As Crypto Currency is getting more and more popular, I’m sure that you would have heard of Bitcoin, the king of Crypto Currency. As the market grows, more and more people are trying to figure out how to buy Crypto Currency. This may not be easy for people who have never made investments in stock markets or financial products before. However, investing into Crypto Currency is actually quite easy and we will discuss two of the biggest exchanges in the Crypto industry today!
To invest into Crypto, you will need to buy them from an exchange, which is a platform for buying and selling Crypto Currencies. You can either buy Crypto Currencies using fiat currency or with other Crypto Currencies like Bitcoin (BTC) or Tether (USDT). Not all Crypto Currency pairs are traded on the market; you can only buy other Crypto Currencies with some of the most popular coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether and Binance Coin on the Binance exchange.
Crypto Currencies are extremely volatile and the price can move very quickly so some people prefer to trade using Tether which is a coin that is pegged to the US dollar so 1 tether will always be worth $1. This is useful if you think the price of the coins will drop so you can put your money in the stable coin and then buy back your desired coin once the price decreases enough.
The best thing about Crypto Currency is that it is very easy to trade and many exchanges like Coinbase make it very user friendly for beginners to invest in the crypto markets. In this article, we will discuss how to buy Crypto Currency using Coinbase and Binance and the advantages of each exchange.
Binance
Binance is currently the world’s largest exchange by trading volume. Even though the exchange was only founded in 2017, it had experienced exponential growth during the 2017 bull run and soon became the largest exchange, exceeding some exchanges like Coinbase that was founded in 2012. This was due to the large number of competitions and events that were run on the platform. Some of the other exchanges like Coinbase rarely ran any competitions but Binance had multiple competition and events every month where you will get rewards for doing certain activities. The activities are mainly related to trading on the platform which attracted lots of customers.
When Binance was first released, they did not have fiat to Crypto Currency options. You needed to buy a Crypto Currency such as Bitcoin on an exchange like Coinbase and then transfer that over to Binance to use it to invest into other Crypto Currencies. This made Binance less user friendly for beginners. However, in 2020, they added 15 Fiat currency payment methods allowing people to buy Crypto Currency easily using bank transfer or their credit or debit cards. Now we will go ahead to talk about how to buy Crypto Currency using Binance.
The main method for trading in Binance is to use their Spot Order books. An order book is effectively a list of buy and sell orders of an asset at a specific price. For example, if someone wants to sell Bitcoin at a price of $11,000, they would put a sell order of $11,000. You can choose to buy their Bitcoin at a price of $11,000 or put a buy order at a lower price and wait for someone to sell their Bitcoin at the price you specify.
Binance’s trading fees are set at 0.1% of your trades. However, if you own their native Binance Coin (BNB) token and use that to pay for the fees, you get a 25% discount. You also get an additional discount based on your trading volume and total holdings of the Binance coin. For the discount rates, you can check out this article.
Binance also offers many other features including margin trading, staking, lending and P2P trading. For advanced traders, Binance is a very good platform because you can leverage the margin trading opportunities. For those beginners in trading, you may research a bit before you buy crypto currency using margin trading. Margin trading is where you borrow money to increase the amount you buy.
However, this is not like Spot trading. With Spot trading, you will own a certain amount of Crypto currency after you buy it. You can withdraw it to your own wallet or send it to another exchange. You cannot do that with margin trading because you are borrowing money to invest. For example, if you invest $1000 into Bitcoin with 2x leverage, this means you are borrowing an additional $1000 to invest to get a total of $2000 worth of Bitcoin. However, you borrowed $1000 so if the value of Bitcoin drops by 50%, your total Bitcoin holdings will become $1000 and you will then be liquidated to cover the costs of the amount you borrowed so you do not end up going into debt. This may sound complicated for the beginners so this should be avoided if you do not have experience in trading.
Binance also offers staking where you can stake your coins directly on the exchange as well as lending to people for Margin trading in return for interest. The platform also has P2P trading where you can buy Crypto Currency directly from other users.
Coinbase
Coinbase was founded by Brian Armstrong in 2012, allowing people to easily buy Crypto Currency in around 32 different countries. The main Coinbase website allows people to easily buy and sell Cryptocurrencies using fiat currencies. There are no order books on the main Coinbase website; you just purchase Crypto Currencies at the Coinbase price given. There is Coinbase Pro which offers spot trading using order books like Binance but our focus in this article will just be Coinbase.
Coinbase offers both bank transfer and credit/debit card payments to buy Crypto Currencies. Their user interface is extremely user friendly due to the smaller number of options available. You can purchase Crypto Currency by specifying an amount you want to buy and then typing your card details; it’s as easy as online shopping. Coinbase accepts PayPal withdrawals for some countries as well.
Even though Coinbase is more user friendly than Binance, it is also more expensive to buy on Coinbase. For credit or debit card payments, they charge a 3.99% fee and a 1.49% fee for purchases using your fiat account balance or Crypto Currency trades. This means if you deposit $100 to your account using bank transfer and then buy Bitcoin, they will charge you $1.49. If you buy Bitcoin directly using Credit or debit card, then they will charge you $3.99. This is extremely high as Binance only charges you 0.1%. That is $0.1 if you purchase $100 worth of Crypto.
Coinbase also offers its customers an opportunity to not only learn about other Crypto projects but also earn money from it. They have a learning platform called Coinbase Earn where you can earn $100+ for just watching videos and answering quiz questions. The best thing about this is that you are guaranteed to earn money from this because if you get the quiz wrong, you can try again until you get it right. Yes, $100+ free money. However, you sometimes need to join a waitlist and you will be notified when it is your turn to earn free coins through the platform. You can earn coins like Stellar Lumens (XLM), Tezos (XTZ) and Basic Attention Token (BAT) and they will be deposited to your Coinbase account straight after you complete the quizzes.
