Recs.
Updated
Coinbase is an American bitcoin exchange and hosted wallet service that allows people with a US bank account to send, receive and store bitcoin.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Secure
Wallets (and private keys) are stored using AES-256 encryption and the site runs entirely over SSL. Also, 90% of customer funds are stored offline in bank vaults to prevent theft or loss.
For more information, visit here.
Pro You can instantly buy Bitcoin
If you provide a credit card as a backup payment method and verify your identity, you can instantly buy and sell bitcoins without waiting the usual 4 days.
Pro Great for cryptocurrency beginners
Coinbase is extremely easy to get started with. This is especially true for beginners looking to get their feet wet in the world of Bitcoins/cryptocurrencies — there’s no figuring out the process because everything is clearly laid out in front of you.
Cons
Con Shuts down and freezes transactions during heavy request for fiats and during bubble burst
Con Month of June 2017 - just horrible experience so far
Continual outages hold your money and/or coins hostage at the times they are most useful to trade. Site does not scale for busy profitable days/hours. Support is effectively non-existant. They treat everyone the same - poorly. Expect your funds to be captive during volatile activity. Poor leadership relegateds support staff to begging Your "patience." New policies are NOT updated online in a timely manner. Beware if you have much to lose. Considering all the kinds of hiccups this website and its app regularly experience, a large catastrophic data leak of sensitive information would not surprise me at all.
Con You'll experience a painful process to restore multiple device access
As soon as a device becomes unregistered from Coinbase, it seems to cause a cascade of other devices also complaining and asking or a code. If you're using certain mail providers, Coinbase emails don't even make it to your spam box - they're blocked at the server level. Folks should take care to use a known, white-listed service to ensure you don't lose access to your email resets, or you have to go through a very painful process to restore it. You have to register an entirely new account and follow up with a request for verification. This is all well and good for security's sake, but takes too long.
It can be done much more professionally and quickly if there were secure features to restore device connectivity and access, such as a backup or two step verification with a mobile. This would save days and days, even weeks of lock-out, from what is YOUR money.
Con Device disconnection happens all the time if you use several devices
It also seems that geolocation and Coinbase do not get along too well from a user perspective, with the same type of device disconnection occurring constantly if you move between a lot of devices, which some of us do, and some of us have to do by virtue of the way we work and live and move through the world.
Con Terrible customer support
Relegates users to a support "bot" which is incapable of supporting escalated issues. Email support takes days to weeks to respond and is not geared to handle time sensitive issues. Avoid Coinbase if at all possible.
Recommendations
Comments
Flagged Pros + Cons
Out of Date Pros + Cons
Con Can be slow to receive bitcoins
It can take from 3-7 days to receive your Bitcoins after you have purchased them.
Con Requires you to connect a US bank account
Coinbase works by connecting to a US bank account. This makes the service easy to use for Americans, but unfortunately does not let Coinbase work internationally. Also, connecting bank accounts to a online service does have additional security risks.