DEC 2017 new user experience - USA, Coinbase, blockchain.info, Coinmama

I thought I would take a few minutes to write up and share my experience as a new Bitcoin user in Dec 2017. Much of the information I encountered online was incomplete or incorrect on various topics I researched and others might benefit from my experience. This is from the prospective of a US Resident.

I wanted to do what I thought was a simple task -- converting USD to BTC, and then spending the BTC with a merchant that advertised a product I wanted to buy. It's day 8 of trying to complete this transaction.

* converting USD to BTC *

After researching the options and recommendations of forums and Youtube I decided to use Coinbase to make an initial purchase of Bitcoin. They provided information that ACH transfers had lower fees than credit card so I decided to use ACH. I started the purchase on December 28. Only at the end of the process after committing to the transfer did it inform me the BTC would not be available in my account until an estimated date of January 8. Seeing how volatile the price of Bitcoin was that seemed like a long time to wait to actually have BTC in hand. The BTC was actually deposited on January 4. So, they completed the deposit faster than their estimate but it took much longer than the few days I originally expected.

Lesson learned: don't expect you conversion from USD to BTC to go quickly with Coinbase even though the exchange rate price is frozen at the time you start the transaction. The price could change radically up or down and you could end up with more or less value by the time your new BTC asset actually becomes liquid and you can decide what to do with it.

Lesson learned: after I committed to the ACH transfer, and tripped across the 1-at-a-time limitation I learned that the transfer would have been instant (but more expensive) if I'd used a credit card.

Coinbase charged a transfer fee in USD that was deducted from the amount originally transferred. I'd planned for this by transferring more than my intended merchant purchase required but at the time I did not realize there were additional fees to transfer funds from one BTC address to another.

Lesson learned: when you choose the amount to convert from USD to BTC, if you plan to transfer any of it from coinbase to other wallets you own or merchants be sure to convert extra. Budget $20-30 for each transfer from wallet to wallet you're going to make across the BTC network. In my case the price of BTC went up from the start of the process to the time I spent, but if it hadn't I would have needed to convert more USD to BTC to complete my intended transaction.

Coinbase also locked my account as a new customer to having only one concurrent transfer in progress. This meant if I'd estimated low I would have to waited for my initial ACH bank transfer to complete before I could start a second one with ACH or credit card. To prepare for this scenario I created an account with a second transfer company (coinmama) with the results detailed later.

* transferring from Coinbase to gdax *

There was a recommendation to transfer your funds form Coinbase to their gdax division if you wanted to send funds off site and that the transfer would be instant between the two. In my experience the information about instant transfer was correct.

gdax did (surprisingly) want me to upload pictures of the front and back of my ID and to take a webcam photo with laptop before I could do any transactions even thought I already had a working Coinbase account. The process didn't work with iPhone. It did work with a Windows 10 laptop. Once submitted the verification process took about 15 min, in the time range they promised.

* transferring from Coinbase to another wallet - how long did it take? *

I wanted to transfer some of the funds i had in coinbase to a blockchain.info wallet. I wanted to buy something from a merchant who had a list of wallets they recommended working with one of which was blockchain. I figured out how to make the wallet. The Coinbase FAQ indicated the transfer should take 30-60 minutes to an external wallet. There were all kinds of warnings about things taking "longer than usual" but no info about what to expect and no progress indication from start to finish. It actually took 12 hours not 0.5-1h . Most of that time Coinbase's site listed the transaction in "pending" state but it was not listed on any of the sites that allow you to view the blockchain like blockcypher.com.

* I tried making an account on coinmama as a second way to convert USD to BTC although their fees are higher than Coinbase. On the internet it said your could convert < USD 150 to BTC with out ID verification. This info was not correct - ID verification is apparently required for converting any amount. I started the verification process on Dec 28. They wanted a pic of the front and back of my ID and a photo to their spec which I submitted on Dec 28. I did receive an automated email that they were working though their manual queue of verification requests. It's Jan 5 and they still have not completed the verification process.

I'll post again later with anything else useful I learn. Hopefully this helps someone else new have a better idea what to expect.