I’ve covered how to sell Bitcoin cheaply on Coinbase. Next we need to know how to transfer the cash into our own bank account. The process is to select British Pound on the My assets page in the Coinbase interface, then select the Cash out all button:
Cash out all (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
then Continue:
Cash out – Continue (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
At this point you can cash out to the debit card you originally used to buy Bitcoin, or select Add a debit card, but the fees on debit cards are high (£52.68 in this case) so we choose Add a bank account instead. Note that, as it says, we need to make a deposit into Coinbase from that bank account to link the two accounts together so we can then move our money in the opposite direction.
Now I believe there are two ways to do this. Firstly, you can select Add a bank account, then UK bank account:
Add a bank account (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
There’s a scam warning (hit Continue) then we get the details we need to make a deposit to Coinbase:
Add cash bank details (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
However, that seemed to me a rather manual and awkward approach so I backed out. Instead, I used a different method, but it does require you to have a banking app on your phone. This way we will link the bank account to the Coinbase account before trying to withdraw the account balance.
Go to the Settings menu under your user profile (here the ‘L’ button top right), then select Payment methods, then Add a payment method. This gives the option of an Easy bank transfer, which wasn’t available through the first route:
Add a payment method (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Select Easy bank transfer. There’s a scam warning (hit Continue), then enter a nominal amount to transfer from your bank account to Coinbase (e.g. £10) and select your bank by name:
Easy bank transfer (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Select Continue. Then there’s some information given about the transfer, select Continue again. This creates a QR code page – follow the instructions: scan it, follow the link, authorise payment on your banking app, then return back to the page. Note you have around 7-8 minutes to complete the process before it times out:
Complete payment QR code (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
At that point there is a deposit pending message:
Deposit pending (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
In practice the deposit goes through quickly; it showed up on the My assets->British Pound page as soon as I clicked on the View account button:
British Pound page (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
The next time I clicked the Cash out all button and Continue there was a new option under Select a destination (for me it was the next day, so I don’t know how long it took to become available), and that was the bank account I had sent the £10 from as planned. Also, it was listed as Free:
Cash out to bank (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Selecting that option, then Continue produces a Cash out preview:
Cash out preview (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Clicking on Cash out now causes a text code to be sent to your phone:
Cash out code (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
On entering the code we get a confirmation of the cash out request:
Cash out request (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
On selecting Done the money was instantly gone from the Coinbase account:
Updated account (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
I immediately checked my bank account. There wasn’t a deposit showing, but the balance had increased indicating a pending deposit. When I checked the account the next morning, the money was in.
So that’s the process of withdrawing cash back out to your bank account. Although the first time is fiddly because of having to link your bank account, once that’s done it’s straightforward for all future cash outs.
I have taken you through the process of opening a Coinbase account, and buying your first Bitcoin. Although buying and selling on Coinbase is relatively easy, the downside of that convenience is the high level of Coinbase fees. £100 bought 0.00185495 of Bitcoin in that latter article, worth about £96 at the time, so effectively 4% was lost in fees.
However, there is a way of buying and selling on Coinbase with much lower fees, and that is to use the Coinbase trading platform. Having been doing this for years I knew it originally as GDAX, which was an exchange bought up by Coinbase, then it was renamed to Coinbase Pro, and in its latest version it is known as Coinbase Advanced. More details are here.
Anyway, the point is if you learn to use Coinbase Advanced you can buy and sell Bitcoin and hundreds of other cryptocurrencies at very low fees. I’ll now go through the process.
First of all, I’ll assume you have some Bitcoin available to sell. To demonstrate the process I transferred in 0.05 BTC from outside Coinbase which, along with the 0.00185495 mentioned above meant a total of 0.05185495 showing on the My assets page; there we click on the Advanced button bottom left:
Selecting Advanced trading on Coinbase (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Click the various tip messages until you’re in the interface proper:
Coinbase Advanced trading interface – Dark mode (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
By default it has a dark theme, i.e. a black background, designed to be easy on the eye for those who trade all the time. It also has the advantage of showing clearly if you are in Coinbase’s standard view or the trading view. Having said that, the colour scheme is optional – to change it just go to your profile menu (shown here as ‘L’) and switch Dark mode to Light.
