Cryptocurrency can be confusing — that’s why I’m writing these tutorials, for my mother-in-law. She’s 70, and wants to get into cryptocurrency this year, so that her golden years can be a little more golden. Whenever I need to send her detailed instructions on how to do something, I turn my notes into a tutorial, so thatI can share it with you, too.
I’m going to make this tutorial super simple, so you can share it with people in your life, too.
If you’ve got Bitcoin in Coinbase, it only takes a few simple steps to send it to another ‘wallet,’ a place where cryptocurrency can live on the blockchain. Transferring cryptocurrency between wallets — that is precisely what the miners on the blockchain are verifying. Their computers are solving very complicated coding problems, to verify that yes, indeed, what those other dozen computers are saying is true, and this bitcoin wallet to wallet transfer is totally legit.
In the video below, I’m going to guide you through X simple steps to send Bitcoin from one Coinbase account to another; and as a bonus, I’m also going to measure how much it costs, both in time and in fees, to transfer with Litecoin instead.
How to Transfer Bitcoin from Coinbase
Can you move bitcoin from one wallet to another?
Yes, you can. But you shouldn’t use Bitcoin, and I will show you why in the video above.
I will demonstrate side-by-side what it’s like sending bitcoin from coin base to someone else’s wallet, And measure the time and the cost. I will also sell an equal amount of bitcoin for like coin, and send it to a light coin address.
If you want to know how to transfer bitcoins from one wallet to another, all you need to do is copy and paste. I will show you where to get the long identifier for the wallet, so you can make a transaction on the blockchain that is verified securely by dozens of other encrypted computers.
How to send a Bitcoin to someone else’s wallet
Step 1: In Receiving Account, go to Account -> BTC Wallet -> Receive
Step 2: Validate that you will only send BTC to this address
Step 3: Copy your BTC address
Step 4: In Sending Account, go to Account -> BTC Wallet -> Send
Step 5: Paste BTC Address
Step 6: Select amount to send (in USD or BTC)
Step 7: Press Continue button
Step 8: SMS Confirmation via Text Message
Step 9: Pay high fees and wait way too long
Step 10: Try doing the same thing in LTC instead of BTC
Watch the video screencast above for details
Step 11: Decide to never send in BTC again
Step 12: Pick your favourite sending cryptocurrency — ETH, LTC, or BCH
…until XRP is listed on Coinbase, anyways. When that happens, your favourite cryptocurrency will be obvious.
Every time you make a Bitcoin transaction on Coinbase, you will incur a 4% fee, minimum. That’s for transferring USD into, or out of, cryptocurrency. Whether you are buying or selling Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, or Bitcoin Cash, you are going to pay Coinbase 4% for every transaction.
If you buy Bitcoin with your bank account, it’s 4%.
If you sell Bitcoin and deposit it to your bank account, it’s 4%.
If you buy or sell Litecoin on Coinbase, it’s 4%.
If you watch my video above on how to transfer Bitcoin from Coinbase to a wallet, you will see that if you are sending Bitcoin over a blockchain transaction that needs to be verified, your fees could be significantly higher. In the video above, it costs me 5.5%, but sometimes it can be as high as 30%.
If you find this tutorial helpful, please use my affiliate link to sign up for Coinbase. At no cost to you, they will send us each $10 worth of free bitcoin.
This tutorial will show you how to send cryptocurrency from Coinbase to a cryptocurrency exchange. I will also compare the speed and fees of sending BTC, ETH, LTC and BCH from Coinbase to a crypto wallet.
I sent $100 through each of the major currencies available on Coinbase: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash. I sent them all to Exmo, a major cryptocurrency exchange, and I measured the time it took to send each one, and how much it cost.
Spoiler alert: Bitcoin was the most expensive, but to my surprise, it was not the slowest.
By using this link, at no cost to you, Coinbase will send us both a fraction of a Bitcoin for using this affiliate link.
How to transfer Bitcoins from Coinbase
Watch my video tutorial below, to see me send all 4 currencies from Coinbase to Exmo. Scroll down to see the step-by-step.
Step 1: Trade your coins.
