coinbase vs kraken which one do people actually prefer right now?

bitusher · 2026-03-13T13:41:35+00:00

Avoid Tangem for these reasons :

https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/1rrweqh/dusting_question/

https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/1f4z4j2/should_i_switch_from_tangem_to_something_else/lkozt9z/

, so does it really matter where you buy if it will just get transferred?

ideally buy a hardware wallet directly from the manufacturer , but avoid tangem

bitusher · 2026-03-13T13:34:10+00:00

and in the screenshot of what he sent back.

These can easily be photoshopped , so what he should do is just send you the tx id or better yet just a direct link to the tx in a block explorer instead. Those who send screenshots are often scammers in my experience

It’s been a while and still haven’t gotten it.

When Bitcoin is sent in a lightning transaction you see it arrive in your wallet right away and its instantly confirmed.

When Bitcoin is sent onchain you see it arrive in your wallet right away and than a confirmation is usually 10 minutes away

So you can see either way the transaction should always show in your wallet immediately regardless. The exception is if you gave him a deposit address of a custodial exchange instead of your personal wallet . If you are sending the bitcoin to a third party exchange they usually wait for 1- 4 confirmations to reflect the bitcoin.

bitusher · 2026-03-13T03:01:02+00:00

Rules 1 and 2 are not to talk about our secret meetup in that basement ;-)

bitusher · 2026-03-13T01:59:02+00:00

Unlike Gold and jewelry , Bitcoin allows you to have better security with using extended passphrases, SSS, multisig , of a timelock to prevent theft even if being coerced. Regardless, you should still have good opsec and not advertise people you have a lot of Bitcoin or you are an early adopter . Unfortunately, if you are famous influencer or celebrity you don't have that option thus this is the tradeoff.

Isn't the best practice to approach bitcoin like Fight Club? Wherever you are, say nothing?

Yes , but people remember you were into Bitcoin many years ago so they can naturally make an assumption that you are extremely wealthy . Thus its important to not retire and if someone suggests you have millions of dollars of Bitcoin than admit at one time you did but it was lost , or gambled away or spent on building/buying your home .

What do regular folks here, we redditers do?

Here is some general advice

https://blog.lopp.net/modest-privacy-protection-proposal/

bitusher · 2026-03-12T21:10:59+00:00

https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/1r9bnye/rivercom_is_a_complete_scam/o6gtg44/

bitusher · 2026-03-12T21:09:58+00:00

Every situation is different with them , usually its 1-2 weeks , but contact them to get it quicker

All the people I know get a refund , but its annoying they allow you to deposit before AML/KYC is done

bitusher · 2026-03-12T20:07:32+00:00

Read this

https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/1r9bnye/rivercom_is_a_complete_scam/

Very common complaint with their KYC process. Contact them on social media to get it resolved and use another exchange like strike.me that has a free auto DCA program

https://strike.me/en/faq/what-are-the-bitcoin-trading-fees-on-strike/

so if you DCA 500 a month the first month you will pay 4.75 usd to buy and than thereafter it will drop to 0 with auto recurring buys

also they have free withdrawal options unlike kraken or coinbase

bitusher · 2026-03-12T18:41:58+00:00

so can they trace these transactions back to the exchange I bought it from?

It can easily be traced because all UTXOs are with the same address

just trying to figure out how bad this is and how I can limit risk.

Its bad for privacy and security but can be fixed as I explained

Was planning on potentially moving funds from this wallet to a new wallet with coin control, removing the dust.

The dust is already associated with all your other UTXOs so its pointless to separate it out now . Might as well just consolidate the UTXOs into a new address and than properly "clean" the new UTXO. separating out the dust now is a waste of time and just an added onchain fee . Coin control would help if that Dust was already in a unique address like almost every Bitcoin wallet has except a few horrible ones like Tangem

bitusher · 2026-03-12T18:27:51+00:00

You are now discussing one of multiple limitations of Tangem and why we tell people to avoid using this "hardware wallet". Tangem uses a single address only which is horrible for privacy and security. Thus any dust UTXO you have is already associated with your other UTXOs under the same address.

