
Binance FEES:
Fees on Binance crypto exchange website are rather LOW compared to coinbase.com. The FEE for not using the BNB coin to make your purchases comes to .01% and deposits are FREE.
Remember, that in order to buy an alt coin within Binance, you must purchase another coin such as ETH, BTC or BNB first and move it to Binance from another exchange.
Withdrawal FEE – You are also charged a FEE when you sell your crypto and if you move it to another Wallet online or offline into cold storage.
BNB trading FEE – If you use the BNB coin also referred to as Binance’s coin, to purchase your alt coins or you use BNB coin for trading of alt coins, then you get a 50% discount on your trading transaction fees. For other options for lower FEES you will want to visit the sites FEE schedule.
Supported coins on the Binance website:
Binance is very quick to add new coins and allow you to trade ICOs of new coins and tokens, therefore, their list of coins is always being updated. It’s hard to say just how many coins are available right now to choose from but its easily in the hundreds of coins.
For more on what coins they OFFER, you can visit their site and see for yourself what coins and tokens are available for purchase.
Final thoughts on Binance vs Coinbase
We use both these exchanges for our own personal investments, so we aren’t bias of one or the other. Coinbase is a great exchange to start off with in our opinion because its easy to understand and user friendly. If you haven’t used coinbase before what are you waiting for? Sign up for an account, deposit some fiat currency and give it a try.
Binance on the other hand, is a little bit more advanced and takes some getting used to. When you use Binance just remember to be very careful with which address you send and receive to. Once you have sent your cryptos to an address there is no way to reverse that transaction. So make sure to verify you have the correct address in place before you commit to the final transaction.
Although there is some RISK involved with moving cryptos from exchange to exchange, the one thing we can say is blockchain technology will be used in the future for moving money around much more efficiently and securely for day to day transactions. It may not be Bitcoin or any of the other cryptos we see today that will be used by Govts. Around the world, however whatever they choose for a digital currency, will use a block chain in our opinion.
So why not learn how it works and use it?? Prepare yourself now instead of later, when you are forced into it. I say that because it’s kind of like what happened with the creation of emails for example.
People said email was a silly technology because they didn’t understand how it worked and they couldn’t see the use case for it. Eventually it was used for every day tasks in business and in your personal life. Using exchanges and cryptos to exchange value in daily transactions, we believe will be much of the same type of scenario that you will see play out, just like what we saw with the use of email.
We hope you enjoyed the insight into these two crypto exchanges and let us know what your thoughts are on these two exchanges.
You can also SUBCRIBE to our website by submitting your email on the right-hand side of this site. You will receive any updates on cryptos and any investment tips or reviews that we release in the future in real time.