If you want to send BTC to an exchange, and eat the network fees, go ahead and do that. But I recommend that you sell your BTC and buy LTC, and send the LTC. The 4% fee for selling BTC, and the other 4% for buying LTC, will often be less than the BTC transfer fee, which can be as high as 30%.
Step 2: Set up your cryptocurrency exchange account.
What is the best Bitcoin exchange?
I’m working on a post comparing all the different exchanges I’ve been using, but until that’s done, I recommend you use Exmo.
By using this link, at no cost to you, Exmo will provide me with a commission for telling you about them. Please support my tutorial by using my affiliate link.
Issues setting up your accounts? Try getting a VPN
If you are out of the United States, it can be very useful to mask your IP address and make it seem like you are in a different country. A VPN (Virtual Prviate Network) makes websites think you are in different countries.
If you are having problem setting up accounts, a VPN may be the right answer for you. I have used Strong VPN (affiliate link) for many years, in many countries, and I like it a lot.
Bitcoin exchange fast verification — good luck
Many cryptocurrency exchanges are having problems getting their ID verifications processed, which can hold up all your crypto trading plans. Get your documents in order early. You will need:
JPG files of the front and back of your ID
JPG photo of a bank statement or other address verification
A phone number that can receive text verification codes
An email address
A webcam for taking selfies (seriously)
This part of the process may take a couple of days. Prepare to wait. Even if you’re kicking yourself for not getting in yesterday, getting in two days from now is better than next week. Start now, and wait if you need to.
Step 3: Create Bitcoin address at cryptocurrency exchange
In the video tutorial above, I demonstrate how to go to the ‘Deposit’ section of my BTC wallet, LTC wallet, ETH wallet and BCH wallet. There, I create a BTC address, LTC address, ETH address, and BCH address, which I can take back to Coinbase to make the actual transfer.
Step 4: Transfer Bitcoins from Coinbase to exchange wallet
Once you’ve done it a few times, it’s pretty easy. But I highly recommend you try some other currency besides BTC.
Why did I test this with different currencies?
Coinbase Bitcoin transfer fees are very high.
The network fee, which is paid to ‘bitcoin miners,’ the other computers on the blockchain that verify the transaction, can be as much as 30% of the amount you send. If you send a small amount, the fee can be higher than the amount sent!
Bitcoin came first, and now, other cryptocurrencies have developed faster and cheaper methods of securely making transfers on a blockchain.
By selling my BTC on Coinbase and transferring the funds into LTC, BCH, and ETH, I was able to make faster transfers, and when the coins arrived in my exchange account, due to a rising market, the exchange fees I was charged at Coinbase were negated.
When I have transferred Bitcoin to other exchanges in the past, it would take up to 18 hours. What I like about Exmo, as an exchange, is it releases the funds to you after only 1 network confirmation.
To my surprise, sending BTC to an exchange was fastest with Exmo. It was not the least expensive, but it was the fastest — although, it would not have been so fast on other exchanges.
Conclusion: The best coin to transfer funds is LTC.
And that’s only because Coinbase doesn’t support XRP (Ripple) yet.
Once Coinbase lists XRP, which it is expected to do sometime in 2018, then Ripple will become the default cryptocurrency for transfer all over the world.
That’s why I recommend getting into Ripple now. Once it is listed on Coinbase, it’s price will skyrocket beyond the $1.30 it is trading at today.
If you want to transfer funds to an exchange from Coinbase, the fastest, and least expensive, option is LTC. Watch the video tutorial above for the exact step-by-step actions I took to verify that it’s the best one.
This tutorial will guide you through the basic steps of buying and selling Bitcoin. With a Coinbase account, it’s not that hard. Even if you’ve got no experience in trading currencies or stocks, by following these easy steps I will show you how to trade cryptocurrency on Coinbase.
There are many cryptocurrency trading sites, but this tutorial will focus on the one where it is easiest for beginners to get started: Coinbase.
This article assumes you already have a Coinbase account. If not, go get one set up so you can start trading cryptocurrency.