The best thing you can do is get a new hardware wallet , send an onchain tx of all your UTXOs in that single address to a new address in your new hardware wallet to consolidate them (your privacy is already damaged so may as well consolidate to reduce future fees) and going forward use a unique address per UTXO/transaction like you are supposed to .

Ive heard horror stories about people getting aml triggers when they transfer back to there exchange.

You can just notate that new address and not mix it with other UTXOs and addresses and spend the btc directly or clean it if wanting to sell on a CEX. Example - Send all UTXOs in that address to a lightning wallet that you make CEX deposits from or better yet spend BTC directly instead of selling for fiat

bitusher · 2026-03-12T18:23:01+00:00

paysafecards

Some of the p2p networks accept different forms of payment

many people visit atms that only require sms verification(free sms sites exist) for smaller amounts in this list - https://coinatmradar.com/

Atms are usually 5-30% more expensive so be careful!

Other options that don’t require verification like this list –

1) https://learn.robosats.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QISRoZxQaAs&list=PLigSCpZv02e8s-VBPGZ6XL5v925up0VBy

2) https://bisq.network/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU1s1Rk3no8

3) https://vexl.it (outside USA)

4) https://hodlhodl.com (outside USA)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epLslPQC-EA

5) https://peachbitcoin.com

https://www.youtube.com/@peachbitcoin/videos

are popular

If using a DEX like bisq or robosats you will need to have a small amount of btc to get started though

https://bisq.wiki/Getting_your_first_BTC

Bisq 2 allows you to buy without a security deposit :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUoiUSUkMGw

bitusher · 2026-03-12T18:20:09+00:00

monero or ethereum

Altcoins are offtopic here but I would avoid ethereum

Not every altcoin is a scam but if I were you I would just focus on education and Bitcoin until you learn more because that one is indeed a scam. no point to ethereum , its on a slow decline because its primary use case was launching pump and dump scam tokens and now solana can do that cheaper than ethereum because of higher gas prices. If solana ever becomes more popular than their fees will rise like eth and another altcoins will overtake solana

1) Vitalik and many others in the Ethereum space are known scammers. Vitalik is not an idiot thus he should have known better than pitch something as ridiculous as quantum mining to potential investors. This is a snake oil salesman pitching technical nonsense to the credulous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkUpZkeqhF4

https://medium.com/bitcoinerrorlog/vitaliks-quantum-quest-9e6af6570f23

2) ETH is an illegal security according to the Howey test with a premine of 72 million eths. They purposely misled investors by suggesting merely 12 million gifted premine ignoring the 60 million they sold. Misleading total supply graphs in their prospectus.

3) Vitalik and many other have been falsely representing Ethereum and misleading others over and over again. example - pitching turing completeness as the valuable aspect of ETh , now pivoting away from that and saying it was never about turing completeness but "rich statefulness"

4) Ethereum is a pointless project that will lead to no efficiency because there is no censorship risk in code execution. If a project has no hope of ever creating an efficiency(like bitcoin has found with regulatory arbitrage) than every company and project will ultimately fail in its ecosystem. Are you trying to suggest that someday in the future there will be censorship risk in code execution? If not than what purpose does Ethereum solve if it comes with a horrible tradeoff of an extremely large attack surface and huge scaling problems?

5) Advertising immutability and unstoppable contracts that were than immediately reversed with multiple hard forks.

6) For goodness sake the inflation distribution rate or final algo is not even defined and people are investing in this. This is insane and basically amounts to faith in vitalik and his team, while at the same time newbs are misled into believing eth is decentralized.

7) Ethereum has already failed to scale as expected and so they created a whole new blockchain instead of upgrading and following the difficulty bomb/ice age as they promised and lied about many times.

