Before buying your first Bitcoin on Coinbase you need to open an account as described in How to Open a Coinbase Account to Buy Bitcoin (2024).

After that you will have an account page that looks like this – with 2 of 4 steps complete:

Click on Add a payment method to get to the next screen:

Here for simplicity we’ll add a debit card:

Fill in the details and press Add Card. That will add the card as a new payment method and you’ll be returned to the main account page, now showing 3 of 4 steps complete:

Next select Buy crypto then Continue and trade crypto:

At this point you will be required to pass a quiz on crypto to show you understand what you’re doing – rather ‘nanny state’ but that’s where we are. It’s best to select Read our crypto guide and then learn the basics about crypto:

There are then a dozen screens like the following to read through:

On the last one select Take the test:

There are then half a dozen quiz questions like the following – in most cases you will be right if you choose the most pessimistic or negative response!

Once you’ve passed, select Continue and trade crypto:

You’ll finally get to the Buy screen – in future you can just select this from the main account page menu. Here the £ option has been selected (to spend so many pounds sterling on Bitcoin, e.g. £100) but you can instead select the BTC option (to buy so much Bitcoin, e.g. 0.1, and be told how many pounds this will cost). Enter the amount required. Note the card you entered will be shown at the bottom, with a credit limit:

Press Preview Buy, note here that the exchange rate changes live:

Press Buy now:

And you’ve bought your first Bitcoin! Note that the value of your Bitcoin will be shown at the bottom, and it will be less than you asked for – there are always trading fees, for buying and selling, so you’ll have to get used to this. Coinbase fees are quite high (here £100 bought £95 of Bitcoin, so nearly 5%!). There are ways to reduce this – but that’s beyond the scope of this article (if you’re going to spend a lot of money, do investigate Coinbase One – but you will have to learn how to do trading).

A short time later the Bitcoin will appear in your account. The subject of how Bitcoin is transferred and how long it will take is a big topic in its own right (essentially the speed depends on how large the fee is that Coinbase spends on the transaction). Suffice to say it should arrive within 10 minutes but may be much faster. Conversely, if there’s a lot happening in the Bitcoin market (e.g. the price is changing fast and lots of people are buying and selling) then it could take longer – I have known it take more than an hour when the network is very busy.

Click on View details to get taken to the Bitcoin Primary balance page (in future you can select this from your main account page):

This shows your current holdings of Bitcoin and the pound sterling equivalent. For a more general overview, return to Home:

Also note that if you buy multiple cryptocurrencies (e.g. Ethereum, USDC, etc.) you can see the balance of each coin, plus the total value of your portfolio, via the My assets menu and page:

Welcome to cryptocurrency and Bitcoin – you are no longer a Nocoiner! There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin in existence so you own something that no-one else can own (that’s part of the reason why its value is trending upwards).

Further blog posts will cover how to securely store, lend and trade Bitcoin. Welcome to the crypto community!

Buying Crypto

This is an introduction to buying Bitcoin for those new to cryptocurrencies in general and to Bitcoin in particular. The first step is to create an account on a website where you can buy some crypto (elsewhere we’ll look at how to hold your cryptocurrency in your own ‘wallet’).

Here I’ll show you how to create an account at Coinbase.com. It claims to be “the most trusted platform in the UK for buying, selling and trading crypto” and is certainly very well known worldwide. As well as being popular it is also easy to use. It is not the cheapest nor the most fully featured platform and so we’ll look at other platforms later (like Nexo.com) for those more experienced with cryptocurrencies. Coinbase is, however, good for newcomers.

The process has got more onerous over the years, unfortunately, probably due to the UK government’s increasing requirements for financial institutions to follow Know Your Customer (KYC) rules. If you look through the process below in advance you’ll understand what you need to do before you get on the Coinbase website.

Opening a Coinbase Account

Go to the following website: https://www.coinbase.com/en-gb/

When you follow that link you’ll see a webpage like the following:

Then go through the following steps.

1. Click on the Sign up button, enter your email address and click Continue:

3. Enter your first and last name and a secure password.

A good place to get a password is PasswordsGenerator – choose a length of 16 characters and include symbols, numbers and upper and lowercase characters. Make sure at this point that you record the password somewhere, e.g. in a new document. You will need a lot of passwords when dealing with cryptocurrency and the general rule is that if you lose the password you can lose the money! Get into careful organisation now.

If your password is suitably secure you will see the green lines below the password box as shown below. Make sure the check box is ticked, and press Create free account. You may need to pass a Captcha at this point.

4. You’ll come to the Verify email screen:

Go to your email interface (Outlook, Gmail or whatever) to find the email and click on the Verify Email Address button:

5. You should now be able to login to Coinbase with the email and password you provided:

At which point you may be emailed a code to enter:

7. Once logged in you will have a bunch more questions to answer:

8. Enter your date of birth and home address and answer some questions:

9. Next we have to get through all the KYC and ‘be careful crypto is dangerous’ warnings and questions. Most people reading this will be Restricted Investors:

10. Finally, if you have had the patience, you will have got through all the KYC requirements:

11. Next, you have to do identity verification, again most likely due to government requirements for Anti-Money Laundering (AML). For most people the simplest option is likely to be uploading a scan or photo of the back and front of their driving licence:

12. After you press the Upload button you will get an acknowledgement:

It’s worth keeping this window open until it completes; if you try to sign out you may have to start again. At some point it will complete (in the example shown it took less than 5 minutes) and you will be signed into your new account on Coinbase:

At this point let’s take a break, and we’ll continue setting up inside your account in another article. By all means now take a look around the Coinbase platform and see what features are available to you.

Next: How to Buy Your First Bitcoin