Coinbase Pro
There are a few names in crypto that have become so recognized within the crypto industry that they are nearly synonymous with crypto itself. Anyone who holds crypto has probably heard of companies like Binance, Crypto.com, OKX, Kraken, and of course, Coinbase. If you are looking for a new, or additional crypto exchange, you have found a good place to start your search here with this Coinbase Pro review as Coinbase is one of the most reputable players in the space.
In this Coinbase Pro review, we will cover the company history, the platform features and functions, Coinbase Pro fees, Coinbase vs Coinbase Pro, Coinbase exchange security, and most importantly, whether or not Coinbase or Coinbase Pro is right for you.
We also have some comparison articles to help you narrow your search and find the exchange that is right for you:
OKX vs Coinbase Review
And without further ado, let’s crack into Coinbase Pro.
Coinbase Pro Summary
Headquarters: | No headquarters as of May 2020, previously, San Francisco, USA. |
Year Established: | 2012 |
Regulation: | Yes- Coinbase complies with all applicable laws and regulations in each jurisdiction where it operates. -Money Transmission License -Registered with FinCEN
|
Spot Cryptocurrencies Listed: | 140+ |
Native Token: | N/A |
Maker/Taker Fees | Lowest: 0.04%/ 0.0% Highest: 0.50%/0.50% |
Security: | High |
Beginner Friendly: | Coinbase: Very Beginner Friendly Coinbase Pro: Slight Learning Curve |
KYC/AML Verification: | Yes |
Fiat Currency Support: | USD, GBP, EUR |
Deposit/Withdrawal Methods: | USA Coinbase Pro: ACH Bank transfer and bank wire USA Coinbase: Debit/Credit, bank account, wire transfer, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay
GBP Coinbase Pro: Faster Payments bank transfer GBP Coinbase: SEPA, Faster Payments, 3D Secure Card, PayPal (withdraw only)
EUR Coinbase Pro: SEPA bank transfer EUR Coinbase: SEPA, 3D Secure Card, Ideal/Sofort (deposit only) PayPal (withdraw only) Apple Pay (buy only) |
Review: What is Coinbase Pro?
Coinbase is one of the oldest, most well-respected, and well-established crypto exchanges in the industry. They are the largest US exchange by trading volume, and second largest in the world after Binance.
Coinbase was also the first crypto exchange to go public and is known for being very regulation friendly, which makes them a favourite for many crypto traders and institutions. Coinbase had originally set up shop for its headquarters in San Francisco, but like many tech companies, has decided to become location independent with no established headquarters as the company establishes a stronger global presence.
Image via Coinbase Pro
With an already successful crypto platform for buying, selling and hodling crypto, Coinbase had a trading platform called GDAX for more serious traders who needed charting functionality and different options for order execution. Coinbase rebranded GDAX to Coinbase Pro in 2018.
Coinbase Pro is a trading platform for individual traders that offers a secure and easy way to buy, sell, and trade digital assets.
Coinbase Pro vs Coinbase
There seems to be quite a bit of confusion among users about what the difference is between Coinbase and Coinbase Pro, hopefully, this can help clear things up a bit.
Images via Coinbase and Coinbase Pro Homepages
Both exchanges are owned by Coinbase Global Inc, both let users use fiat to buy crypto, and both platforms can be accessed with the same login credentials on different platforms.
Coinbase is fantastic for beginners and many crypto veterans will likely tell you that they purchased their first crypto on Coinbase. The beauty is in its simplicity, no-frills, no fancy features, no difficult-to-navigate screens, just a clean, easy-to-use basic interface for simple buying, selling, holding, and swapping crypto assets.
More seasoned users and traders will opt to use Coinbase Pro for the advanced options, charting functionality, trading pairs, and lower fees. Users pay considerably more for the ease and simplicity of Coinbase, Coinbase Pro is much easier on the wallet once you learn how to navigate the platform.