There are many elements in the trading view, too many to go into detail here. For now the things to note are the currently selected coin pair (BTC-USDC, i.e. buy/sell Bitcoin with USDC coin) shown top left. Under that is the current price chart (where ‘1m’ indicates 1 minute intervals as candlesticks) and below that any recent orders you’ve put in – here blank. To the right is a list of orders other people have put in, and the trades they have made recently. To the far right is the interesting bit – the panel where you buy and sell.
To begin, select the BTC-USDC button top left and swap from buying/selling BTC in USDC coin to BTC-GBP, i.e. buy and sell in Great British Pounds. Up will come a search box – enter BTC-GBP:
Selecting the BTC-GBP pair (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Then click on the BTC-GBP option and the price chart will change to Bitcoin – GB pounds (then close the Markets window):
Now lets sell some Bitcoin into pounds. In the right hand window (‘Available to trade’) select the Sell tab. Here we can see I have the 0.05185495 Bitcoin available to sell, and I don’t yet have any GBP in my account. For details of the selling options available see here; however for our purposes the main two are Limit and Market. Market is straightforward, you sell your Bitcoin at the current market price. This is essentially the same as selling it in your main Coinbase account, but by doing it here in the Advanced trading view you will pay much lower fees.
The Limit option is more interesting, and the one I nearly always use. It allows you to set the price at which you want to sell your Bitcoin, rather than accepting the market rate. As I write this on a Saturday evening the Bitcoin price has just dropped below £53k. I don’t want to sell below £53k so I’m going to set my sell price at £53k. The good news is that if the price rises through £53k overnight as I’m hopeful it will then I get to sell at my preferred price. The downside is that the price may continue to fall and my order will never be filled. So, if I need the money fast, or I think it’s going to keep falling, I should actually sell at the Market rate – but I’m optimistic it will go up and I’m happy to wait a few days to get the price I want.
Here’s the process: click Limit if it’s not selected. Enter the Limit Price (for me, 53000). I want to sell 0.05 Bitcoin so in the Amount box I enter 0.05. I leave everything else as default:
Trading tab (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
then I click the Sell BTC button. I immediately get an acknowledgement, and my order is now showing in the Orders pane:
Order submitted (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
It is marked as Open as it has not yet been filled (because the market price is below what I asked for). Now we wait…
It is now 2 days since I wrote the previous paragraph. Bitcoin did not go up to £53k that night as I had hoped, but it did during the following night/early this morning and my order was filled. In fact the Bitcoin price even went up to £54k this afternoon; however it has since dropped to £52k so I’m happy to have achieved my automatic sell at £53k.
In the interface we can see that the order Status has changed from Open to Filled, and the Total shows how much I sold the 0.05 BTC for – £2634.10:
Order filled (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Clicking on the ellipsis (three dots) for that order we can choose View details:
Order details (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
The order information includes the cost of Fees, which we can see was £15.90 on a sale Total of £2,634.10 – so about 0.6%. That’s what this is all about – remember the fee on a standard sale on the main Coinbase site was around 4%, so this method is massively cheaper.
In fact 0.6% is about the highest fee you can pay this way – if you hold significant amounts of cryptocurrency on your account and/or you do large amounts of trading the fees can be much lower. Full details are here.
For now we’re done here. At the bottom left of the screen click Advanced to off, and we’re back in the standard Coinbase view. Selecting My assets shows that we now have £2634.10 as the balance for British Pounds, and our Bitcoin balance has gone back to 0.00185495 (the amount we bought for £100 in the previous article before we transferred in the new 0.05 BTC).
New asset balances (Image: Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
So that’s the process of selling or buying Bitcoin with very low fees.
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:
Coinbase Payment added (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Next select Buy crypto then Continue and trade crypto:
Coinbase Trade crypto (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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:
Coinbase Crypto quiz (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
There are then a dozen screens like the following to read through:
Coinbase Crypto quiz 2 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
On the last one select Take the test:
Coinbase Crypto quiz 3 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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!
Coinbase Crypto quiz 4 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Once you’ve passed, select Continue and trade crypto:
Coinbase Crypto quiz 5 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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:
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:
Coinbase Account home (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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:
Coinbase Assets page (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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!
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.
