When I first started out on this epic crypto journey, one of the first questions to figure out was which exchange to use, there seemed a daunting selection. I now use Coinjar, Binance and Coinbase, here I detail why I did that and my experiences on these as someone starting out.
All of the following is based on my own personal experience, I make no claims on the correctness of any of this, and I’m happy to be corrected. Maybe this will either help the exchange product owners to see value propositions, or they can provide feedback on their products for how to use them more effectively? As always, none of this is financial advice, I’m not a financial advisor, you will need to do your own research
After some research I initially decided on Coinjar, which from my research was a good choice for the UK and Australia for both ease of use and costs.
Unfortunately the application process was slower than I planned for, having completed the application I waited several days for the account to be verified, to the point where I gave up waiting. I wanted to get in after the price dip earlier this year, so got increasingly more frustrating waiting and seeing the coin prices rebound, so whilst waiting patiently decided to open an account with Binance, the next on my list.
Binance was much quicker to get started, account setup and registration and initial deposit were all completed rapidly and I was up and running in a few hours converting my first GBP into BTC and happy to have taken the first steps on the long and dusty road.
Eventually once my Coinjar account was verified, which was probably about 3 or 4 days, I decided to continue with that too and keep both accounts running, that way if I ever have a problem with one, I still have the other and ultimately, as I use separate passwords and separate 2FA, it gives me some additional security to have my funds split across exchanges.
From a personal perspective these are my observations:
Criteria: Setup
Requirement: Fast
Result: Binance much faster, same day vs several days
Criteria: Access Security
Requirement: Two factor authentication
Result: Comparable, for 2FA I use SMS for Binance and Microsoft Authenticator for Coinjar, both require me to authenticate on my mobile phone. Coinjar does give me the choice to authenticate for a 2 week period on a specific device, more convenient but perhaps less secure if someone else has access to that device.
Criteria: Costs
Requirement: Low cost
Result: Initial I selected Coinjar as I thought it was a lower cost than Binance, however I’m not convinced. With the App, I have only been converting with a cost of 1% for a transaction, I believe it costs less to trade so I had to transfer to Coinjar exchange (which was easy and free) but as I only have a relatively small investment, I never seem to have enough to meet the minimum trade requirement (to be fair I only have a relatively small amount in each, this should not be an issue as I invest more). So I’m only currently converting at 1%. On Binance when I trade it’s approx 0.1% and never seem to have an issue with minimum trade limits. So for me, as a small investor, Binance gets my vote. I have to admit here that I’m not an expert on the charges or minimum trade requirements and still trying to figure out exactly what these are so please refer to the exchanges yourself for the details, hopefully if there are better alternatives someone can provide more information.
Other Features:
Binance Earn: Just started using this as an easy way to make interest when I HODL
Coinjar Bundle: A very easy way to spread investments amongst a multitude of coins in one go, I have done this as a control test to compare if my active investing can outperform my passive investment, at the moment the bundle is just winning because my active investing and not unsurprisingly by about the 1% cost to convert between funds, hopefully as my skills improve my active investing with overtake the passive bundle.
So between the two, I prefer Binance for my active investing but like the Coinjar bundle as a passive investment which is spread across coins.
Why Coinbase:
Coinbase came into the mix as I found the rewards gave me a nice quantity (currently at ~£18) of coin at absolutely no monetary cost to me, the cost is my time to watch a few minutes of education videos which I found interesting and part of my normal DYOR. I like the ability to easily convert into funds which I can earn interest and watching the active earned interest clock is a nice touch and keeps me smiling (currently approaching £0.04 and counting which for £18 over a few days is not too shabby). For my next round of monthly investment I might put some more in here and will report back. What’s strange is that I don’t seem to be charged for converting between coins, I find that hard to believe, so maybe I’m just not finding where those costs are.
Incidentally my go to place to track all of these is CoinGecko, on there I setup a portfolio for each which helps me monitor them all at a glance.
All Coinjar, Binance and Coinbase links are all my personal referral links, I make no apologies for that, writing posts takes time. I’ll let you decide on the value and whether to use them, but these referral links can offer potential rewards to both you and me and I only wish I had made more use of these previously from other folks when I first started out instead of thinking it would be better to go direct as I feel I have missed out on some rewards.
Enjoy your day and make sure its fun!
