Coinbase Affiliate / Referral Program
Coinbase Affiliate Program Url: https://www.coinbase.com/
Website Url: http://www.coinbase.com
How to contact: https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/emails/new
What is it? Buy and Sell Digital Currency
Category: Exchange
Affiliate payout in Bitcoin? YES
Which non-Bitcoin payout methods do they support? SEPA,DEBIT CARD
Revenue Share Percentage: $5
One Time Commission: NO
Lifetime Revenue Share: $5
Affiliate Referal Commission: no information
Additional Program Info: Sends $10 worth of bitcoin for free to both (user and referrer), when someone gets $100 worth of bitcoins using affiliate/referral link.
Supported Crypto-Coins: Bitcoin
US Users / Players allowed? YES
Coinbase is by far the largest and most successful provider for the direct purchase and sale of crypto currencies. The American provider recognized very early on that the entry must be as easy as possible. However, in our test Coinbase only took the X. Place. There were deductions mainly due to the comparatively modest selection of payment options and the small selection of currencies. Coinbase, on the other hand, scored points for the platform’s security, which is credibly communicated to customers.
Somewhat strange is that Coinbase is not addressed to customers from Germany according to AGB. The registration or verification and trading with crypto currencies, however, has been working smoothly for hundreds of thousands of German customers for years. It is possible that this information is only a legal safeguard for Coinbase.
Information
Coinbase offers so called “Hosted Wallets” for all offered crypto currencies. Beginners do not have to deal with the sometimes complicated mechanisms for storing crypto currencies. Nevertheless, by entrusting them with this task, they give up a bit of financial sovereignty, and the analogy to a normal bank is obvious. This kind of storage contradicts the core idea of crypto currencies. As with all tested providers, the purchased crypto currencies can of course also be transferred to your own wallet.
For the purchase of crypto currencies one must load with Coinbase after the verification first its euro Wallet , thus money pay in. This works by bank transfer and takes 2 days. It is faster with credit cards. However, the high credit card fees make this payment method much more expensive. If the euro Wallet is filled with capital, the euro can be exchanged within seconds euro into the offered crypto currencies.
Coinbase under test: User friendliness
User friendliness of the website Coinbase is a clear pioneer in terms of usability. On no other platform was the access to Bitcoin & Co. as easy as on Coinbase.com. Even if the market has caught up in the meantime, the intuitive user interface with website and app remains top.
Number of crypto currencies Coinbase attaches great importance to security and compliance with current regulations (see below). The provider therefore has a relatively strict set of criteria that a crypto currency must meet before it is considered for the trading platform. This has led to the fact that currently only a handful of crypto currencies are available for purchase. Coinbase has announced that it will add more crypto currencies in the near future. But so far the selection is serh narrow in comparison to the competition.
Payment methods Coinbase is a provider with a global target group. However, payment methods are often characterized by local preferences. Thus one looks for the SOFORTüberweisung usual in the German area in vain. Giropay or PayPal are also a bad idea. If you don’t want to accept the high credit card fees, all you can do is make a good old SEPA transfer. Users must bring the two days waiting time with them. In this respect, there were clear deductions in our test.
Registration and Verification Coinbase requires a lot of personal information for full use of the platform. The aim of the query is to comply with legal requirements, for example on money laundering. In addition to the identity card data, however, the source of the money used is also queried. Questions about the professional situation are also asked. Nobody seems to check this. Nevertheless, it is an invasion of privacy which other providers do not demand in this form.
Registration and verification The verification also takes place at Coinbase by means of a photo of the ID card via webcam or mobile phone camera. However, the whole process takes a little longer than with Bitpanda, for example. The final activation of the account takes additional time.
Other functions: Here Coinbase can score points. For example, the function to buy or sell a certain amount at regular, freely definable intervals via a standing order is very helpful. The comprehensive reporting options also attracted positive attention in our test. In addition, it is possible to buy several crypto currencies at once with the “Coinbase Bundle”. This comes very close to a “crypto index fund”.
Last but not least the ‘Vault’ should be mentioned. It offers an increased security of the crypto currencies managed by Coinbase. Payouts can be cancelled at any time within 48 hours. Transactions can also be configured to require the consent of multiple people before the transaction is sent. According to Coinbase, 98 percent of deposits are secured in geographically distributed “cold storage” locations. This means that they are not connected to the Internet. Since the described additional functions go far beyond the performance of other providers, we award a bonus point in addition to the maximum number of points.
Fees and Conditions
Fees for purchase and sale The fees for purchase with SEPA transfer amount to 1.5 percent of the purchase price. With credit card, 3.99 percent is charged. In addition, Coinbase determines the purchase price itself. According to Coinbase, this price may differ by up to 0.5 percent from the actual price Coinbase buys for. This premium, known as the “spread”, is directly included in the displayed price.
- Price compared to market prices In our test, Coinbase purchase prices tended upwards compared to other providers.
- Fees for withdrawals Coinbase charges 0.10 cents for withdrawals of credit in Euro. Sending crypto currencies costs only the miner fee and is variable. This point goes to Coinbase!
- Fees for alternative payment methods Payment by credit card costs 3.99 percent. That comes user clearly more expensively to stand than on the market usual.
Deposit insurance / Insurance of funds
According to its own statements, Coinbase stores about 98 percent of the crypto currencies in secure “cold storage”. The remaining 2 percent in the “Hot Wallet” are 100 percent insured. This measure and transparency of disclosure is exemplary in comparison.
Regulatory clarity Coinbase is registered with the American FinCEN. It assumes criminal prosecution for suspicious transactions. Furthermore, Coinbae complies with the KYC & AML regulations for identifying customers and complying with the Money Laundering Act in all countries in which the provider maintains business relationships. Somewhat strange is the fact that according to AGB Coinbase you are not allowed to use German products. On request we got the following answer, which doesn’t bring more light into the darkness:
“Some accounts in Germany are supported, which makes the buy and sell feature available too. Please note that we will not be closing German accounts even if their area is not supported yet. These customers will still have the ability to use Coinbase to send and receive funds from external address, and store them on their accounts.”
Therefore there is a small deduction of points at this point. How long in the market? Coinbase is by far the largest provider and has been on the market since 2012. During this time there were no negative headlines about security. Coinbase is now backed by powerful investors. The company is valued at several billion dollars. Even if an incident were to occur, it is very likely that no users would come to harm.
Bug bounties, audits To internal audits of processes and security we have nothing. Coinbase has an increasing number of institutional clients through its Pro and Custody programs. We therefore assume that the standards at Coinbase are very high in this respect. There is a bug bounty program on Hackerone that rewards vulnerabilities that are discovered.
Security precautions (login protection) Coinbase expressly recommends the use of 2-factor authorization (2FA) in many places to provide additional protection against unauthorized access to the account. Users must always verify new devices first. Withdrawals can be performed without confirmation by email. Without a 2FA code, however, it does not work.
Help & Support
Support, no matter on which channel, is currently only available in English at Coinbase. Both the relatively detailed online help and support requests by e-mail are answered exclusively in English. There is no telephone support. Somewhat annoying is the fact that each support request is first answered by an automatically generated answer mail. This is an attempt to solve the problem without human intervention. For example, in our test we received the same answer to different questions twice. And even these answers took a few days. In our test we had to wait between a few days and several weeks (!) for the correct answer. Coinbase is very active in the social media. We have our own Twitter account, which regularly answers questions and doesn’t just refer to e-mail support.
Go to coinbase.com