Someone explain to me how my nocoiner but bitcoin curious friend is curious about buying bitcoin through coinbase.
How does coinbase capture noobs? Paid ads? They watch too much Fox News? Where does this come from?
Discussion
marketing. and news. which is also marketing lol
For me when I was an early shitcoiner, the initial attraction to Coinbase was the similarity to Robinhood. What's kind of funny is the Coinbase feature to earn by "educating yourself about the difference tokens" was a big part of how I was orange-pilled.
"Wait a minute, they all say they are 'decentralized', but what does that really mean?'" 🤔
Word of mouth. Coinbase is widely used by normies and even non-normies. Coinbase is simple to use and you can purchase Bitcoin easily with a debit or credit card. It's a regulated corporation so your Bitcoin will be safe on there. It's good for beginners.
Once they learn through Coinbase, you can help them move away from Coinbase and understand self custody.
Where else they gonna buy Bitcoin? those shady P2P websites?
There are a ton of other ways to buy bitcoin.
Coinbase had a first mover advantage meaning it was created near the beginning and they still haven't ran away with anyone's Bitcoin so the exchange has a good reputation and will continue to get bigger.
So if a new exchange comes out it has to build it's reputation before otherwise move away from Coinbase or new users start using other exchanges.
It's about trust and reputation. Coinbase has it.
Yeah, it’s been around a long time, true
I only recommend Coinbase and Shakpay for noobs because those 2 exchanges haven't stolen anyone's Bitcoin and it's important to recommend something easy and trustable so noobs can learn. Last thing you want is them getting their money stolen and they aren't smart enough to self custody although it is getting easier but you still need a way for them to easily convert their fiat to Bitcoin.
Self custody is the 2nd step…
There was like almost no exchanges when I first learned about Bitcoin so self custody was my first step, and using sketchy websites to buy Bitcoin is what I had to do, It wasn't easy. Much easier now.
Ok so does coinbase allow self custody at all? This makes it look like it doesn’t (from the App Store)
They don’t offer self custody. They keep the btc.
That’s scary 😱
Very.
cant you just send it to a different wallet?
Oof. Maybe the normie appeal is “someone else is taking care of it and I don’t need to learn wallets.”
Yes, you can send it out, but they don’t advertise that they say, “just keep it with us, it’s safer” and that’s BS.
If you do need to go through an exchange to buy BTC. At least use one that promotes getting it off the exchanges and one that doesn’t push Shitcoins on its customers.
I don't think they do. I haven't really searched for it.
My strategy is and what I tell noobs to do is buy a little bit on Coinbase or ShakePay every month, learn and understand how an exchange works. Once you have about 1000k USD worth of Bitcoin. I will teach them to download a self custody app and transfer their Bitcoin to the app.
The problem is if they buy like 20 USD of Bitcoin and transfer it right away to a self custody app they fees are ridiculous because you can't control the mining fee or other fees on Coinbase. Exchanges have the highest fees because they don't want customers waiting days for their Bitcoin or arrive.
Maybe there is exchanges now that you can self custody right away on their website? If you know any, tell us.
I don't even know many other exchanges because my Coinbase strategy is good enough for me and the Coinbase fees aren't that high comparing to new exchanges.
Better propaganda
I somehow avoided it, wouldn’t recommend it. What’s the best normie-friendly way to tell normies to buy bitcoin so they are empowered to learn and I’m not hand holding. She’s gonna go down her own rabbit hole and hopefully not find too much bad info. But if she’s attracted to coinbase, she’s gonna think it’s like stonks.
Let them ask better questions. I think it's more educational if they do it by themselves. If you guide them by the hand all the way they'll take it for granted and get reckless later on.
I think it’s a rite of passage to fuck it up when you get started. It’s up to her what she does… I’m def not a hand holder.
What’s so wrong about coinbase?
Easy to use, you can get a debit card to spend bitcoin and get .5% back in btc, credit card is coming, 4% interest on just holding usdc there, if you want to gamble on shitcoins/nfts you can, yeah it’s fully kyc/aml but it works.
Well, the kyc. I’ve never used it, so I wouldn’t recommend it. I will not encourage anyone to touch usdc, shitcoins, or nfts and other bullshit
Do you have a kyc/aml bank account? What is the difference between that and coinbase?
Yes and I don’t trust any of them
But none the less you still do?
Again what’s the difference between them?
I’ve had a lot of really bad experiences with banks, nonetheless I still use them. Would be great if all the Bitcoin financial products could replace banks for good, but even those are still chained to banks. We will get there. Sigh. Someday.
The goal is a day when all banks are obsolete.
Couldn’t agree more!
Coinbase is a hard pass. Not onboarding anyone with that pos
Amen. I was never a fan, always seemed smarmy to me run by smarmy people
Absolutely.
But normies don’t know this so… 🤷♀️
We just have to help where we can with education.
At this point, there’s at least plenty of info out there. The finance bro end of things is not at all my interest in bitcoin. I prefer the tech side to the finance bro side. I’m pretty unfamiliar with what options are being presented to the normies at this point.
They’re the robinhood of digital assets.