I covered in the blog before the best place to buy Cryptocurrency. But I never really explained how to buy Bitcoin using a cryptocurrency exchange online. It is really easy and you’ll see it with today’s Coinbase review and tutorial!

I’m going to reveal how you can have your money directly taken from your paycheck every week and turn into Bitcoin.

Also, you are going to learn which cryptocurrencies I am buying right now so you can fill up on the same ones.

I will be teaching you all this using Coinbase Cryptocurrency exchange. It’s really easy to use and probably one of the most secure Bitcoin exchange out there.

My coinbase review is in a text version and there’s also a video version just below.

What you will learn:

• How to create an automatic Bitcoin purchase from your bank account every week
• Where to store your Bitcoin so you don’t get hack
• How to know if Coinbase.com is a safe exchange to use

Coinbase Review and Tutorial

Text Version:

Who should use Coinbase?

First thing first. If privacy is important to you, I would suggest against using Coinbase. Simply because they are a US based business, if the IRS or other governmental agency ask for your information, they have to comply and give that information away.

One reason some people join bitcoin is for it’s anonymity, so if you are one of those, id would warn you agains using Coinabase. A site like LocalBitcoins.com will probably much better for privacy. It Is a little less convenient, but you gain on privacy.

privacy score 2/5

With that out of the way, let’s look at my Coinbase review and Tutorial.

Is Coinbase trustworthy?

To verify the trustworthiness of Coinbase, you can go on Reddit.com/r/Bitcoin and search for Coinbase. You’ll see all the comments of other people in the industry and it will tell you wether or not you should trust Coinbase.

You can see all the complains there and usually people will start a thread when an exchange become untrustworthy. Make sure to have a look if you haven’t been following Bitcoin for a while.

Trustworthiness score: 5/5

Can you use Coinbase in your Country?

Coinbase currently doesn’t support all countries. You can go on Coinbase.com/global to see if your country is supported. If your country is not in the list, you’ll have to use a different exchange. I usually suggest Kraken.com as an alternative if your country is not listed. Maybe in a few years, more countries will be added.

What can you do with Coinbase?

One of the greatest feature of Coinbase in my opinion is there automatic Bitcoin purchase. You can have your Bitcoin aquisition automated and money debited straight from your bank account every week.

Just click on buy in the upper left and select how much money you want to purchase. Select the frequency of your automated order, either: daily, weekly, every two weeks or monthly. It will be debited from your bank account automatically there after.

This is the reason why I still recommend Coinbase. The automatic purchase lets you acquire Bitcoins on a regular basis and takes away all of the guess work of timing the market and such.

Ease of use score: 5/5

Where should I store my bitcoin?

Coinbase offer you to store your bitcoin directly on their platform. The problem with that is that there has been many hack on exchange before and thief walked away with the customers bitcoin.

There’s a saying in bitcoin: “Not your private key, Not you bitcoin” Unless you control the private key to your Bitcoin you are not really owning any Bitcoin, someone else own them for you.

The best way to own your private key, is to use a hardware bitcoin wallet like Trezor, Ledger or the ColdCardWallet from coinkite which I had on the podcast last time.

Just keep in mind that keeping your bitcoin on the exchange is fine if you are just starting out, but as you understand more about Bitcoin, you want to move them somewhere YOU control them, not someone else.

Money on an exchange is money you are willing to lose. With that said, because Coinbase is well funded and well managed, I assume that they practice fairly safe private key management procedure. For that reason I am not as worry for a possible hack as certain smaller exchange. But only use any exchange as a short term storage solution.

Short term storage score: 4/5

What else can I do on Coinbase?

Once you have purchased your Bitcoin and moved them to your own phone wallet or hardware wallet, you have used Coinbase to it’s maximum capacity as an individual.

If you are a trader and want to day trade, you can use their pro “pro advanced digital currency” platform. Or if you are an institutional investor and need to invest millions of dollar, you can get in touch with them for their Prime platform or Custody solution. I go over them in the video but we won’t need to use those solution as a retail Bitcoin investor.

To wrap it up:

If Coinbase is supported in your country and government privacy is not a main concern for you, then Coinbase is a great solution. If you are privacy concerned and want as much anonymity as possible when dealing with Bitcoin, then LocalBitcoins.com is the solution for you.

Coinbase is a solid exchange and i’m excited to see what other product they will come up with in the future.