When you follow that link you’ll see a webpage like the following:
Coinbase UK Home Page (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
Then go through the following steps.
Click on the Sign up button, enter your email address and click Continue:
Coinbase Sign Up Page (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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.
5. You should now be able to login to Coinbase with the email and password you provided:
Coinbase Sign In (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
At which point you may be emailed a code to enter:
Coinbase Sign In Code (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
7. Once logged in you will have a bunch more questions to answer:
Coinbase Sign In email option (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)Coinbase Sign In phone (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)Coinbase Sign In citizenship (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
8. Enter your date of birth and home address and answer some questions:
Coinbase Sign In personal information (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)Coinbase Sign In personal information (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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:
Coinbase Sign In KYC (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)Coinbase Sign In KYC 1 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)Coinbase Sign In KYC 2 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)Coinbase Sign In KYC 3 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
10. Finally, if you have had the patience, you will have got through all the KYC requirements:
Coinbase Sign Up (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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:
Coinbase Sign Up identity verification (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)Coinbase Sign Up identity verification 2 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)Coinbase Sign Up identity verification 3 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
12. After you press the Upload button you will get an acknowledgement:
Coinbase Sign Up identity verification 4 (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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:
Coinbase Sign Up success (Bitcoin-Investors.co.uk)
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.
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.
GDAX Exchange Trading Screen (Image: BIUK)
This is the process if you want to save a stack on Coinbase fees:
Create a GDAX account if you don’t already have one (I already did).
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.
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.
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).
The BTC sells, the money appears in your GDAX wallet – and there’s no fee!
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.
Have you ever gone to purchase something on an e-commerce website like eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and found the option to pay via the PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) commerce button? Well now, Coinbase has rolled out a commerce platform that might be extremely appealing to merchants. This allows merchants to seamlessly integrate cryptocurrency payments into their current platforms. Currently, Coinbase offers payments for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC).
Coinbase Dashboard (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Making it more convenient for cryptocurrency holders to make everyday purchases is a smart move by Coinbase. For now, this new service is not open to new signups by companies. However, on the website it states that major companies are already signed up and have used this new feature. It’s unclear if they have just tested a Beta phase of this product, but the companies listed include Overstock (NASDAQ:OSTK), Expedia (NASDAQ:EXPE), and Digital River. On Coinbase’s website it says that currently, 48,000 businesses trust the platform to integrate Bitcoin payments. It remains unknown if these other companies such as Dish, USAA, Reddit, and 1800 Flowers, are testing this commerce button as well.
Once you’ve bought Bitcoin on a cryptocurrency exchange or other online platform it is advisable to transfer it to your own wallet.
If the currency has low value then you could take a chance and leave it online, but there are three risks to be aware of:
The exchange could collapse (it has happened before, e.g. Mt Gox).
You can’t get access to your currency as fast as you need it (e.g. to sell in a falling market). Currently Poloniex can take 24 hours for a withdrawal to go through, Bitfinex 12 hours.
The exchange gets hacked and a third party withdraws your Bitcoin.
Here we’ll cover the process of moving your Bitcoin from an online platform to your own wallet. It will be similar on most platforms and wallets – here we’ll assume:
Each wallet owns a series of Bitcoin addresses where coins can be deposited. Select the Receive tab to show the first address available in your wallet, listed as Receiving Address.
[A quick detour into addresses: Note the subject of addresses is quite a complex one that we don’t need to go into here – just be aware that most wallets will manage a series of addresses for you. For example, many wallets will use a different address for every transaction for enhanced security. Also, since a sending address may contain more Bitcoin than is sent from it the ‘change’ may get sent to a third address. You don’t need to worry about this, you just rely on using the addresses the wallet suggests. If you want to see the addresses that are being managed ‘under the bonnet’ have a look at the Addresses tab to see the various Receiving and Change addresses handled by your wallet.]
Copy this address to the clipboard: you can either select it and copy or click on the Copy icon at its right-hand end. Enter a Description, e.g. ‘Initial transfer from Coinbase‘. With that done we are ready to receive Bitcoin to the copied address in this wallet.
