This guide will take you through buying, sending and receiving cryptocurrency on both coinbase and binance

Start By Creating Both A Coinbase And A Binance Account

Coinbase is the most beginner friendly, offering approximately 40+ of the most established cryptocurrencies on the market.
Binance has the lowest trading fees on the market, while offering a majority of the total cryptocurrencies on the market (2000+).

Both can be used as a point of entry, but banks have a tendency to be more lenient towards allowing transactions to and from Coinbase, (depending on your geographical location). This is why you want verified accounts on both platforms.

Create Binance Account

Create Coinbase Account

Buy cryptocurrency

Coinbase

Before you get started and buy anything, you first need to verify your identity.
When everything’s been verified, you’ll land on your Dashboard.

Select Buy / Sell on the upper right-hand side.
Click the Buy field to select the asset you’d like to purchase.
Enter the amount you’d like to buy denominated in crypto or your local currency.
Select your payment method.
Click Preview Buy to confirm your purchase (you can always click the back arrow to make a change).
If the details are correct, click Buy to complete your purchase.

Coinbase Fee Overview

Payment method/fee:

Bank account or Coinbase wallet: 1.49%
Debit card: 3.99%
Instant card withdrawal: Up to 1.5% (minimum fee of $0.55)
ACH transfer: Free
Wire transfer: $10 ($25 outgoing)

Register On Coinbase

You can use your credit/debit card, or you can also link your bank account. Using your credit or debit card to purchase is quick, but they add an extra fee.
Your bank account usually takes about a week, but there’s fewer fees.

In order for Coinbase to verify that you’re actually using an authorized account, they’ll do two small verification transactions (under $1 each). This may be instant if you used your card, or it may take a couple days for your bank account, but if you have online banking, they will generally show up under pending transactions.

Note: Your bank or credit card may deny your transaction from Coinbase initially and place a freeze on your account. It’s a toss-up.
Before you proceed to buy anything, I’d recommend calling them up and letting them know that you’ll be making a purchase on Coinbase with that bank account or card.
Save yourself that headache of a cancelled transaction.

Buy cryptocurrency

Binance

Step 1

1. On your Internet browser, go to Binance.com and login with your Binance account. If you don’t have one, click here to open a Binance account.

Step 2

2. On the menu bar at the top left side of the website or desktop app, go to Buy Crypto and select Credit/Debit Card.

Step 3

3. You are now led to a new page where you can proceed with your Bitcoin purchase. Select your preferred local currency and enter the amount you want to spend. (Please note that there are minimum and maximum amounts you can enter for each corresponding local currency. Then, under Coin, select BTC (or your preferred cryptocurrency). Then, click Buy BTC.

Step 4

4. A pop-up window will open on the website where you can enter your card information, such as your card number, expiry date, and CVV code. Enter these details, then click Next. You’ll be prompted to enter more information such as your country, address, city, and postal code. Once you’re done, click Pay Now.

Step 5

5. You will now see a Confirm Order prompt, where you can check if your order is correct. To confirm your order, click the checkbox beside the “I have read and agree to…” section and then the Confirm button. Please note that you have 60 seconds to confirm your order.

Done!

6. Once the transaction is successful, you will receive your Bitcoin.

Binance Fee Overview

Payment method/fee:

Bank account: 0%
Debit card: 0%
Instant card withdrawal: 0.5%
ACH transfer: 0%
Wire transfer: 0%

Trading fee:

Market Maker 0.1%
Market Taker 0.1%
Paying with BNB 0.075%

Register On Binance

Note: You can buy in fractions, and DO NOT need to purchase a whole Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin etc.
As you can see in my example, you can buy 0.09 of a Litecoin if you’d like. You can buy 0.005 of a Bitcoin as well.
If your intention is to transfer the funds over to an exchange (e.g. Binance) to continue trading, then Litecoin will provide you the cheapest transaction fees.

Exchange options

Exchanges

Exchange platforms match buyers with sellers. Like a traditional stock exchange, traders can opt to buy and sell bitcoin by inputting either a market order or a limit order.
When a market order is selected, the trader is authorizing the exchange to trade the coins for the best available price in the online marketplace.
With a limit order set, the trader directs the exchange to trade coins for a price below the current ask or above the current bid, depending on whether they are buying or selling.

Binance

Binance is one of the largest exchanges out there with one of the greatest selections of markets.
It’s one of the more simple exchanges to use, in addition to offering the lowest transaction fees on the market (exceptions may apply)
When trading on the Binance Exchange, each trade will incur in a standard fee of 0.1% (trading fees are determined by your monthly trading volume and BNB holdings). You can either pay the trading fees using the assets you are trading or you can pay for them with BNB. If you choose to pay in BNB, you will get a special discount on your trading fees.

Coinbase Pro

Coinbase Pro and Coinbase is the same entity.
So if you have a Coinbase account (you have one right? If not, click here to get your Coinbase account set up), then you’ll be able to use Coinbase Pro to trade, send, and receive the coins that Coinbase supports with fewer fees.

