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Comment by sp821543 | Hacker News Reader

From coinbase TOS:

You acknowledge that the quoted Buy Price Conversion Rate may not be the same as the Sell Price Conversion Rate at any given time, and that Coinbase may add a margin or “spread” to the quoted Conversion Rate.

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If that's in the GDAX TOS, it's an unnecessary disclaimer. The best Bid and Ask are by definition not the same price, otherwise one or the other order would have been at market and matched against the other, and there is always a non-zero spread between the two.

Coinbase is not an exchange, it is a direct seller. Gdax is the exchange.

Same TOS

I'm having trouble locating it but it is the same for Gdax except that it is individual market makers who make the spread and not coinbase itself.

Thank you for the clarification.

I like how they say "may add"... haha, they always add it! I assume they're talking about the GDAX order book but if you watch the live coinbase price data on tradingview.com and try to buy bitcoin on casebase at the exact same time, it's always a little higher on coinbase.com (about 0.5% higher from my experience). I wouldn't mind if they weren't also charging an additional ~4% fee on top of that.

So that's more fee than the worst wire transfer or credit card currency exchange?

Definitely more than a wire transfer, but I'm not sure where else to buy with a credit card at a lower fee. Buying instantly at a known price is much better than a wire transfer that comes through in 2-3 days -- who knows what the price will be when it comes through!

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