Are you thinking about getting started with Bitcoin? Let’s get you a good footing for your first excursion into the world of cryptocurrency.
Beginners with Bitcoin should start with exchanges like Binance, Kucoin, or Gate.io. Other exchanges that are good for beginners are Gemini, Kraken, and BitYard. For the best investment, look for an exchange with low trading fees, an understandable UI, customer support, and fund insurance.
When you invest in anything, you should be aware of the risks involved, but those risks can be hard to gauge when you’re just getting started. That’s why buying Bitcoin through the right exchange for you is important: it can teach you important things about buying Bitcoin and help you do so safely and securely. Here are some of the best places to purchase bitcoin.
Binance
Binance can be a good place to start, especially if you don’t have any experience with other cryptocurrencies. Its trading platforms are easy to navigate compared to other trading platforms. If you’ve never used a trading platform before, it might take you a bit to learn how it works, but if you’ve traded other cryptocurrencies before, it’ll be a piece of cake for you to understand.
This exchange has low trading fees, especially when compared to other exchanges of the same caliber. The taker fee isn’t the lowest on this list, but it’s not much higher. They support a wide array of cryptocurrencies, so you don’t have to limit yourself to Bitcoin.
These low fees, along with their large selection of supported cryptocurrencies, make Binance one of the most popular crypto exchanges in the world, and traders of all experience levels make use of it.
Binance.US
Users in the U.S. will be redirected to Binance.US, which split off from Binance in 2019. It’s not available to all U.S. residents, but it is accessible to many of them. More specifically, its platform is not available in Hawaii, New York, Texas, or Vermont. Binance.US doesn’t offer as many cryptocurrencies as Binance, but it’s still one of the world’s top 10 exchanges.
In Binance.US, Tier 0 trades have zero trading fees. Other trades are either Tier I or Tier II, which have different fees since trades in those tiers have less stability than Tier 0 trades.
Binance.US has less thorough educational materials than its parent company, but that’s not to say it’s lacking. In fact, Binance.US encourages its users to go through with the educational material by offering rewards for completing courses.
Some other important factors that make a good exchange platform are the ability to use staking platforms and the security of assets. Binance.US excels with both. Its staking platforms are among the best in the world, and its security ranks high as well.
One thing that could be a problem for inexperienced crypto traders is that they don’t offer customer service over the phone. if you need help with something, you will have to go through the slow process of sending your request through their ticket system or email, and then waiting for a response instead of getting immediate help over the phone.
That can be an issue if your issue is time-sensitive, but you’re not likely to find better customer service among other crypto exchanges of Binance.US’s size, so the lower fees might make up for this drawback, and if you have an issue, you should send them your question as soon as possible, and then start researching it yourself if it’s an urgent problem.
KuCoin
If you’re looking for volume, Kucoin is the place to look. It’s one of the 10 largest crypto exchanges in the world. It has over 600 tradable coins available, it offers discounts on trading fees based on the volume of your account, and the trading fees are already competitively low.
KuCoin is based in Seychelles, and it’s a popular choice for users in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
Trade discounts are based on your average monthly holdings of KuCoin Token (KCS), which is KuCoin’s native token.
If you’re based in the U.S., one thing you’ll need to be aware of is that KuCoin is not licensed in the U.S., which means you won’t be able to verify your account, and that will limit your access to certain features. This makes trading with KuCoin from the U.S. riskier, as accounts through the U.S. don’t get the same fraud and hacking protection as verified ones get.
However, KuCoin offers margin trading features, making it one of the few exchanges that allow U.S. investors to use such features. It also offers futures trading features, and it accepts credit cards and debit cards.
KuCoin’s crypto assets are secured by Onchain Custodian, a security platform based in Singapore, and backed by a private insurance brokerage called Lockton. KuCoin did have a major hacking incident in 2020, but they recovered most of the stolen assets, and the rest were compensated for by KuCoin’s insurance.
Gate.io
Compared to the platforms we’ve already discussed, and the ones we have yet to cover, Gate.io doesn’t have much going for it. It’s not available in the U.S. or Canada, and its features are greatly limited to people in the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Italy. This is a recent change due to regulatory adjustments that Gate.io could not adhere to.
One major advantage Gate.io has over other exchanges is the sheer number of tradable coins it has. It offers over 1400 tradable coins. This makes it a good place to look for more obscure coins. Those in the European countries stated above can only use spot trading, but users in other countries can use its margin, lending, and staking features.
Gate.io’s fees aren’t the lowest on this list, but they’re still competitive, and they offer discounts on the fees based on how much GateToken you hold in your account. GateToken (GT) is Gate.io’s native crypto token, and the more of it you hold, the lower the maker and taker fees get, and if you pay for spot trades with GT, you get a more impressive discount.