If you find this article helpful, please use my affiliate link to open your Coinbase account. At no cost to you, Coinbase will give us each $10 USD of free Bitcoin. https://stellarplatforms.com/coinbase
How to Trade Cryptocurrency — For Beginners
In the video tutorial below, I’m going to transfer my Bitcoin into Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin, the three other currencies currently on offer at Coinbase.
During this 11-minute video walkthrough of the world’s easiest cyrptocurrency trading site, I will measure the fees for each transaction, and describe the advantages and disadvantages of using each one.
In my next tutorial, I will show you how to send each of these cryptocurrencies to a cryptocurrency exchange, so you can buy other blockchain-based ‘alt-coins’ like XRP.
Spoiler alert: If you’re planning to buy and sell bitcoin for profit, the fees are going to surprise you. The blockchain has evolved far past BTC.
If you find this article helpful, please use my affiliate link to open your Coinbase account. At no cost to you, Coinbase will give us each $10 USD of free Bitcoin. https://stellarplatforms.com/coinbase
Buying bitcoin is becoming easier, but it still takes a little know-how. In this easy, 6-step tutorial, I will show you how to buy your first Bitcoin on Coinbase, the most trusted cryptocurrency exchange.
First thing to know: Learn about the blockchain
Before getting into Bitcoin, you should probably understand the Blockchain. I like the way that Mark Pascall describes it. He’s a blockchain programmer, so he knows the blockchain inside and out; however, sometimes he has to explain the blockchain to newbies at a dinner party. This is how he does it:
If you want an explanation that’s a little more visual, try this video:
Second thing to know: Keep your guard up
Cryptocurrency is a little like the Old West right now. There’s plenty of snake oil being sold to newbies, and you might be one of them, if you’re not careful.
There are all sorts of bots you can purchase for high-frequency trading, and complicated schemes that look great on a flashy website. Be warned: plenty of people are losing plenty of money to scammers in this space. So tread carefully, and don’t invest big with anyone or anything until they have earned your trust with smaller investments. Caveat emptor, friend.
How To Buy Bitcoin step-by-step
There are 32 countries where the easiest way to buy Bitcoin is on Coinbase. If you have fiat currency in USD or EUR, this is the most secure and trusted platform to use.
Step 1: Go to Coinbase
If you find this article helpful, please use my affiliate link to open your Coinbase account. At no cost to you, Coinbase will give us each $10 USD of free Bitcoin. https://stellarplatforms.com/coinbase
After you click the link above, you will see a screen just like this:
You can sign up for a Coinbase account with your name, email address and password. Then you will need to verify your email address.
Step 3: Select your location
After you have verified your email address, you will need to select your state or region.
Pro Tip: If you are outside of one of the 32 countries listed above, you can use a VPN to mask your location. I like https://stellarplatforms.com/strongvpn.
If you have the ability to set up a Google Voice number, I find that to be the easiest method of phone verification from abroad.
Step 5: Add a payment method.
Now you can login to Coinbase and see your dashboard. But you don’t have the ability to send and receive bitcoin until you add a payment method.
If you’d like to send Bitcoin to this account, you can, but you won’t be able to send it back out again until your payment method is verified. Go to Accounts -> BTC Wallet -> Receive to get the address, and you can send BTC here.
Step 6: Verify your payment method
Once you added a payment method, Coinbase will send you two small transactions. You will need to verify the amounts in these transactions to verify that you are the owner of the account.
Once you have verified your payment method, you have a working Coinbase account. You can add funds and purchase Bitcoin, or one of the other currencies that Coinbase offers.
Step 7: Deposit funds
You will need to transfer fiat currency into your Coinbase wallet. A credit card transfers instantly; bank deposits run through ACH and take a few days to process. (Until banks get on the blockchain, anyways.)
Step 8: Buy Bitcoin
Go to Coinbase -> Dashboard -> Buy/sell, and you can purchase BTC with the funds in your Wallet.
Notice the fees? They are hefty. In the Crypto world, Coinbase has the highest fees. 4% per transaction is high, and if you have credit card fees or international processing fees on top of that, your transactions can quickly be eaten up by friction costs. If you want to trade regularly, look at one of the exchanges linked below.
