Which came first: the Bitcoin or the Dollar? Getting your first crypto coin can be a Catch-22: you want to dip your toe into cryptocurrency, but you find out that you need to already have a coin in order to join an exchange—but you don’t yet have a coin.
Don’t worry, I had the same challenge when one of my vendors asked me to pay him with fractional Bitcoin. That is, until I found Coinbase, the newbie-friendly exchange where you can register, prove you are who you are with a valid ID, and then buy your first coins with a credit card. It’s that simple.
Coinbase vs Binance for Beginners
Once you get a feel for buying and selling, and then figure out what a wallet is, you’ll soon discover that there are dozens of alternative cryptocurrencies—ALT coins—besides Bitcoin. You’ll also soon realize that trades on Coinbase are more expensive than you can get from other exchanges. When you become more serious and cryptocurrency becomes the epicenter of your investment and asset portfolio, the amount of money you spend each time you buy or sell starts to add up. As you transition from beginner to amateur or even pro, you’ll likely want to diversify to an exchange that offers more coins, better analytics, and lower fees, and that exchange could very well be Binance.
While Coinbase allows you to make that transition from the regular commercial Coinbase to Coinbase Pro, Binance has taken the world by storm in a very short while by going global first and then aiming at the US market in the form of Binance. Being validated as a citizen and proffering an ID to prove your country and state is something mandatory in Coinbase whereas Binance allows you to buy and sell in a limited way even before you’ve gone through the process of uploading a valid License of Passport to prove your citizenship and residency. Each exchange has a different ethos and is focused on jumping through the legal hoops of different financial legislations and laws.
Until January of 2019, you couldn’t even buy a coin in Binance with a credit or debit card—it was always exclusively an exchange for serious traders and investors, not for the faint of heart. Coinbase and Binance are both developing towards each other: Coinbase is developing from being a beginner’s jumping off point for the new digital economy towards being a place where the pros can buy and sell and day trade; Binance launched as a sophisticated professional platform for global crypto trading but is developing its platform to also become accessible to beginners and noobs.
So which is better: Coinbase or Binance? I’ll be honest with you: I have been able to keep my buying and selling safely within the bounds of the Coinbase and Coinbase Pro universe, but the only reason is because the Coinbase platform has always made it easy for someone like me who doesn’t have a lot of experience in traditional investing, the stock market, trend analysis, and whatever candlestick charts are. If I had any level of passion for “the market,” I would take the extra time to become familiar enough with Binance to make it my home.
The good news is that you don’t really have to choose. When comparing coinbase vs binance, they’re both trustworthy and solid solutions that will help you become a cryptocurrency mogul.
