Buying Cryptocurrency for the first time / Coinbase

Hi,

After deciding to move into the CC (cryptocurrency) market the first question I had (and that I imagine most people have) is how do I go about buying bitcoin. What I find interesting about this is that this simple question is actually how I think a lot of new investors find out that there is more to investing in CC than just buying bitcoin. This article is about how I went about buying my first CC.

After making the decision to invest $40K in CC, I never imagined that it would be so hard to actually move that money into the market. I did some searching and quickly discovered some of the main exchanges like CEX.io, Kraken, Changelly, and Coinbase. In the coming posts, I will outline my experiences on getting onto all of these exchanges.

The fist one I am going to talk about is Coinbase.

Perks: Great, Simple UI. Accepts Credits Cards and recommended as the go-to exchange for newbies in the space.

Verification: I learned that the new normal for verification is completely different from the internet of the past when you never shared any personal details online. Prepare for pictures of yourself holding credit cards, passports and sending colonoscopy footage (ok not yet but don't be surprised when they ask) before being allowed to buy anything using your credit card.

Bummers: So one thing I learned was that I was not the only guy in the world that was looking to invest in this market. As a result of the massive influx of new users since early June (derived from comments on support forums), most of these sites were completely overloaded with new users which meant that most of the normal onboarding flows were delayed if not outright broken. This means massive delays to limit increases and zero response from support for non-critical issues (that assumes they are actually responding to critical support tickets). Also, since they are located in the US they are very strict about who they allow on their exchange. This means that if you plan on doing anything nefarious with our btc then don't be surprised if your account is frozen and your funds returned...without explanation.

Summary: So the initial account set up and verification is not so bad when compared to other exchanges. The fact that they have a simple user interface and option to make credit card purchases is great. My biggest hang ups are 1) The purchase limit is pretty extreme. At first you are limited to about $50. If you wait out the first waiting period and do through all the verification hoops, then you can get to a level of $250/week however when you want to move tens of thousands into the market this is not a very good option. At point I had a timer that seemed to indicate that after a 30 day waiting period I would unlock another limit level but 5 days out that timer disappeared and now I have no options in the UI to increase my limit. My hangup number 2) is Account freezes. I have read a few too many users talking about having accounts frozen so while I haven't experienced it myself it makes me nervous to hold my funds there. I am still using the account to make purchases but I move everything to my other accounts.

Next review: Changelly (spoiler: STAY AWAY)