Extra Credit: Other Cryptocurrencies
Your Coinbase account will allow you to buy and trade Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). As of this writing, it will not allow you to buy Ripple (XRP), which is the cryptocurrency with the highest market capitalization, and is poised for phenomenal growth in 2018. (I bought Ripple at $0.24 USD, and it has increased by 800%. Experts predict it will reach $1k next year.) If you’d like to buy Ripple, get on one of the exchanges here.
If you find this article helpful, please use my affiliate link to open your Coinbase account. At no cost to you, Coinbase will give us each $10 USD of free Bitcoin. https://stellarplatforms.com/coinbase
I’ll admit, I don’t know a lot about investing. But when a rich person I know and trust said to me, ‘You need to get into Ripple, and you need to buy some XRP, this is going to get really big,’ I took her advice. By learning about Coinbase and crypto exchanges, I was able to buy Ripple with a credit card and turn a few hundred bucks into a few thousand.
What is Ripple? What is XRP?
Ripple is the world’s first enterprise solution for global payments on the blockchain. Some cryptocurrency enthusiasts turn up their nose at Ripple, because they don’t have an anarchist-friendly bent to their philosophy of currency. Instead, they work directly with existing global banks, and get vetted by securities regulations. Wall Street will prefer XRP over any other coin.
Ripple wants to be the bridge between global bank transactions.
This cryptocurrency has the second-highest volume of any of them, second only to bitcoin. You remember what bitcoin did over the past year, right? Well, Ripple could do the same thing. Some people are predicting it will be above $1k by the end of 2018, and as of this writing, it is trading at $2. (Do the math, it’s worth a few hundred bucks.)
How to buy Ripple with Coinbase
Unfortunately, you can’t buy XRP on Coinbase that. (Yet. As of this writing.) The word ’round the campfire is, XRP is coming to Coinbase soon, and when it does, the price will skyrocket.
I’ve found that it’s easier (and faster) to move funds through Coinbase, into LTC, and over to an exchange, than waiting 5 days for a standard bank ACH transaction.
How To Buy Ripple Step By Step
Step 1 – Set up your Coinbase account:
https://stellarplatforms.com/coinbase
By using this link, at no cost to you, Coinbase will send us both a fraction of a Bitcoin for using this affiliate link.
Step 2 – Invest some funds into Coinbase.
This transaction will carry a 4% fee.
Step 3 – Transfer USD to LTC.
I go through how to do this in detail in the video tutorial below.
Step 4 – Transfer LTC to an exchange.
The best exchange to buy ripple is Bitstamp, in my opinion. I’ve also had good success with Exmo — they also offer a lot of non-credit card payment options. You can find a full list of places you can buy XRP here: https://ripple.com/xrp/buy-xrp/
Step 5 – Transfer LTC to USD.
Sell your new Litecoin on the exchange for USD or EUR.
Step 6 – Buy XRP.
You can see how this works in the video tutorial below.
How to buy XRP with credit card – tutorial
Disclaimer
I’m not an expert in any of these cryptocurrencies; I just took some smart advice, and bought Ripple at $0.24. A few hundred turned into a few thousand.
There might be more efficient ways to do this process, and by the time you are reading this, you may be able to buy XRP on Coinbase super fast. Or, the price could plummet after you buy it. Caveat emptor. Good luck!
I started trading in Bitcoin with $300 two months ago, and I’ve already tripled my money. This article goes over the simple steps I took to get started investing with Bitcoin.
I was lucky enough to jump in when BTC was trading at $4,000 USD, and as of this writing, it is $10,800 USD. I have withdrawn my principal investment, and the profits are what I have been using to continue investing.
First, a disclaimer: I’m not much of an investor, but I am smart enough to jump on a bandwagon when there’s this much activity going on. I’m also smart enough to learn the things I need to know about something new, but even then, learning about blockchain was intimidating.
Step 1: Blockchain Basics
Before you get into Bitcoin investing, it’s good to learn the basics of how the Blockchain works. Watch this video:
Or this one:
Got the basics? Good.