Coinbase | Coinbase Pro |
Main Features: Beginner-friendly. Buy, sell, send, receive, exchange and withdraw crypto. PayPal support. | Main Features: Advanced charting features and functionality. Buy, sell, deposit, withdraw, trade, stop order, limit order, market order, time in force order policies. |
Fees: 0% to 0.60% per trade, 2.49% for card transactions and fees vary for bank deposits. | Fees: 0% to 0.5% per trade |
Crypto Supported: 100+ | Crypto Supported: 140+ |
Security Features: 2FA via SMS or Google Authenticator app. Cold storage and multi-signature wallets. USD balances are FDIC insured (up to $250k). | Security Features: 2FA via SMS or Google Authenticator app. Cold storage and multi-signature wallets. USD balances are FDIC insured (up to $250k). Whitelisting pre-approved addresses. |
While Coinbase is touted as being one of the most beginner-friendly exchanges, they also receive a lot of criticism for having significantly higher fees than most of its competitors. If you do choose to sign up with Coinbase, learning to use the Coinbase Pro interface will definitely help you save some bucks and stack some Sats.
Fortunately, Coinbase has handy help articles that teach users everything they need to know about How to Use Coinbase Pro.
Coinbase is also more than just an exchange, though it is outside the scope of this article, Coinbase offers the massively popular Coinbase wallet that has Dapp access, an NFT marketplace, integration with Opensea NFT marketplace via the Coinbase app, and enhanced Web 3 accessibility within the Coinbase app and wallet, while Coinbase Pro is simply used for trading crypto assets.
If you want to see how Coinbase Pro stacks up against other crypto exchanges, feel free to check out our Top Exchanges article where we break down the best exchanges in different categories to help you find the right one to fit your needs.
Coinbase Pro Exchange Key Features
First and foremost, the main feature is the Coinbase Pro trading exchange interface itself, which we will cover later on. For now, let’s cover the Coinbase Pro App and go over some specific features.
Coinbase Pro Mobile App
All the major exchanges these days have a mobile application to trade or manage your crypto on the go. While I am a big fan of crypto apps to manage crypto, at the Coin Bureau, we generally do not recommend using a mobile app as a primary trading tool.
The reason for this is that any professional trader will tell you that trading is no joke and should be taken seriously. You’ll likely never meet a successful trader who routinely trades from their mobile phone while watching Netflix or waiting in line at the grocery store. Mobile apps just have too small of a screen to perform proper technical analysis, and serious traders often have multiple screens and multiple tabs on those screens, swapping frequently to access important data, not something easily done from a single mobile device.
A professional trading setup normally looks something like this:
Image via Shutterstock
Not this:
Image via Shutterstock
All that aside, the Coinbase Pro mobile app is a fantastic app, it is well built, clean, and easy to use. Note that Coinbase has two different apps, Coinbase app is for using the simplified Coinbase platform while the Coinbase Pro App is for accessing the Coinbase Pro trading exchange.
The Coinbase Pro mobile app is great for monitoring your positions on the go and performing basic trading activities. The app has great reviews on Google, scoring a 4.3 out of 5, and 4.7 out of 5 on the IOS App store. With over 200,000 combined reviews across both devices, I think it is safe to say you won’t be disappointed with the app.
Multiple Trade Options
Coinbase Pro offers enhanced control and options for cryptocurrency traders with multiple trade options. Here are the types of trade options that are available, which are not offered in the standard Coinbase platform:
Market Order: This is an order that is placed at the market level and is executed almost immediately. It will be placed at the lowest “offer” if a buy or at the highest “bid” if a sell
Limit Order: This is an order that is placed at a level that is away from the current market level at a predetermined price. This could be above the market price if a sell or below the price if a buy.
Stop Order: These are essentially two opposing market orders that are placed at the same time. One will be to buy/sell and the other will be to stop out of the position. These are effective risk management tools that protect your position in the event of downside risk.
In addition to the types of orders, there are also more advanced options when it comes down to the “order life” of market orders. Here are the order life parameters:
Good Till Cancelled (GTC): This is an order that will remain open until it is either executed or cancelled by you. If neither happens, it will remain on the books forever
Good Till Time: This is a market order that will remain open but only for a specified period of time. At Coinbase Pro you can set this to one minute, one hour or one day
Immediate or Cancel (IOC): With this order, it will execute all or part of the order immediately and will cancel the unfilled portion. This means that this type of order allows for “partial fills”
Fill or Kill (FOK): With this type of order, the entire position should be executed at a particular price. If this cannot happen then the order is cancelled. This is different from the IOC order in that it does not allow for partial fills
Advanced Charting
Coinbase Pro allows users to adjust charting views to fit a trader’s preferences. Minute-by-minute trading, swapping between tick and candlesticks, and viewing exponential moving averages are accessible for each cryptocurrency pair.
