What is Coinbase? Coinbase Review 2022: Products, UX and more

What is Coinbase?

Coinbase is a cryptocurrency trading and investing platform (CEX), where people can buy, sell and trade over 100 cryptocurrencies with ease. Coinbase now has approximately 90 million users, 11,000 institutions, and 185,000 ecosystem partners in over 100 countries.

Coinbase’s history

Coinbase was founded in 2012, four years after Bitcoin was invented. It was first founded by Brian Armstrong, a former Airbnb engineer, later joined by Fred Ehrsam, a former Goldman Sachs trader, and Ben Reeve, founder of Blockchain.info.

In May 2013, Coinbase raised $5 M in a Series A fundraising round led by USV.

In 2014, the company achieved its first milestone, 1 million users, and kept rising until this moment with 90 million users.

Coinbase’s Products

Coinbase contains many separate products, not just an exchange platform. All of Coinbase’s products will be listed below.

Coinbase Exchange

Coinbase Exchange is one of the deepest CEXs in liquidity which means users will be able to make large purchases without problems. This exchange station allows users to pay with many methods such as banking, credit card, and PayPal.

One special thing about Coinbase is that almost any asset on the platform was secured by a cold wallet, and by that, hacking is not a big problem for Coinbase.

Coinbase Pro

It is the same as Coinbase Exchange, but a premium version of it. With Coinbase Pro, users can make more orders like Limit Order, Stop Order,... Besides that, Coinbase Pro also supports big purchases which will be restrained due to payment methods or countries' limits. 

Coinbase Wallet

A centralized wallet that supports more than 4,000 assets. Coinbase Wallet is integrated with many Dapps on the market, which will improve user experiences. Besides cryptocurrency, Coinbase Wallet also supports users to store their NFTs right in the wallet.

Coinbase Custody

Presented in 2018, Coinbase Custody is a stand-alone company independently capitalized by Coinbase. This is a custodian protocol where capitals, companies, and exchanges hold their assets. Guaranteed by the New York State banking law, all digital assets are segregated and held in trust for the benefit of their clients. Many big Venture Capitals are using Coinbase Custody such as Polychain Capital, a16z Crypto, Placeholder,...

Clients of Coinbase Custody can also stake their assets or participate in governance on some protocol.

Coinbase Ventures

Coinbase Ventures was first launched in April 2018 with the aim to provide financing to early-stage cryptocurrency and blockchain startups with a focus on building the crypto ecosystem. 

Coinbase Ventures has made nearly 200 investments in diverse sectors, including huge crypto protocols like Compound, Blockfi, Etherscan,...

Coinbase Prime

Coinbase Prime is an integrated solution that offers secure custody, an efficient trading platform, and prime services, allowing users to manage their crypto assets in a single place. 

With Smart Order Routing from Coinbase Prime, users will have access to many other exchanges by automatically transferring their order to any exchange that has the lowest price possible.

Coinbase Review in 2022

100+ Cryptocurrencies available to trade and store

Coinbase is now supporting more than 100 cryptocurrencies and regularly puts new coins on the listing. There are many coins and tokens to name, but here are some of the most popular currencies on Coinbase (Data were taken directly from the Coinbase Exchange platform):

• Bitcoin (BTC).
• Solana (SOL).
• Cardano (ADA).
• Avalanche (AVAX).
• Polkadot (DOT).
• Dogecoin (DOGE).
• Terra (UST).
• Shiba Inu (SHIB).
• Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC).
• Polygon (MATIC).

Trading Experiences

Coinbase runs on 2 different platforms: Coinbase Exchange and Coinbase Pro. We will go into details below:

Coinbase Exchange

Trading on this platform is easy since Coinbase Exchange was built with a user-friendly interface. Most beginners on the market can easily buy, sell, or trade on the platform. Coinbase is available on websites or mobile apps for both IOS and Android.

The crypto market and Coinbase Exchange operate 24/7 so that users worldwide can log in and trade at any time, unlike the stock market. As mentioned above, users can purchase with many methods, 3 popular of which are banking, credit card, or Paypal. Successful purchases are instantly added to users' accounts.

Coinbase Pro

Coinbase Pro has the same features as Coinbase Exchange, but it is more sophisticated for some orders on the platform. Designed for those who trade frequently, Pro offers more charting tools, order types (stop and limit orders), and an API used to create trading bots.

Coinbase Fees

As a CEX, Coinbase requires fees for each transaction. For transactions with $0-$100 in volume, Coinbase will charge users $0.99 to $2.99 based on their trading size; transactions above 200$ will be charged percentage-based. Other fees come from account funding and withdrawal methods, and other services. Here are some of them:

• U.S. Bank or Coinbase Wallet: 1.49%
• Debit Card: 3.99%
• PayPal: 3.99%
• Apple Pay: 3.99%
• Wire Transfer: $10
• ACH Transfer: Free
• Crypto Conversion: 2%

Coinbase Customer Services

Coinbase’s customer service is one of the users' significant problems while using Coinbase. There is nearly no help from humans at all.

The Coinbase help page, emailed support tickets, an automated phone system, and a chatbot are officially supported customer service options.

Many customers have experienced not-so-good services on Coinbase, based on TrustPilot. Coinbase only has 1.6/5 stars, 6,924 reviews and 78% of them were “Bad”. Coinbase’s users suffer from a number of problems, some of the most complained about are frozen accounts and held assets.

Security: Is Coinbase safe and legit?

As one of the leading CEXs in the crypto industry, Coinbase can be considered a safe and legit platform. Using top-notch technology for security, customer deposits and assets are safe. Most customers’ assets are stored offline using cold storage. It uses bank-standard encryption and security for its website, and two-factor authentication to log in to the Coinbase app.

But there are still risks in the crypto industry. For instance, at least 6,000 Coinbase users were hacked and had funds stolen from their accounts in 2021. So it is necessary to keep your password or phrases totally in private.

How Coinbase compares to other cryptocurrency companies

There are a lot of big CEXs in the crypto industry, and each is a competitor for the others, so how is Coinbase compared to other CEXs?

Coinbase vs Binance

Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao in China. Binance is the leading cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume with up to 1379 trading pairs. 

Both of them are the leading CEXs in the market, so here are some comparisons between them:

• Liquidity: Both of them have deep liquidity, so this won’t be a problem to make big transactions from Coinbase or Binance.
• Token Listing: Many tokens on the market desperately want to be listed on Binance or Coinbase as their token price will rise significantly after listing.
• Products: Both Coinbase and Binance have a wide range of products like trading, leveraging, and investment arms: Coinbase Ventures & Binance Labs. However, Coinbase has a hot mobile wallet called Coinbase Wallet, while Binance does not. 

Coinbase vs Gemini

Gemini is one of Coinbase's most direct competitors. Here are some comparisons:

• Liquidity: Both have deep liquidity for big transactions.
• Pricing: Coinbase has spread pricing, and Gemini has fixed fees.
• Regulation: Both are U.S.-based firms that connect with United States regulators.
• Products: Coinbase has Coinbase Pro, same as Gemini’s Gemini Active Trader. Coinbase Ventures vs Gemini Frontier Fund. 

Conclusion

Coinbase is one of the leading CEXs in the USA with a wide range of products for many kinds of users, from small individuals to big companies and capitals. Coinbase is a good exchange for beginners who just want to buy and sell crypto.

Besides that, there are also some downsides of Coinbase such as pricing structure and customer services. 

You’ve been through an article about Coinbase and all of its products, I really hope you have got good insight for your crypto journey. Goodbye, and good luck from the Coin98 Insight team!