I was right about the Bitcoin Dip – and have made a tidy profit. I bought half a Bitcoin at £5500.

Of course, it should have cost me £2750 but I bought it through Coinbase with my debit card which is a pricey, though convenient, way to do it. Coinbase charged me 4%, so about £110, making the total £2850.

Bitcoin was been rising in value since as I predicted, though in its usual erratic way. I had intended to take my money out when it passed £8000 and, as I watched it last night, it did just that.

I was hesitant to sell it directly through Coinbase again because of its fees. However, I had come across some advice about selling through Coinbase’s exchange, GDAX, instead at lower fees. Here’s an example video from the excellent Coin Mastery:

I followed the advice and it worked like a charm.

This is the process if you want to save a stack on Coinbase fees:

1. Create a GDAX account if you don’t already have one (I already did).
2. Transfer the Bitcoin to GDAX – on GDAX click the DEPOSIT button, then in the form choose your Coinbase Account -> BTC Wallet and set the amount. Click Deposit Funds. It will appear almost immediately on GDAX and there is no charge.
3. Select LIMIT then SELL, then set the amount. Here you need to be a bit careful and set the correct price you are prepared to sell at (double check it, because if you set it low it will sell low). At the time Bitcoin was selling for about £8010. I wanted to make sure that, if there were fees, I would clear £4000 on my 0.5 BTC so I set the value to £8050.
4. Since the price is volatile your price will likely be hit very quickly so long as you didn’t set it too high (mine too less than a minute).
5. The BTC sells, the money appears in your GDAX wallet – and there’s no fee!
6. Transfer the money back to Coinbase using the WITHDRAW button, set the amount and the destination (e.g. GBP Wallet) and click WITHDRAW FUNDS. It goes back to Coinbase – no charge.

So I have proved to my own satisfaction you can sell BTC, i.e. convert it to pounds sterling, for no charge this way – and at a price slightly higher than the current market rate

Note that selling Bitcoin is called a ‘Maker’ transaction since you are putting Bitcoin into the market. Note that moving in the opposite direction has a ‘Taker’ fee of 0.25%, still not a bad deal.

I sold my 0.5BTC at £8050 so I received £4025, and that’s all now sitting in my Coinbase account.

Since I only paid £2870 for the Bitcoin less than a month ago (a profit of about £1100), I’m rather pleased with that.