I'm a long term investor. I'm making this part of my retirement plan. I'm slowly moving a small percentage of my investment/retirement portfolio into Bitcoin and a few other "blue chip" alt coins, putting them into cold storage, and forgetting about them.
First off, I did my research and found CoinBase to be a reputable company, and I like that they supply litecoin and etherium directly, too, so I don't have to pay additional premiums to shapeshift them.
But in the downside, I'm limited to how much I can buy a week, and fees are a killer. If I buy $150 in Bitcoin, I get a $5.98 purchase fee, and my Debit card companies charges me a $4.68 international fee, then there is a $2-3 fee to transfer the Bitcoin to my control.
All totaled, it costs me $160.66 to get about $147.5 to my wallet. That puts my investment about 9% in the hole from day 1. And since the fees are mostly percentage based, larger purchases wouldn't solve the problem.
I get that in 20-30 years if Bitcoin continues to grow I might be laughing at myself for worrying about $13 in fees per transaction, but they add up and are pretty significant... so I have to ask if there is a better way purchase bitcoins with dollars?
Thanks.