Note that the sending platform is in control of the transaction, Coinbase in our example. It doesn’t matter how much Bitcoin you want to receive, you’ll only receive what is sent – so the other items here (e.g. Request amount) are irrelevant for our purpose. By all means click Save to record your description of this transaction, but otherwise it isn’t necessary.
Electrum Receive screen after saving (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Click on the Send button under BTC Wallet. to bring up the Send BTC screen. On the day I wrote this it had a message about delays in sending Bitcoin – you may or may not get that.
Paste the address copied from your Electrum wallet into the Recipient box. Check that Withdraw From shows the BTC Wallet. Under Amount click in the BTC box – this will bring up a Send Max button. Click on this to transfer out all your Bitcoin in this account (the fee is shown at the bottom). Add a Note such as ‘Transfer to my Electrum wallet‘. Press Continue.
Press Confirm. You should then get a brief confirmation message saying the transaction is going through. Go back to the Dashboard and you should see the transaction is listed under Recent Activity as Pending.
Now you have to wait. You may get an email confirmation from Coinbase that it is going through.
A transfer can take from minutes to hours depending on how busy the network is and how much Coinbase spent on fees to transfer the money (they probably default to a low fee). A transaction has to be confirmed by a number of different nodes on the blockchain and these transactions will come through one by one. If you click on the transaction in the Coinbase you can see how many Confirmations have gone through.
The first sign that the transfer is definitely happening may be seen in Electrum on the History tab. With luck this will show the transaction as it is confirmed, with the Description that you entered above and saved.
Electrum History screen (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
If you double-click on the transaction you can see the confirmations counting up.
As the confirmations come in the ‘Unconfirmed’ message changes to a clock face that fills in segments and goes from red to green.
Electrum Transaction Being Confirmed (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
When the transaction is complete it will show a green tick (you can see the details on the Addresses and Coins tabs and by double-clicking the transaction line):
It will also be shown in Coinbase as no longer pending (and if you double-click it there under Recent Activity it will be marked Completed).
It’s done. Your Bitcoin has been successfully transferred from your Coinbase account to your private Electrum Wallet. There it can only be transferred out using your private seed or password, otherwise there is no way for anyone to access it.
(Author’s Note: It’s been a few years since I wrote this post. I have recently updated the main screenshots – November 2020 – and the general procedure should still be similar)
Here I’ll describe the buying process for when you are ready to buy your first Bitcoin. Don’t forget, by following the referral link above you’ll get about £7 ($10) of Bitcoin for free so long as you buy at least £80 worth.
Login and click on the Buy/Sell tab – you will then be asked to ‘complete your account’:
Coinbase: Add a Payment Method (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Click on the Add a Payment Method button. Next you will have to choose between adding a Bank Account or a Credit/Debit Card.
Choose the Payment Method (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Choose Credit/Debit Card for now as it’s fast and easy. Later, if you want to buy larger amounts of cryptocurrency, you may want to add your bank account.
Add a Debit Card (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Fill in your debit card details as usual. Press Next.
Once you have a payment method set up, when you click on Trade you will see this screen:
Check that Buy and Bitcoin are selected (you can also buy other cryptocurrencies here – but they’re for another day). Your debit card or bank account should be showing as Payment Method.
On to the amount. This is up to you but I suggest £100 for your first purchase so you get the free £7 from Coinbase. Obviously if you’re keen you could buy a lot more, but as ever you shouldn’t risk more than you can afford to lose – bitcoin pricing is volatile.
Enter the amount you want to spend in the £ box, alternatively click the up/down arrow symbol to the right – that swaps over so you can now enter how much Bitcoin (symbol BTC) you want to buy. Leave the buying option set to One time purchase for now. Press the Preview Buy button to see more details on the transaction:
Order preview (Image: BIUK)
[A quick detour into fees for those interested. The most obvious fee is that Coinbase charges about a fee on your purchase if you buy £100 you get £96 worth of Bitcoin – more details here. However, like at a foreign exchange desk you are also having to accept Coinbase’s view on what Bitcoin is actually worth at the moment you buy it which can be higher than the market rate. If you look closely in the screenshot you can see Coinbase is quoting a slightly higher BTC price in the Price row compared to the live value visible in the main dashboard, the background.]
Check you’re happy with the summary and press the Buy now button.
Coinbase may ask you to confirm and authorise the transaction.
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.