Step 2: Open a Coinbase account
Coinbase is the most user-friendly method to converting your cash into Bitcoin.
Coinbase has three advantages:
You can deposit funds with your credit card.
The graphs are really visually appealing.
You can trade between 3 types of cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.
The transaction fees are high (4%) so this isn’t a good site to use for day trading. However, before getting into high-volume transactions, you just have to get a bitcoin into your BTC wallet, and Coinbase makes this easy to do.
If you find this article helpful, please use my affiliate link to open your Coinbase account. At no cost to you, Coinbase will give us each $10 USD of free Bitcoin. https://stellarplatforms.com/coinbase
Step 3: Verify your Coinbase account.
You will need to verify your email address, and if you are linking a bank account, verify ownership through micro-deposits. This could take a day or two, so be patient.
Step 4: Make a deposit.
Once you have deposited at least $100 USD (and we each get $10 USD of free Bitcoin, yay!) then you can make your first trade.
Step 5: Buy Bitcoin.
You can buy Bitcoin, Litecoin, or Ethereum through Coinbase. Pick one, any one, just get started.
Keep in mind, Coinbase does take a 4% fee for every transaction you make, so this is not a platform for high volume trading. Right now, we are just getting you Bitcoin into your BTC wallet. If you want to make money on trading, there are 2 easy options to choose from below.
Congratulations! You now own Bitcoin.
You can sit on it, and deposit a modest amount every month; or, when you are ready, you can grow your money faster using one of the 2 methods below.
Extra Credit: Limit Orders at Bitstamp.
Bitstamp (https://www.bitstamp.net) is one of the few places where you can buy Ripple (XRP) as of this writing, and that’s why I chose this cryptocurrency exchange. The fees are very low — 0.25% per trade — making this an ideal place to practice your trading skills.
To get Bitcoin into your Bitstamp account:
Go to Bitstamp -> Deposit -> Bitcoin
Copy the Address for your BTC Wallet
Go to Coinbase -> Accounts -> BTC Wallet -> Send
Paste the address, select the amount, and send
This allows you to transfer from Coinbase to Bitstamp, and the record of this transaction is on the Blockchain. (You watched those videos above, right? Good, then you know how this works.)
High Volume Ripple Trading
Ripple has a lot of potential — it’s one of the cryptocurrencies that is getting vetted by major financial banks, as a potential transition onto the blockchain. Because of this, it’s looked down upon by hard-crypto advocates, but for my money, I am happy to invest in something that gets mass-adoption.
The biggest reason I am interested in Ripple is: it has the highest volume of any cryptocurrency. This means lots of people are buying and selling it, and the price fluctuates (a lot) around the $0.25 USD range. This makes it a great candidate for basic day trading.
Once you know how to buy XRP on an exchange, Bitstamp will allow you to do many advanced types of trading orders, but there’s only one I’m going to introduce here: Limit Orders.
A Limit Order can automate your ‘Buy Low, Sell High’ formula to profiting off of your investment. Here’s how it works:
When making a Limit Order, you can define the price at which you want to buy, and if the price falls to that level, you make a trade at that price. (The ‘Advanced’ option on the Limit Order opens a second box, to ‘Sell If Executed,’ which automatically opens another order if the first order happens.)
This means that you can profit from the volatility of the prices, by setting up some simple orders. In the example above, you can invest $100 in XRP at 0.25, and set a Sell Limit Order of 0.26 with a Buy if Executed follow-up order of 0.24. This simple formula will earn you 7.5% on your $100 investment.
With the volatility of XRP, if the price reaches 0.24 and 0.26 in the same day, you can earn 7.5% on your investment every day.
Buy it when it gets low — automatically.
Sell it when it gets high — automatically.
Then, when you do this a second time, you have the profits from your first trade assisting you. Easy, right?
Disclaimer
I’m not a financial professional. I don’t know much about trading. I’m just a guy who was able to scrape together a couple hundred bucks, and turned it into a couple hundred more in Bitcoin. If my advice sounds good to you, compare it with other advice on the internet (there is plenty) before making a decision. Caveat emptor, yo.