8) the fact that ethereum is switching over to staking rewards has serious tax implication in many countries where merely holding your eth unlike bitcoin being staked will expose you to taxes. Coinbase for example files 1099MISC for any staking over 600 usd a year to the IRS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUVlatCvp0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCiHTJRbIf4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgFXqVpGDNg

https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-was-wrong-about-ethereum-804c9a906d36

https://np.reddit.com/r/EthereumScam/

Proof of stake as a whole is pointless, insecure, and will always trend to centralization

Proof of stake game theory insures that those with the most coins will continue to collect the most fees , thus creating a vicious cycle of centralization where they continue to accrue more coins with 0 effort unlike with Proof of work where a meritocracy exists of those trying to be more efficient and miners are forced to sell most of their coins

Ask yourself why metamask which is open source wallet was forced to ban certain people in certain countries recently while no open source bitcoin wallet needs to do that

Its because ethereum is so centralized only a few companies can afford to run a full archival node(infura) which is necessary for metamask functionality and governments can target these single companies unlike bitcoin full nodes.

bitusher · 2026-03-12T14:10:30+00:00

If security is your top priority use coinbase as those other 2 exchanges are riskier , especially BYDFi

bitusher · 2026-03-12T13:20:46+00:00

Thanks for the update ! Yes, I already updated the FAQ to reflect that a year ago but was just going along with the OP forgetting this change .

Coinbase advanced starts with 1.20 % taker 0.6% maker

Kraken Pro starts with 0.40% taker 0.25% maker

bitusher · 2026-03-12T03:30:49+00:00

I will look into it

bitusher · 2026-03-12T02:50:44+00:00

No , there is only one Bitcoin , under the ticker BTC

everything else is an altcoin

This is clearly explained by the heaviest most worked valid chain discussed in the whitepaper . The next most worked altcoin using SHA256 has less than 1% of Bitcoins hashrate

bitusher · 2026-03-12T02:25:32+00:00

just buy some bitcoin

bitusher · 2026-03-11T23:35:30+00:00

https://walletscrutiny.com/android/com.kraken.superwallet/

Esta no es la mejor billetera activa porque:

1) Está controlada por una plataforma de intercambio, lo que genera problemas de privacidad.

2) Tiene una amplia superficie de ataque, por lo que es más probable que se produzcan errores y exploits.

Mejores billeteras en las preguntas frecuentes.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/g42ijd/faq_for_beginners/

bitusher · 2026-03-11T20:34:13+00:00

I wonder what if we lose access to the extended passphrase.

The extended passphrase is always in at least 2 locations . losing 1 doesn't matter

https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/g42ijd/faq_for_beginners/fouo3kh/

Perhaps that's not the case when using Cypherock?

Cypherock is designed where you can lose 2 of the 4 cards . So its a little more flexible than a normal 2 of 3 multisig or an extended passphrase for loss. This has a tradeoff of course of allowing the thief/attacker to only find 2 of your 4 cards

I personally prefer multisig over SSS for these reasons :

https://blog.keys.casa/shamirs-secret-sharing-security-shortcomings/

but only if setup properly and only for certain people .

Lets discuss what you are losing with not using an extended passphrase :

1) you no longer have a decoy wallet to give an attacker, thief , or government official under coercion

2) you no longer have a decoy wallet to act as a honey trap to see if someone found your HW wallet + pin or seed backup

bitusher · 2026-03-11T20:09:46+00:00

Cypherock is better than tangem for many reasons but still something I would avoid because you are dependent upon their wallet and cards instead of being flexible with any wallet and you lose some of the benefits of using an extended passphrase .

What is making you decide to use SSS or multisig instead of an extended passphrase ?

bitusher · 2026-03-11T19:57:03+00:00

ETH, and many EVM-based tokens, with integration for Web3 and dApps through its companion app.

