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Comment by anilshanbhag | Hacker News Reader

Coinbase makes a killing with their fees. The spread between the buy and sell prices on coinbase are 1-1.2%. On top, their bank transfer charges are proportional to amount transferred instead of standard flat fee. I wonder why they need another $100M !

For people who want to buy, I would recommend Kraken - they have much higher volume and sane pricing. There are others too like Bitfinex, Poloneix, etc.

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It's important to note that Coinbase also operates an exchange, GDAX, that anyone can get access to. The fees for limit orders on GDAX are currently 0%, and there are no transaction fees for withdrawal (at least on USD->Bank account or BTC withdrawals). I'm not sure if GDAX has any deposit fees.

Buying/selling directly on Coinbase is merely for convenience, and obviously you're going to pay for that convenience. I'm glad that Coinbase offers that option, because there are a lot of people for whom the fees are worth the ease of use.

But if you're one of those people for whom the fees aren't worth it, and you want to get your hands dirty, by all means use GDAX and pay no fees at all.

No deposit or withdrawal fees for GDAX, and it's instant to move funds to/from Coinbase wallets.

the fees for market making orders is 0% other orders is about 0.25% (better if you are trading more). market making is when you place an order that is not instantaneously filled.

I was wondering the same thing. At the volume GDAX is processing ($100M/day [0]) they should be making $100M in gross profit every year [1].

[0] https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/#gdax [1] $100M * 0.0025 = $250K /day, or almost $91M per year.

There is currently a 0% fee for "market making," or when you do a limit buy/sell. The 0.3% fee only applies when you make a market transaction (instantly filled) [0].

[0]: https://www.gdax.com/fees/ETH-USD

One of the two parties is paying the market-making, the other the market taking fee. So for every transaction, there is always a 0% + 0.3% total commission for Gdax.

(note, large customers get a discount on the taker fee, so I went with 0.25% on average)

> their bank transfer charges are proportional to amount transferred instead of standard flat fee.

I don't think that is true. From everything I've seen they only charge a nominal fee of 15 cents to do an ACH transfer.

There is a $0.15 minimum in the US, but they will take the max of that or 1.49% (to a bank account) [1]. Different countries and output methods vary, but most are proportional to the amount transferred.

[1]: https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/210...

The fee is not on the transfer, but on the conversion.

ACH deposit to USD wallet is free. Converting that USD to BTC or ETH is where the fee comes in. (Why one would want to deposit USD at Coinbase and leave it there, though, is another question...)

You deposit on Coinbase and the transfer to Gdax where you can place post only limit orders which have zero fee

Right, I just learned of GDAX. I have money at Coinbase and will be taking advantage of this in the future! Thanks for confirming what I heard.

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