So, the "value" of Bitcoin continues to climb. Still kicking myself for not buying years ago, but I felt it was all a bit dodgy (crime blah blah blah) so stayed away. Sigh.
Anyhow, sometimes I hear something that is stated as a fact and I like to double check rather than accept at face value. Point in question - just did a quick comparison of local exchanges and coinbase.
I've heard a lot about how coinbase is easy to use but expensive. I wanted to make sure this actually was the case because the price of bitcoin is generally lower on the bigger international exchanges. As of 11:37am today one bitcoin was selling for an average of $17,328 (Cointree: $17,288 - btcmarkets: $17,248 - Coinspot: $17,450). On Coinbase, it was AUD$15,624. That's a 10% difference which is pretty significant, and I thought could actually balance out the extra fees they charge.
So let's do a comparison with btcmarkets (which was the cheapest local market, and seems to have a good rep on ozbargain) and coinbase (also good rep, but claimed to be expensive).
btcmarkets charge 0.85% for trades up to $500
coinbase charge a variable fee, but the most they charge is 3.99%. Initial knee jerk reaction is wow - that is expensive.
Math time. If you bought $300 worth of bitcoin you would get:
btcmarkets: $300 less $2.55 (fee) @ $17,248/coin = 0.17245 BTC
coinbase: $300 less $11.97 (fee) @ $15,624/coin = 0.18435 BTC
That's a difference of 0.0119 BTC or around $20 worth of bitcoin
Happy to be proven wrong, but I calculate (as of today) even with the insanely high fees you will end up with more bitcoin via coinbase whether you're buying $10 or $10,000 worth of bitcoin. Obviously this will all change as the price of bitcoin changes, but thought it was interesting!
LOL…