Coinbase is more of a brokerage and also serves as a crypto wallet. You can buy or sell digital currency from Coinbase using real (fiat) currency. While Coinbase Pro is more of an exchange, letting investors buy and sell from each other.

FTX.US

Although FTX.US is relatively new to the cryptocurrency market, it has already established its position in less than two years. This is primarily because the exchange has managed to offer an assortment of financial products that are highly appealing to experienced crypto traders.

FTX.US was created by Wall Street and Silicon Valley veterans, and quickly became one of the world’s best-known cryptocurrency exchanges. It is an incorporated corporation in the state of Delaware. It is registered as a money services business with FinCen.
FTX.US is the United States-specific variant of the main FTX.US exchange. It’s essentially the same exchange certain features and markets stripped away for the sake of complying with stringent US regulations.

Send and Receive

Coinbase

Start at the Home/Dashboard page
Select Send/Receive
Enter the amount of crypto you’d like to send. You can toggle between the fiat value or crypto amount you’d like to send.
Enter the crypto addres, phone number or email address of the person you would like to send the crypto to.
Select Continue to review and confirm the details of this send.
Select Preview
Select Send on the blockchain and follow the remaining prompts.

Note: All sends to crypto addresses are irreversible. Make sure you have the correct address, then input the amount you want to send in USD or the amount you want to send in the respective cryptocurrency in the next box over.
To get the address someone can send you some cryptocurrency at, click the Receive button. You can get the address, as well as a QR code, that you can receive cryptocurrency at.
Make sure you’re only sending Bitcoin to a Bitcoin address, Ethereum to an Ethereum address, etc.
An error on this could result in your funds being permanently lost.

Send and Receive

Binance

Step 1

1. Log into your Binance account and go to your wallet overview page.

Step 2

2. Click on [Deposit] at the top right side of your screen.

Step 3

3. Select [Deposit Crypto].

Step 4

4. Select the cryptocurrency you want to deposit. In this example, we will deposit USDT.
However, if your intention is to transfer over in order to continue trading then Litecoin will provide you with the cheapest transaction fees.

Step 5

5. Next, choose the deposit network. Make sure the selected network corresponds with the network of the platform you are withdrawing funds from.

Be careful! If you select the wrong network, you will lose your funds.

Summary of network selection:

BEP2 relates to the Binance Chain.
BEP20 relates to the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
ERC20 relates to the Ethereum network.
OMNI refers to the OmniLayer that runs on the Bitcoin network.
TRC20 relates to the TRON network.
BTC refers to the Bitcoin network.
BTC (SegWit) refers to Native Segwit (bech32), and the address starts with “bc1”. Users are allowed to withdraw or send their Bitcoin holdings to SegWit (bech32) addresses.

Step 6

6. In this example, we will withdraw USDT from another platform and deposit it into Binance. Since we are withdrawing from an ERC20 address (Ethereum blockchain), we will select the ERC20 deposit network.

The network selection depends on the options provided by the external wallet/exchange that you are making the withdrawal from.
If the external platform only supports ERC20, you must select the ERC20 deposit network.
DO NOT select the cheapest fee option. Select the one that is compatible with the external platform.
For example, you can only send ERC20 tokens to another ERC20 address, and you can only send BSC tokens to another BSC address. If you select incompatible/different deposit networks, you will lose your funds.

Step 7

7. Copy the deposit address provided by Binance and paste it on the corresponding platform’s address section (where you intend to withdraw your funds from).

Step 8

8. After confirming the withdrawal request, you have to wait until the transaction is confirmed. The confirmation time varies depending on the blockchain and its current network traffic. Please, wait patiently for the transfer to be processed. The funds will be credited to your Binance account shortly after. You will receive a confirmation email when your funds have been confirmed.

Done!

9. You can check the [Transaction History] page for more information on your recent transactions.

Binance

Congratulations, You Are Ready To Start Trading!

The easiest, and far less intimidating option to use is the ‘Convert’ tool, simply select the token you have and the token you want to buy (for example if you followed the previous steps to assure the lowest possible transaction fees, you’ll have Litecoin in your spot wallet, which you can then convert into USDT. And then you convert that USDT into Dogecoin directly without having to use the market tool). The tool will then convert these immediately based on current market price. However, do note that not all trading pairs are available to the converstion tool.
The next step is the ‘Classic’ market trading option.
For some introduction on how to use this you can check out our guide explaining the different order types.

Security

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

Two-Factor Authentication, in a nutshell, provides an extra layer of security on your accounts by means of you manually verifying that you’re actually the one logging in. Two-Factor authentication is a must, and an authenticator app like ‘Google Authenticator’ is the most secure.

There are two ways you can apply 2 factor authentication on your accounts (of course, depending on what option the site allows):

Via an Authenticator application. Some exchanges and applications allow ‘Authy’, but the vast majority use ‘Google Authenticator’. They function the same, as applications on your phone. Be sure to write down the installation passphrase in case you ever lose your phone. You will also need this in order to verify setting up a new phone. (most secure)