Coinbase Pro Trading Interface
The order forms are on the left where traders will be placing orders and sending them onto the exchange order books. Next to that, you have the order books themselves. This gives you an overview of all the buy/sell orders currently on the Coinbase Pro exchange as well as the spread between the two. When you place an order, you will see it be sent to these books.
As far as the charting functionality itself goes, Coinbase falls pretty flat here with limited functionality for those who like performing technical analysis.
Most exchanges such as Crypto.com, and Binance leverage the power of TradingView to provide a robust and feature-packed trading screen full of tools and options, while Coinbase Pro has extremely limited functionality and the only indicators available are the 12- and 26-day EMA. To be honest, it isn’t even worth using as you can’t even use trendlines, mark support and resistance areas, access RSI, Stochastics or any other common technical indicators.
If you are interested in learning more about how to trade, we happen to have an article that provides some great info about How to Perform Technical Analysis, and Guy also has a great video on TA tips and tricks:
Because of the limited charting functionality, most users who perform Coinbase Pro trading will use TradingView on another screen, and then execute their orders on Coinbase Pro to make up for the lack of features available on the Coinbase Pro platform.
Here is a look at the plethora of options and features on TradingView that makes TradingView better for charting than Coinbase Pro.
TradingView is Robust and Feature-Packed. The Free Version is More Than Enough for Most Traders. Image via TradingView
Back to Coinbase Pro. Under the Orders tab, traders will be able to see their open orders waiting to be filled, what trades have been filled, and the fees associated with each trade. This is the main place where traders will manage their trades and find important trading info such as:
Size– The quantity of cryptocurrency for this order
Filled– The quantity of this order that has been filled. Orders may be partially filled depending on market availability unless you use a Fill or Kill order
Price– The price set for this trade in your local currency (eg: USD, GBP, EUR)
Fee– The total fee for this trade in your local currency (eg: USD, GBP, EUR)
Time– A timestamp for when this order was placed
Product– What currency pair is set for this trade
Status– The status of this trade. You can also use this field to cancel an unfilled order or the remaining unfilled part of an order
Coinbase Pro trading can also be done using a depth chart, which is another tool used to highlight the buyer vs seller activity, price, and volume for the trading pair selected.
Coinbase Pro: Portfolio Tab
Under the portfolio tab, users will be able to see the state of their portfolio in real-time, including what percentage of their portfolio is in what assets. This sort of insight into a portfolio can be helpful to make sure a trader’s asset allocation is in line with their investor and trader thesis. If you find that 90% of your asset allocation is in Shiba Inu or Safemoon, you may want to consider rebalancing.
Insight Into a Trader’s Portfolio can be Valuable
Under the portfolio tab, users can also find deposit and withdrawal information, if there are any holds on orders and their available balance.
Coinbase Pro Fees:
One of the major differences between Coinbase and Coinbase pro is the fee structure. As mentioned, Coinbase is far more convenient, but users will pay a premium for that convenience. Users can save quite a bit in fees and get in at better prices by using Coinbase Pro instead.
In the interest of full transparency here, even Coinbase Pro is not the easiest on the wallet. I’ve often wondered how Coinbase was able to maintain its hold as the #2 cryptocurrency exchange for so long when they offer no additional usability from the competition while charging significantly higher fees for just about every action performed on the platform. It’s no wonder why they have been losing market share to competitors.
Crack Open the Piggy Bank, You’ll Need it to Pay Those Coinbase Fees. Image via Shutterstock
While we are on the topic of fees, for those looking to save as much as possible, exchanges like KuCoin, OKX and Binance are cost leaders in the space. For those thrifty traders looking to save their pennies, I recommend checking out our Binance Review, KuCoin Review, or OKX review.
Though I can’t beat up on Coinbase too bad for their fees, after all, there are millions of users worldwide who feel the fees are worth the price of using a world-class exchange that is US based and one of the most regulation-friendly exchanges in the world.
Coinbase Pro operates on a maker/taker fee model, meaning that there will be two rates depending on whether traders are creating liquidity on the exchange or whether they are taking liquidity off the books. Coinbase Pro trading fees are dependent on trading volume over a 30-day period and are as follows:
Image via pro.coinbase
And here are the fees for depositing and withdrawing fiat:
Coinbase Pro KYC and Account Verification
As Coinbase is very regulation friendly and plays nicely with the authorities, full KYC and ID verification is mandatory for both Coinbase and Coinbase Pro. For users who already have a Coinbase account, the same credentials will log you into Coinbase Pro, easy peasy.