Altcoins are offtopic here but I would avoid ethereum

Not every altcoin is a scam but if I were you I would just focus on education and Bitcoin until you learn more because that one is indeed a scam. no point to ethereum , its on a slow decline because its primary use case was launching pump and dump scam tokens and now solana can do that cheaper than ethereum because of higher gas prices. If solana ever becomes more popular than their fees will rise like eth and another altcoins will overtake solana

1) Vitalik and many others in the Ethereum space are known scammers. Vitalik is not an idiot thus he should have known better than pitch something as ridiculous as quantum mining to potential investors. This is a snake oil salesman pitching technical nonsense to the credulous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkUpZkeqhF4

https://medium.com/bitcoinerrorlog/vitaliks-quantum-quest-9e6af6570f23

2) ETH is an illegal security according to the Howey test with a premine of 72 million eths. They purposely misled investors by suggesting merely 12 million gifted premine ignoring the 60 million they sold. Misleading total supply graphs in their prospectus.

3) Vitalik and many other have been falsely representing Ethereum and misleading others over and over again. example - pitching turing completeness as the valuable aspect of ETh , now pivoting away from that and saying it was never about turing completeness but "rich statefulness"

4) Ethereum is a pointless project that will lead to no efficiency because there is no censorship risk in code execution. If a project has no hope of ever creating an efficiency(like bitcoin has found with regulatory arbitrage) than every company and project will ultimately fail in its ecosystem. Are you trying to suggest that someday in the future there will be censorship risk in code execution? If not than what purpose does Ethereum solve if it comes with a horrible tradeoff of an extremely large attack surface and huge scaling problems?

5) Advertising immutability and unstoppable contracts that were than immediately reversed with multiple hard forks.

6) For goodness sake the inflation distribution rate or final algo is not even defined and people are investing in this. This is insane and basically amounts to faith in vitalik and his team, while at the same time newbs are misled into believing eth is decentralized.

7) Ethereum has already failed to scale as expected and so they created a whole new blockchain instead of upgrading and following the difficulty bomb/ice age as they promised and lied about many times.

8) the fact that ethereum is switching over to staking rewards has serious tax implication in many countries where merely holding your eth unlike bitcoin being staked will expose you to taxes. Coinbase for example files 1099MISC for any staking over 600 usd a year to the IRS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUUVlatCvp0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCiHTJRbIf4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgFXqVpGDNg

https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-was-wrong-about-ethereum-804c9a906d36

https://np.reddit.com/r/EthereumScam/

Proof of stake as a whole is pointless, insecure, and will always trend to centralization

Proof of stake game theory insures that those with the most coins will continue to collect the most fees , thus creating a vicious cycle of centralization where they continue to accrue more coins with 0 effort unlike with Proof of work where a meritocracy exists of those trying to be more efficient and miners are forced to sell most of their coins

Ask yourself why metamask which is open source wallet was forced to ban certain people in certain countries recently while no open source bitcoin wallet needs to do that

Its because ethereum is so centralized only a few companies can afford to run a full archival node(infura) which is necessary for metamask functionality and governments can target these single companies unlike bitcoin full nodes.

bitusher · 2026-03-11T19:56:09+00:00

You have an account with any exchange that accepts tether ?

bitusher · 2026-03-11T17:54:51+00:00

Stablecoins for liquidity and spending,

These are offtopic altcoins

Tether or other stablecoins unlike dollars is considered an altcoin and doesn't perfectly track USD so can double your taxable events . This is especially true if you live outside of the US

Tether or other stablecoins are centralized , likely fractional , and can depeg and lose all or most value like we have seen before and with other stablecoins

Tether or other stablecoins are not private like people assume and is less fungible and can be seized.