On the downside, beginners to cryptocurrency may find it difficult to operate the interface, and you can’t deposit fiat currency to buy crypto directly from the platform.
Kraken
Kraken, or Kraken Pro to be more specific, is an excellent exchange platform, combining low trading fees with high-end security. To reach Kraken Pro, you’ll just have to speed through the Instant Buy platform, which is the beginner platform. While the Instant Buy platform is certainly beginner-friendly to use, the fees to use it are very high.
If you go for Kraken, don’t spend too much time using Instant Buy, and get to Kraken Pro as quickly as you can. You will have to wait for your documents to be reviewed manually before that happens, but it’s worth the wait to get past the steep fees of Instant Buy.
Once you get to Kraken Pro, you can take advantage of its competitive trading fees and its advanced trading features, including staking and margin trading.
Kraken offers a wide range of educational material, giving you the opportunity to study crypto and learn the best ways to handle it.
They also have customer service options that rival some of the best exchanges on this list, making it easier for you to get help when you need it.
A couple of important things to note is that Kraken only accepts eight fiat currencies, and it’s not available to residents of New York or Washington.
BitYard
BitYard is a relatively new exchange, and it’s taken steps to be widely available across the globe, with trading services provided to more than 150 countries. It’s one of the few exchanges with licenses in Australia, Singapore, and all 50 states of the U.S.
However, it doesn’t have a great number of available currencies. It only has 45 tradable coins. But if you just want to stick to Bitcoin, then that shouldn’t be a problem. You can start out with classic trading, and then move on to more advanced trading. They don’t offer crypto staking, which is a shame, but they do offer leveraged tokens and margin trading.
It’s a good choice for beginners because it has a user-friendly interface. You can use the exchange to research and buy crypto with your account, and then convert one currency to another right on the website, which is accessible both on their mobile app and desktop.
They have competitive trading fees, with a 0.1% maker fee and a 0.1% taker fee. That’s about as low as a good exchange gets unless you count KuCoin’s discount program. That makes BitYard one of the best exchange platforms to use if you’re only looking for low trading fees.
One major disadvantage, especially for beginners with Bitcoin, is that Bityard doesn’t offer much more than its interface in terms of helping you figure out how it works. They have a minimal amount of educational material, so you won’t be able to get a comprehensive understanding of working with crypto from their website, and their customer service is only through email.
So, it can be a good place to start because of the easy interface and low fees, but you’re going to want to explore other exchanges and learn more about crypto from them instead of sticking solely to BitYard.
Gemini
While Gemini has slightly higher fees than other exchanges we’ve discussed, its interface is incredibly simple and easy to use, making it the most beginner-friendly exchange of all of them. If you’re looking for an exchange that’s convenient and easy to use, the higher fees might be worth it to you, at least while you’re getting started and still learning how to trade crypto.
Speaking of learning, Gemini will give you access to everything you need to know about crypto topics. You can use its “Cryptopedia” to study and learn all about cryptocurrency. It can teach you advanced crypto trading strategies, and it can keep you up to date on news about the world of decentralized finance.
Then, when you’ve built your confidence in your ability to trade cryptocurrency, you can take the skills and strategies you’ve learned and apply them to another exchange with lower fees.
Gemini also features strong security measures to keep your assets safe. The last thing you want when you’re starting out is to lose everything because of a hole in the system, but that won’t happen when you use Gemini.
One of the problems with Gemini is the fee structure. Unless you’re spot trading, the fee structure can be complicated and difficult to understand and maneuver. On top of that, they don’t have the best customer service.
So, while it’s a good idea to start with Gemini, you should only stay with it long enough to learn how crypto works and gain some experience, and then you should start looking for a better exchange where you can continue your crypto practice at a less expensive rate, though you will need to learn how to use a new, more complicated interface when you do so.
Crypto.com
Crypto.com is a good choice if you can buy crypto with cash from your bank account. They offer trades at no fee at all when you use cash. Credit and debit transactions are subject to a very high fee of 4%, but those fees are easily avoidable if you fund your account with cash.
Those absent fees make it possible for you to make your first purchase of Bitcoin for $1 or less. The minimum may be greater for other cryptocurrencies, but you can buy as little as you want and not worry about how the fees will cut into it. That makes it easy to get your foot into the door of cryptocurrency.
Crypto.com works best on mobile devices. Its services aren’t all available on desktop, at least not if you’re based in the U.S., and it’s not available at all in New York.
It offers chat-based customer service, which isn’t as good as phone-supported customer service, but it’s certainly better than one that’s restricted to email.
