You want to start getting your feet wet and starting buying some bitcoin or some dogecoin, but which is the best cryptocurrency exchange for you to get started?
In short, it largely depends on which country you are from as there some regulations fro your government that prevent you from using that exchange. I’ll be offering a review of 4 exchanges and a hardware wallet: Crypto.com, Binance, Coinbase, Wealthsimple, and Hardware Ledger Wallet.
Coinbase
Coinbase is based in the United States (US) and was publicly listed on the NASDAQ in April 2021 and provides a level of trust and transparency we have come to expect with public tech platforms coming out of San Francisco.
Pros
Easy to use platform to buy, sell, trade, send, and receive major cryptocurrencies and altcoins like Bitcoin, Cardano, Dogecoin, Ethereum and more. They are also offering a larger variety of altcoins like Shiba Inu (SHIB), and Polkadot (DOT)to their platform after being publicly listed.
They are probably the easiest platform for Americans to use and fund with their banks. They offer tight integration with paypal for cashing out and american banks.
They offer the ability to earn free cryptocurrency by taking quizzes and offer a good referral program of $10 worth of free BTC for you and the person signing up when they spend their first $100 of bitcoin
In my experience the fees to send crypto off of Coinbase to other exchanges like Binance, Crypto.com, and the hardware wallet are quite fair. They have a reputation for high fees, but I like that they are transparent about the fee structure
They have good built-in functionality for scheduling purchases for dollar cost averaging automatically.
Try out my Online Coinbase Course
Cons
Their fees are higher than other exchanges when purchasing cryptocurrency, but this is offset by lower fees if you plan to send your crypto off their platforms
Coinbase pro which offers more advantages and functionality, lower pricing for certain trade volumes, and early access to trading new coins is not available outside of the US at the time of writing.
Within the regular version of Coinbase their isn’t an option for yield farming or earning interest on your cryptocurrency. You also can’t set limit orders, which means setting the most you would be willing to pay and schedule this. This means you would need to time the market to get the best pricing.
Weekly limits seem to kick in when using american banking, which restricts the amount you can purchase in a week.
Check out our Coinbase tutorial on Youtube as well as our other Cryptocurrency tutorials
Crypto.com the App
Crypto.com is based in hong kong and is an international friendly super app. The app is well designed as a Super app offering plenty of functionality from your phone, a good selection of coins, and good interest rates for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stable coins. They also have a visa card that you can use to transfer your cryptocurrency on or earn their native CRO cryptocurrency cashback for regular purchases with the card. This is the best overall app for a wide variety of countries.
Pros
A wide selection of cryptocurrencies from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, XRP, Vechain, SHIB, Polkadot, CRO, and more
Good App user interface making it easy to navigate and use for beginners
The watchlist and notification system are easy to use and effective
Powerful app allowing you to earn interest on dogecoin, shib, USDC, and some of the better interest rates for bitcoin and ethereum (4.5%)
Different tiers of the crypto visa card allows you to earn CRO (2%) cash back for purchases and additional interest on their crypto earn feature
They have a crypto credit feature to borrow using your cryptocurrency as collateral
Funding from a fiat bank account is fairly straightforward
Cons
Prices for cyptocurrencies can be priced higher than exchanges like Binance
You don’t always receive the price that you thought were going to get when it comes time to confirming your purchase. This may be going to fees
Fees to transfer some cryptocurrencies off platform can be high
No limit order functionality built into the app, which would help users get the price they want while they sleep.
The desktop version of crypto.com is a complicated
Binance
Binance is the largest cryptocurrency platform by volume. Their app offers a lot in addition to the ability to buy, sell, trade, send, and receive cryptocurrencies. You can get into futures, derivatives, and even stock tokens. They also have some of the largest variety of coins to buy like dogecoin, bittorrent, shiba inu coin, busd, and more.
Pros
One of the best selection of coins
You can connect to the binance smart chain using BNB to get exotic altcoins like cummings on pancake swap
good short term interest rates for alt-coins like cardano, polkadot, and matic
app has a lite (easy) version and a pro version that allows you to access functions like limit orders
Cons
Can involve a bit of work to fund your account using fiat
Americans have to the use Binance.us
Staking coins for longer term 90 days or longer are often sold out or not available
platform interface can be initially overwhelming and intimidating to beginners
Try out the Binance platform here.
Try out our Binance Online Course here.
WealthSimple
Pros
A trusted and familiar platform use to buy stocks and get int crypto using a Canadian Bank
You can get bitcoin and ethereum Exposure through Exchange traded funds and keep your profits in a tax free savings account.
Cons
Limited selection of coins
This is not the real thing. You are not actually purchasing Bitcoin and ethereum that you can transfer to other wallets and exchanges as well as earn interest on. It is just for buying, holding, and selling on wealthsimple.
Ledger Nano Hardware Wallet
This is one of many hardware wallet solutions where you can securely store your private key for your cryptocurrency off the Internet. The problem with doing this is that your cryptocurrency is just sitting there not earning interest. There are some coins like Polkadot (DOT) where you can earn some interest, but this is not beginner friendly. I’ll expand on this section possibly in the future. A hardware is a good place to store some crypto in the event that one of the exchanges do get hacked, but it doesn’t replace the need for a cryptocurrency exchange in my opinion.
American get the Ledger Nano S here