When comparing Coinbase vs Bitstamp, the Slant community recommends Coinbase for most people. In the question“What are the best ways to buy/sell bitcoin?” Coinbase is ranked 1st while Bitstamp is ranked 2nd. The most important reason people chose Coinbase is:
The entire process of using Coinbase is seamless. All you need to do to start buying/selling Bitcoin is link your bank account to Coinbase, and if you provide a credit card as a backup payment method you can start buying Bitcoin instantly.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Very easy to set up and use
The entire process of using Coinbase is seamless. All you need to do to start buying/selling Bitcoin is link your bank account to Coinbase, and if you provide a credit card as a backup payment method you can start buying Bitcoin instantly.
Pro Trustworthy
Coinbase have raised over 6 million from reputable investors.
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 Acts as a hosted wallet
You can also use Coinbase to store your bitcoins in their hosted wallet. This makes the entire process of using bitcoins really simple, as you only need to use one service.
Pro Limited to the most stable coins
Coinbease is limited to the most stable coins, making it less likely to run into problems in the world of Crypto
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.
Pro Intuitive user interface
Coinbase’s user interface is well-designed and easy to grasp in a short amount of time. Compared to other exchange platforms, Coinbase has the best user experience for those who are new to cryptocurrencies.
Pro Offers phone support
Coinbase offers phone support for customers needing urgent help with ID/account verification issues, limit increases, and such.
Pro Great mobile apps
As well as the website, you can access Coinbase on Android, iPhone and visa SMS.
Pro No fees for deposit through SEPA bank transfer
For Europeans, there is no fee for depositing to Coinbase through SEPA bank transfers (but your bank may charge a fee).
Pro Free SEPA deposits
Bitstamp is very economical if you live in Europe as they have free SEPA deposits.
Pro Very low transfer fees
For small transactions (< $500 USD) you're only charged 0.5%. This incrementally decreases to 0.2% for transfers over $150,000 USD.
Pro Lets you limit orders
On Bitstamp users can enter limit orders that stay open until they are either cancelled by the client or executed in the market.
Pro Supports multiple currencies
Bitstamp supports US dollars, British pounds, and Swiss francs.
Pro Offers prepaid debit cards
You can purchase physical or virtual prepaid debit cards through Bitstamp and load money into them directly from your Bitstamp account. There are currently three supported currencies: USD, EUR, and GBP. Note: this is currently unavailable to US citizens.
Pro Great support
Multiple threads on the Bitcoin sub-reddit praise Bitstamp for fast and helpful support.
Pro Great user interface
The interface and overall user experience of Bitstamp is fantastic. The design is clean, easy to use while also providing great features like the order book.
Pro Order book
The order book is a great feature because it’s where the exchange shows all the open orders it has from its clients.
The first part of the order book is a chart that represents all the orders organized by type (bid or offer), price, and volume. This is a very efficient way of looking at the market depth and also analyzing the open interest so you can decide how to set and manage your orders.
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 Fees are quite high
Coinbase is beginning to increase their fees. Credit/debit card purchases also carries an upwards of 3.49% fee.
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 Too focused on altcoins
Con Few choices
Coinbase is extremely limited in choices. Granted... to the most trusted and secure coins, but accessing other options requires a secondary service, and incurs fees.
Con Not available in many countries
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.
Con High fees for credit/debit card purchases
Bitstamp charges a flat 5% for all credit/debit card purchases, regardless of purchase amount.
Con Not so great for cryptocurrency beginners
Bitstamp is not the best platform for those unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies in general — the live trading platform and UI can get too overwhelming for beginners due to information overload.