Bitcoin Forum

2 days ago it seems as if coinbase had the same sell and buy price, so how can they make money? and have the prices been changed?

they have a % on every withdrawals, if i'm not mistaken it's 1%

so i guess if there are many that have even a small profit and they send those coins out because they fear that the exchange may be hacked, it would be profitable for the exchange

Amph is right. Coinbase makes their money through fees. Also you'll notice their buy price is always a couple dollars higher than all the exchanges, so if you buy BTC from them you are paying over the current market rate.

And they probably do something with the funds they hold to make them some more money...investing in bonds with fiat or something. They have so much in deposits they have to be doing something with a small fraction of that coin.

I think they get a reward for every arrest made using personal information they supplied to the government. lol

 :D :D
That post is funny because it sounds like it could be true. They are so strict with AML since they want to stay legit with the government.

And thats why I haven't registered with them yet xD.

I was joking but if they ever supplied the information that lead to the arrest and conviction of a most wanted person they really would get a reward. The grand prize jackpot currently is $25 million for Ayman al-Zawahiri.

If/When that happens, let's make sure we find out how much they made...we can post there service thread or something. Then ask them if they get more or less than Xapo.

Now that is funny. It might be true lol

This. :)

Plus they also make a 1% fee on both the buy/sell side on the customers who are more legit. Doesn't sound like much, but those fees can add up overtime and with the amount of volume CoinBase has.

So if you buy or sell $100 worth of BTC, they make a buck. If 10,000 people buy/sell a day, they make $10,000 a day. Plus they probably shave a bit off the spread, i.e. sell to customer A for $230/BTC and buy from customer B for $228/BTC. Sometimes the buy/sell may be the same, but oftentimes is varies a bit where they can eek out a bit more profit.

So using this example not only would they get $2.30 fee from customer A and another $2.28 from customer B, they could make an extra $2.00 from the spread for a profit of $6.58. Not too bad when multiplied out by the number of transactions per day.

https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/1826294-how-do-fees-work-when-buying-or-selling-bitcoins-

The way they are being pushed, trying to be everywhere it doesn't really matter if they are profitable right now. There are already many sites claiming to be bitcoin sites, which are actually Coinbase-only sites (eg. Zapchain). The lock-in will make them money sometime down the line.

100% of exchanges make money from fees, there's no mystery on the business. It's all about getting big traffic, a big userbase and start raking up money throught every single fee they can get away with, that's all. I don't care about their regulation policies or their security, because as soon as I get the coins I put then on my wallet. I trust the protocol, i dont trust any exchange.

Actually, Coinbase doesn't make money.  They lose money.  They are not yet profitable.  They are burning their investors cash. One day, they will have to make money.  But today, the job is to get as many people signed up and in love with the service as possible.  Then, they will live off their fees.  But for now, they still spend more than they make.  Like nearly all bitcoin businesses.

Fast ... and fees to merchand (1%).
Simple.





like Paypal.

You are right there. They have just increased they referral program from $25 to $75 which is a huge increase and very serious amount. There is no way they can earn all this money from fees, but luckily they have a lot of investment money. They have given everything into mass adoption and they have pretty much taken a huge gamble.

They make money from everything. If you buy coins they make money. If you sell coins they make money. If a wealthy elite dump his coins they make money.

I do not think there is a fee to withdraw your bitcoins from one of their wallets.  

But as others have pointed out, there is a % fee (1% I think) as well as a nominal base fee (like .25 USD) when you exchange to or from USD.

They also have a slight spread between their buy and sell prices.  It probably helps that they are famous for cancelling orders due to "suspicious activity" if the market moves against them a lot when you buy or sell.

I didn't realize their financial statements were published, I sort of assumed they were one of the more financially healthy companies, but hadn't seen anything specific.

Good Luck!

1% is a good profit, have you seen exchanges that has only 0.2% and make a good profit (i think) then 1% is x5.
Did you know that you have not to pay tx. fee when you use coinbase to send bitcoins?

I think you don't have to pay tx fees only if you are sending to another Coinbase account. AFAIK you still need to pay for on-chain txs.

LOL.

although they fees is in % like paypal but the fees is not really high like paypal and it's natural i think, although 1% fees every transaction is really good enough for build a branch company.
but i'm not using this :P

For onchain transactions, you don't have to pay the transaction fees [1] unless you are sending a small amount. AFAIK, they do have fees when converting to different currency and trade fees too.

[1]https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/topics/601112-sending-receiving-bitcoin/articles

My bad then, didn't know since I actually don't use Coinbase. But I guess it makes sense if they are controlling all the private keys in the backend to handle everything themselves.

Yes you don't have any private keys so all money stays to them.
Here is an article where is mentioned that they pay the fees.

Does Coinbase pay bitcoin miner fees?[url] (https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/815435-does-coinbase-pay-bitcoin-miner-fees-)

 they make money by the fees when your having transaction to them. it is only a small fee so sometimes you will not notice it.
and i also think they also make money when you buy to them some coins.

I think the opposite. You do not have to pay the transactions fees.
Here is an article where is mentioned that they pay the fees.

Does Coinbase pay bitcoin miner fees? (https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/815435-does-coinbase-pay-bitcoin-miner-fees-)

(y)

This is amazing lol!!!!! CoinBase does also dox its users
All jokes aside though, coinbase does charge a fee

Just wanted to comment. If you decide to buy anything on the dark web. Don't use your coin base account..

There are many good things on the dark web, such as prescriptions. You can save a lot.. But that's just what I've heard ;)

They make money on fees for buys and sells, which a lot of people do many times a day with a lot of coins. Their fees net them a crap ton of money.

coinbase will trace your transaction like gambling
http://cointelegraph.com/news/113207/coinbase-is-tracking-how-users-spend-their-bitcoins

Does the transaction fee increase the speed the transaction will be confirmed or does it have not affect, as coinbase transactions seem to be slower than others with a transaction fee.

you can cashout your bitcoin from coinbase without fee

coin base acts more like a broker dont they?

depending on certain prices, they can delay the honored price. I heard way back some guy on the reddit thread said they held his buy order then released their revised price.

I wish i can find it again to link it here.

I use coinbase too but the transaction speed is normal.

Sometimes the speed is fast sometimes is getting slower, it really depends of the network and the number of transaction at that time.

At the time of  "stress-test" the fee has a big role which affect the speed of transaction to be confirmed.

These are some questionable practices for sure, I'd personally avoid them.

But to stay on topic, how can they not be profitable, they're hugely popular and their 1% fees are pretty high. 

I am surprised to see how much volume the Coinbase Exchange has been doing. It's currently over 13% of all USD volume / relatively close to Bitfinex volume (https://bitcoinaverage.com/markets#USD). I guess all the people who have their banks hooked up just find it more convenient to buy on their exchange even though they charge a 1% fee.

I don't understand one thing with coinbase , how they pay that huge amount per referral . it is really strange for me . their fees are low so how they can afford it ?

I am curious too, in euro market it is if your referral buys 100€ you will get 75€.
I still don't know how they can earn at least 75% from that.
It's known that to buy you should verify some steps like Banks account, Phone number, ID... do they earn by these?

Mmaybe , I don't know
But what I know that they are already famous between betcoin users  . why they need this campaign unless they want to get new people to use bitcoin

They are famous but maybe they are getting loosing their users so they want to promote more to be the #1
There are many competitors like other exchanges so it decrease the number of coinbase users, because of their fees and other verification.
And one thing is that they don't give you the private key so they hold your bitcoins.