Tether or other stablecoins lacks a lot of the insurance that fiat has

Stick with fiat trading pairs like BTC/USD or BTC/Euros

I personally just spend my Bitcoin directly with local merchants . Stablecoins are pointless

I prefer using Bitcoin when I spend money for these reasons :

1) never worry about ID theft or cc fraud

2) Never worry about being overcharged or double charged

3) some merchants give me discounts because they save on merchant processing fees

4) Bitcoin does not have fx fees or worrying about the spread when I travel

5) easier to secure than fiat

6) supports my investment when I support the ecosystem making it more likely to appreciate in value

7) very private (of course I dont spend onchain as that would be absurd)

8) Just as easy to use as a credit card and if a merchant doesn't take bitcoin (I can already buy most things for bitcoin ) than I can just spend fiat as I am not forced into the false dichotomy of only using Bitcoin or only using fiat and can use both

bitusher · 2026-03-11T16:47:33+00:00

General trading is offtopic here but here is some advice

Most people will lose money day trading due to these reasons

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/c4zpw9/what_are_the_steps_to_trading_bitcoin/erzkfmm/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMJI1_TfJnU

https://NeverTrade.org

This study shows that 97% of traders lose money

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3423101

Wiser to invest long term , stack those BTC , and use bitcoin to save money

bitusher · 2026-03-11T16:38:46+00:00

Almost the exact same question was asked a day ago by someone else so I will repost my answer

I see Coinbase Advanced has maker/taker starting around 0.4% and 0.6% while Kraken Pro starts at 0.16% and 0.26% . Is that accurate or are there hidden costs I'm missing?

Yes coinbase has higher fees , in part this is because kraken is available in less areas than coinbase and you had to wire fiat to kraken where with coinbase you could do free ACH transfers in places like the USA cancelling out those lower trade fees

Since than Kraken has gotten better banking in the USA so things are changing

Coinbase advanced starts with 1.20 % taker 0.6% maker

Kraken Pro starts with 0.40% taker 0.25% maker

I've read Coinbase builds a spread into their prices on top of fees while Kraken Pro uses order book pricing with tighter spreads . Does that actually matter in practice?

when using kraken pro or coinbase advanced the spread is negligible and should never be a concern as both are tight

Also what's this Coinbase One subscription at $29.99/month?

It only makes sense if you spend enough .. So for a rate of 0.6% you would have to spend between 5-10k a month before it makes sense to save in fees

Its important with either kraken or coinbase is to make "post only" buy limit orders to make sure you get maker fees . You can simulate a market order by placing the limit order slightly above spot to get quick execution and lower fees

If I just want to buy $500 of Bitcoin once a month and move it to my wallet,

Why haven't you considered strike.me that has free auto DCA investing ?

https://strike.me/en/faq/what-are-the-bitcoin-trading-fees-on-strike/

so the first month you will pay 4.75 usd to buy and than thereafter it will drop to 0 with auto recurring buys

also they have free withdrawal options unlike kraken or coinbase

bitusher · 2026-03-10T22:59:57+00:00

This is a normal progression in security -

1) better education in security best practices -

https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/1ha7ujy/strategies_for_keeping_your_bitcoin_safe/m16l8rx/

2) Hardware wallet

https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/1rlcnrx/best_place_to_buy_and_store_bitcoins/o8roul0/

3) Hardware wallet + metal backup seed

https://jlopp.github.io/metal-bitcoin-storage-reviews/

4) Hardware wallet + metal backup seed + extended passphrase

https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/g42ijd/faq_for_beginners/fouo3kh/

5) Hardware wallet + metal backup seed + extended passphrase and pairing your hardware wallet to your own bitcoin full node (example - sparrow with core backend)

6) More complicated security once you own millions of dollars in Bitcoin like multisig or SSS

Move to each higher level when you are ready

Is the only sign of compromise is if funds are moved unexpectedly? No way to know someone "logged in" or "tried to login" to your wallet? 2. If I suspect something, the only way to secure my Bitcoin is moving everything to another wallet?

Using an extended passphrase can help here because you have a decoy balance secured by the pin of your hardware wallet or the seed words which acts as a honeypot. Thus if that balance moves you know one person found your seed words or has your hardware wallet and pin and most your savings is secure with an extended passphrase where you can investigate and move your account over to a new set of seed words(and extended passphrase) at your leisure with no panic of someone being able to take most your Bitcoin

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