If you are looking to open a new Coinbase Pro account, here is what the step-by-step process looks like:
Navigate to the Coinbase Pro Sign-up page
Enter your account details, including name and email address. Be sure to use your actual email as you will be asked to verify the email address.
After verifying your email, you will be prompted to enter a phone number, you’ll be required to verify the phone number via SMS.
Depending on your region, you will be asked for your name, date of birth, address, intent, source of funds, occupation, and employer. Blimey, next thing you know they’ll be asking for a list of your likes and dislikes, blood type, if you like Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain, and what your favourite starburst flavour is.
Be sure to have your government-issued ID ready as you will be asked to upload it or take a photo of it. US and UK customers will need to complete an ID verification for documents and an ID verification for a profile. Other users will need to verify two IDs of different types, either a passport, driver’s license, or government-issued ID card.
Once that laborious process is complete you can now link a bank account and start trading.
Coinbase Pro Security
As any good exchange should, Coinbase places a strong emphasis on security and safety of user funds. Coinbase goes above industry best practices and even provides institutional custodial services for other companies as they know a thing or two about how to keep funds secured.
Coinbase keeps 98% of funds in a cold storage, “air-gapped” environment where it is safe from hackers, and operates multi-signature wallets, meaning that these funds can only be accessed if a number of different individuals in the organization authorize the transaction.
Coinbase also has FDIC insurance on their USD accounts for up to $250,000, and users on the platform can utilize the following security features to further protect their accounts:
Phone number verification
Two-Factor Authentication for login and crypto transactions
Minimum password complexity requirement
Address book and whitelisting addresses
Multi-Email required Crypto Storage Vault feature
Coinbase Vault is an interesting feature that I think is a fantastic security addition. This feature is ideal for users who want to store larger amounts of digital currency for the long term.
Image via Coinbase
Withdrawals from the vault have a 48-hour time delay, users can require multiple approvers for withdrawals, and 2FA provides additional security for funds held in the vault.
Even with all these security measures in place, it is important to disclose that Coinbase did suffer a significant hack in May 2021, which resulted in over 6,000 customer accounts being drained of funds.
Coinbase Hack Affected 6,000+ Customers Image via PCMag
Coinbase did the right thing after the hack and reimbursed all lost customer funds, and have patched the issue and enhanced the platform’s security protocols.
Cryptocurrencies Available on Coinbase Pro
Coinbase Pro has over 140 different cryptocurrency pairs available for trading, including the major coins and speculative plays like Doge and Shib. A full list can be found on the Coinbase Pro Markets page.
It is important to note that unlike most of Coinbase’s competitors, there is no margin/leverage trading allowed, and there are no derivatives/options/futures markets available for trading. Coinbase Pro users are restricted to simple spot pair trading. Binance, Bybit, KuCoin, OKX, and pretty much all the other major exchanges offer far better tradeable assets and market support.
Coinbase knows that they need to up its game here to remain competitive as they are quickly losing market share to other exchanges and the industry was shocked when competing exchange FTX surpassed them to take the #2 spot before its collapse. To make strides in the derivatives market, Coinbase has recently made an acquisition of FairX, which is a CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange.
This will allow Coinbase to offer more trading products like derivatives and open Coinbase Pro users to more tradable markets in the near future.
In all fairness, Coinbase moving at a turtle’s pace compared to their competitors isn’t entirely their fault. Remember that whole, “being regulation-friendly,” thing we talked about earlier? This has been a double-edged blade for Coinbase as they need to be far more selective and careful in what products they can and cannot offer, and often need to wait for regulatory approval before moving forward as they are a publicly-traded company. We’ve all seen how slow regulation progress moves.
This was painfully highlighted by the fact that Coinbase approached the SEC in 2021, informing the regulator of their intention to launch earn products. The SEC’s childish response was a lawsuit threat, another ball and chain slowing down Coinbase. You know the saying, “it’s better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission”? Well, Coinbase chose to ask for permission first resulting in their competition beating them to market as Binance didn’t bother asking first.
Coinbase Pro Exchange Platform Design and Usability
The Coinbase Pro trading platform is okay for those who like simplicity and who have no need for charting or performing technical analysis. The order options are suitable for most average traders, and it is easy not to get overwhelmed by all the additional features available on other crypto exchanges.
Due to the platform being so simplistic, many Coinbase Pro users prefer using the Coinbase Pro app over the web platform, which has been designed very well.
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