Anyway, go to the Portfolio tab and which will update to show that the transaction was successful and you now own some bitcoin:
Portfolio – success (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
The percentage figure just tells you how much of your ‘portfolio’ is in Bitcoin. Since you haven’t yet bought any other currency in Coinbase it will say 100%.
If you want to review a transaction in detail, such as your first purchase, you can click on it in the right hand column, for example:
It shows how much BTC you got (note, all cryptocurrencies are recorded to 8 decimal places, though not all decimal places are always shown), how you paid, the fee, etc. The Completed status shows that the transaction is confirmed, initially this may show Pending until it has fully gone through.
That’s it – you are now the proud owner of some Bitcoin! 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!
(Author’s Note: It’s been a few years since I created my account and wrote this post. I have recently updated the main screenshots – November 2020 – and the general procedure should still be similar)
This is an introduction to buying Bitcoin for those new to cryptocurrencies in general and to Bitcoin in particular. The first step is to open a ‘wallet’ – a software app or website – to hold your cryptocurrency.
Here I’ll show you how to do this in Coinbase. This claims to be “the world’s most popular Bitcoin wallet” and is certainly very well known. As well as being popular it is also very easy to use. It is not the cheapest nor the most fully featured wallet and so we’ll look at other wallets later for those more experienced with cryptocurrencies. It is, however, perfect for newcomers.
Note this is an referral link – this means you’ll get about £7 ($10) of free bitcoin when you buy your first bitcoin and so will I. Your first purchase needs to be worth at least $100 (about £75) so I suggest you buy £80-£100 to be sure you get the free money.
When you follow that link you’ll see a webpage like the following:
Opening a Coinbase account (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Complete the form (First Name, Last Name, Email and Password), and confirm your age and acknowledge the User Agreement and Privacy Policy. Click Create Account. 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 have record the password somewhere, e.g. 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.
A Coinbase account will be created for you and you’ll see a screen that says ‘Verify Your Email: We sent a verification email to <your email address>. Click the link in the email to get started!’
Go to your email inbox, find the Coinbase email and click on the Verify Email Address button/link. Return to Coinbase and you’ll see a new Coinbase screen with a popup message that says ‘Your email has now been verified. Thank you!‘ Close the old Coinbase screen.
The new Coinbase screen will say ‘Welcome <first name> – Let’s get started > Complete the following steps to get your first bitcoin or ethereum!‘ Select the Individual button unless you’re working on behalf of a business. Press Next.
On the next screen choose your country (if it’s not already set) and enter your mobile phone number. The number is required for security – Coinbase will text you a ‘2 Step Verification’ security code to login with. Press Next.
Enter the code Coinbase sent to your phone on the form on the next page. Press Verify Phone Number.
Once that’s passed you come to a payment method screen. You can return to this later – for now Press Skip, I’ll do this later. You’re now into Coinbase.
You’ll see the main Dashboard, as show below.
Coinbase Dashboard (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
This shows a chart of your portfolio balance, i.e. a total of all your cryptocurrencies in £ Sterling (zero at this point). You can change the timescale to 1 hour, day, week, month, year, or All time. There are also rows below where you can get more detailed information on Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies offered by Coinbase.
Below left you’ll see your account status, with the value of all non-zero currencies (again, zero if you’ve just created your account). Below right you will later see a list of your recent transactions.
Before you’re ready to buy your first Bitcoin you need to Verify your identity. To move to this step you can click on ‘Complete your account‘ bottom left, or just attempt to Buy (on the top menu) or add a payment method.
The screen will show ‘Select ID type‘, choose whatever you want (e.g. Driver’s License).
Choose your ID type (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
You will need to take a live photo of your ID so you are asked to choose to do this with either your mobile phone’s camera or your PC’s webcam, it’s up to you. I found it easiest to use the phone – once you select this you get messages on your phone to take you through the process.
I chose to photograph my driver’s licence – I did this with care in good lighting on a plain surface (white paper on a kitchen worktop) otherwise it can fail. Once you’ve taken front and back pictures on your phone control goes back to the PC. You get a message confirming that the ID is being verified:
ID is being verified (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Once it’s complete you’re back at the Coinbase Dashboard and ready to buy your first Bitcoin.
