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.
Here’s a quick guide to how to get started with Bitcoin. You’ve heard about it, you like the sound of it, and you want to get your first Bitcoin or part of one.
Bitcoin (Image: Antana/CCBY-SA2)
If you just want to buy and own Bitcoin you just have to do the first two steps below. If you want to take it off the Internet and store it on your own computer and have full control over it, then also do the last two steps:
There are lots of ways to hold your Bitcoin but they can mostly be divided into exchanges and wallets. If you put your Bitcoin on an exchange like Poloniex, Bitfinex, Bittrex or Kraken then really you’ve handed your Bitcoins over to the exchange provider to look after.
If, however, you want complete personal control over your Bitcoin then the only way to ensure that is to create your own wallet and hold your Bitcoin there. The difference from an exchange is huge – only you can deposit and withdraw money there because you’re the only person who knows the passphrase or seed (like a complex password). Whereas with an exchange you have to ask the exchange provider to deposit and withdraw money – you can’t be sure they will, though they usually will, and it’s up to them how long they take to carry out a transaction.
Electrum Home Page (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Here I’ll explain how to create a Bitcoin Wallet that is entirely yours to control. The example I’ll use is Electrum which is one of the biggest and most respected. Like most Bitcoin Wallets (and related software) it’s a software app that’s free to use.
To download the software go to https://electrum.org/#download and choose the most appropriate version for your device. I’m on Windows and have gone for the Windows Installer for the Latest Release (2.9.3 at time of writing). You could instead choose the standalone executable if you didn’t want to install it (you could then put it on a USB stick, for example).
Download the Electrum Wallet software (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Once downloaded run the installer as appropriate for your device (note that if you have an older version of Electrum installed it’s clever enough to upgrade the program without losing your data).
When that’s complete, close the installer and run Electrum (e.g. in Windows via an icon on your desktop). Then select File -> New/Restore. Choose a suitable wallet name (or accept the default if you plan to only ever have one). This will create a new wallet (the option to Restore only applies if you’ve previously created an Electrum wallet and want to reuse it).
Create a new Electrum Wallet file (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Next you will be asked ‘What kind of wallet do you want to create?‘:
Standard wallet
Wallet with two-factor authentication: this requires a second device, typically your smartphone, as an extra security layer
Multi-signature wallet: this is where two people are required to confirm a transaction (a bit like joint signatures on a bank account)
Watch Bitcoin addresses: this allows you to monitor a Bitcoin address elsewhere (e.g. in a hardware wallet) but not make transactions with it
Choose Electrum Wallet type (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
In most cases you should choose Standard wallet. If you are going to hold a lot of Bitcoin in this wallet you could research and choose Wallet with two-factor authentication. Here we’ll go with Standard wallet.
Next you’ll be shown the wallet generation seed. This is like a complex password, one that is made up of 12 individual words. Record this as it is the key to your wallet – lose it and you could lose the Bitcoin in the wallet.
If you are only going to hold small amounts of Bitcoin in this wallet then you may choose to store this seed electronically, e.g. copy the words to a Word document. However, if you are going to hold any significant amounts in this wallet then take the advice on the screen and write the seed on a piece of paper.
This avoids the risk of your device being hijacked (e.g. by malware) and your seed – and all the money in the wallet – being taken (an interesting property of Bitcoin is that if someone has your seed they don’t need to access your wallet – they can create a new wallet on their PC containing your money). Keep that piece of paper very safe – it could be far more valuable than your passport, bank cards, etc.
On the next screen you type in the seed so Electrum can confirm you really did record it! A bit painful, but a valuable check.
Once you’ve done that you have to enter a password to encrypt your wallet. I recommend you don’t make one up yourself (humans are very poor at creating passwords that can’t be cracked by computer). Instead go to Passwords Generator and create a new one with the following settings:
Random Password Generator settings (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
Press Generate Password then write down the password and the mnemonic below it (to help remember and confirm it). You can write this on the same piece of paper as the seed since in most cases your Bitcoin can be accessed with either.
Type in the password (not the long mnemonic) – don’t be tempted to copy and paste it (what gets used by Electrum needs to match how you read what you’ve written down). Leave Encrypt wallet file ticked and press Next.
There is a brief ‘Electrum is generating your wallet addresses‘ message then Electrum opens on its main view. It will default to showing a History tab listing transactions on the wallet – at this point it will be empty.
The bottom status bar will show the current Bitcoin value – if this is showing in dollars (USD) you can set it to pounds (GBP). Go to Tools -> Preferences -> Fiat -> Fiat currency and select GBP:
Electrum Preferred Fiat Currency (Image: Bitcoin Investors UK)
That’s it – you now have a Bitcoin wallet up and running ready to receive, store, and send out your Bitcoin. Its various features and the methods to send and receive Bitcoin will be covered in future posts, e.g. Receiving in an Electrum Wallet, and Sending from an Electrum Wallet.
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