Using Binance to Buy Crypto Currencies
Now that you know what the two exchanges offer and a little background about them, I will guide you through how to buy Crypto Currency using these exchanges.
With Binance, you can buy Crypto Currency using other Crypto Currencies like Bitcoin without being verified. However, if you want to use their fiat to Crypto options, you will need to be verified by providing a valid government ID. Without being verified, you will have a daily withdrawal limit of 2 BTC. Once you are verified, this limit increases to 100 BTC.
Assuming that you will buy using fiat directly, you can buy Crypto Currencies directly from their main website by going to the “Buy Crypto” section of the website and either choose the “Deposit” or “Credit/Debit Card” option. Only certain Crypto Currencies can be purchased using fiat. If you want a Crypto Currency that cannot be purchased using Fiat, you will need to buy it from the spot market order books afterwards. Once you purchase your Crypto Currency, we recommend that you transfer your coins to a cold wallet such as a Ledger Nano S.
Using Coinbase to Buy Crypto Currencies
Unlike Binance, you must verify your account before you can use Coinbase. Without verification, you will not be able to use their exchange to buy any coins. The payment methods that Coinbase supports depends on the country you are in but the main payment methods are bank transfer and credit or debit card. For bank transfer, you will need to add money to your account by transferring funds to the Coinbase bank account using a unique reference. It is important that you put your reference in the bank transfer or it will not arrive. The easier but more expensive way will be directly buying Crypto using your credit or debit card.
At the time I’m writing this, most users can trade up to $25,000 daily.
There isn’t much more to talk about in this section because Coinbase is very simple with very limited features, but that is also why it is so user friendly.
Security
When talking about Crypto Currencies, it is important to talk about the security of exchanges. Many exchanges were hacked and ended up shutting down so it is important not to keep your coins on exchanges. You should ideally store it on a Cold wallet such as the Ledger Nano S. Thankfully, Coinbase and Binance offers good security features for its customers including 2 factor authentication and email notifications when you log in to your account.
Coinbase also has insurance which fully insured them using a syndicate of Lloyds of London and US residents are also insured for up to $250,000 from the FDIC insurance. However, this does not cover personal losses like account compromisation so it’s important that you enable 2 factor authentication on your account. There are multiple 2 factor authentication options available on Coinbase such as Google Authenticator and SMS text code. We recommend using Google Authenticator as SMS text codes can be intercepted which is less safe.
Coinbase has never been hacked but Binance was hacked once in 2019 where they lost $40 million. However, Binance covered the losses with its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) funds and anyone who lost money as a result of the hack was compensated.
Both exchanges have measures in place to prevent customers from losing money as a result of security breaches but it is always important to keep your coins in your own private wallet. As they always say “if you don’t own your private keys, you don’t own your coins”. No matter which exchange you choose, these two both have very good security so it’s definitely safe to leave your money with these exchanges for a short period of time.
Support
Coinbase offers email support and they normally respond within 24-72 hours. Coinbase also has a knowledge base and FAQ section which has lots of information about their exchange including fees, payment methods and other frequently asked questions.
Binance also offers a similar email support where customers can contact the team via a support ticket system on their website. There is no live chat feature and responses can take a while. However, Binance does have a very good FAQ and general information about Crypto Currencies. They also have Binance Info which is a part of their website which includes information about different crypto currency coins and research information about them. This allows you to easily make informed decisions when investing.
Binance or Coinbase?
Now that you know how to buy Crypto Currency, you might be thinking which exchange you should use. Coinbase is better for beginners who are just starting to invest into Crypto Currencies. Its user interface makes it very easy to buy Crypto Currencies without needing to learn how to use Limit or Market buy orders. However, once you have more experience or you want to start trading regularly, Binance is better because there are more options available and it is cheaper to trade on due to the cheaper fees.
Coinbase also only supports around 37 Crypto Currencies at the time this article is written. On the other hand, Binance supports over 500 Crypto Currencies so if you want to invest into smaller market cap altcoins (alternative coins to Bitcoin), then Binance would give you more options. Even though Coinbase are adding more coins on a regular basis, they list at a much slower rate than Binance. For first time Crypto Currency buyers, we recommend starting with Coinbase and once you get more experience, then Binance is an exchange that you must try due to the wide range of advanced features and Crypto Currencies available.
Both platforms have a very large trading volume so you do not have to worry about liquidity and you can always get a good price for your coins. As there is a lot of volume on both exchanges, buying a large number of coins is also relatively easy. Both Binance and Coinbase have very strict listing requirements so only high quality coins will be listed on these exchanges. Binance has reviewed coins that are listed on their exchange and have delisted coins that don’t meet their strict requirements anymore. Buying coins on these exchanges has become safer because proper due diligence is done on the listed coins to ensure that they are not scam coins.
Both of these platforms make it very easy to use even on their mobile phones. Both Coinbase and Binance has their own mobile app which allows you to easily buy and sell Crypto Currencies or check your account holdings on the go.
At the end of the day, you cannot go wrong with either; they are both very good exchanges with a very strong reputation in the industry! You may decide you want to try Binance even if you are a beginner and many savvy traders still use Coinbase so just because you are a beginner doesn’t mean Binance is not suitable for you. There are a lot of resources online to learn how to trade so you can dive straight into trading using a more sophisticated exchange like Binance even if you are new to the Crypto market. The decision is yours and we hope that this article has helped you learn how to buy Crypto Currencies and the advantages and disadvantages of Coinbase and Binance.
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