Coinbase will probably be the place you start buying Bitcoin. But it gets old paying such high fees. Let’s save on Coinbase fees.
I want my $3.84. While I understand having to pay fees, but if I buy from Coinbase ten times that’s $38.40. This money could of been invested and maybe doubled.
There is a better way, GDAX. GDAX is owned by Coinbase so if you have a Coinbase account you already have a GDAX account. Follow this and I will show you how to get around the high fees and you will save money.
This will show how to buy and transfer Bitcoin, but the walkthrough can be followed for both Ethereum and Litecoin.
Click the sign in button in the top right and sign in with your Coinbase account log in. If you do not have a Coinbase account click Create Account in the top right. Follow the directions and create an account.
Now let’s go to the BTC market and deposit some USD. The deposit can take 3-5 days to get there.
Click on the Deposit button, from the above picture, and you will get the screen shown below.
Click the Bank Account tab in the top right. From there enter your bank account information. Then in the amount section, enter the amount of USD you want to deposit. When you have the amount entered, click deposit funds. That is it. Now wait for the cash to get deposited.
Alright the cash is deposited in your GDAX account. Below I have circled where it will show up in GDAX. Yes, I have a whole $0.68 in there at the moment.
Now we will purchase some Bitcoin on GDAX with the money that was deposited. The current price of Bitcoin is shown at the top. I have an arrow drawn to it in the picture below.
There are two ways to buy Bitcoin on GDAX. The first way will have 0% fee. Yes, there will be no fee buying bitcoin this way. This is called a Limit Order. You are saying you want to buy Bitcoin at a certain price. So in the above picture the price is $13,206. You would try and buy it for any price below that.
To do a Limit Order, first click the Limit tab. I have it circled below.
Once the Limit tab is selected you will have the screen shown below.
In the Amount section you want to buy how much Bitcoin you want to buy. For Example: 0.01 BTC would equal about $130 as of writing this. It will be different for you. In the Limit Price section you want to put the price you want to buy Bitcoin at. For example: the price is currently $13,206. So you could put $13,201 as the price you want Bitcoin to be for you to buy it. The Total (USD) section shows how much it will cost you in total.
You may have to adjust the amount of BTC to get the Total USD to not be over the total amount of money you have in your GDAX account. Basically the Total USD section can not be more than the amount of cash you have in GDAX.
Now just click Place Buy Order and your order is submitted. If the price of Bitcoin hits your Limit Price of $13,201 your purchase will go through.
If it does not hit that price your purchase will not be made. Depending on what the Bitcoin price does and how long you can wait to get your Bitcoin you may need to cancel the limit order.
To cancel the limit order go to the Open Orders section. Your order will be seen there. From that section you are able to click cancel. Once the order is canceled you can create a new Limite order with different prices.
That is all you need to do to have no fees while purchasing Bitcoin.
The second way to buy will have a fee of 0.25%. A much lower fee than Coinbase. This buy is called a Market Order. You are taking whatever the price of Bitcoin is at the moment and buying it.
To do a Market Order make sure you are on the screen below.
You want to select the Market tab which I have circled. From here we are able to enter the information we need.
In the Amount section you will put how much money you want to spend. It can not be over the amount of USD you have in your GDAX account. The Total (BTC) section shows you how much Bitcoin you will be purchasing with your entered USD amount.
Now remember you are taking the current price of Bitcoin and buying at that price. If you are fine with the current price click Place Buy Order. Your order is now done.
That is it.These are two easy ways that can save you a lot of money if you are buying Bitcoin frequently.