Using Coinbase Pro to Avoid Coinbase Fees

So last month I was annoyed to realized that not only was Coinbase Pro nota premium paid version of Coinbase, but was just Coinbase "for the pros" with a less user friendly UI but more features for more advanced users.

Now, first of all, I just want to say that this is absolutely not a paid article or whatever, although I do have an affiliate link at the bottom. No, I have incredibly mixed feelings about Coinbase as a company and pretty consistently make my complaints pretty well known. This is one of those loud complaints of mine.

Why am I complaining about Coinbase Pro when it is free? Well it just seems pretty shady, for one, that they never really advertise the free platform that has significantly lower fees than the other. Obviously it's good for business to advertise the app making more money, but it feels dishonest that they have different fee structures between the two apps in the first place.

I hate Coinbase fees with a seething passion. It often feels like it defeats the entire purpose of crypto when they take between a dollar and five dollars in fees per deposit. I hate these fees so much that I usually find myself buying bitcoin via my CashApp account and then sending the bitcoin to my Coinbase from there. The CashApp fees are more than what Coinbase Pro charges, but significantly lower than what Coinbase charges. I still find myself going the CashApp route most of the time because even with the lower Coinbase Pro fees because for some reason Coinbase (including Pro) insists on holding my funds for 5-7 days after deposit regardless of whether it's been debited or not, which is endlessly frustrating.

Either way, I am dodging quite a lot of fees by completely avoiding the exorbitant fees on Coinbase itself. I'm sure most people in Crypto know how to avoid fees to some extent but I find it incredibly problematic that Coinbase is making so much revenue by taking advantage of people first coming into crypto or those doing so casually, and doing so by design since they go out of their way to market the app with the higher fees. I take issue both with an advertising structure preying off of fabricated ignorance, but also because it is taking advantage of a population we keep telling each other we need in order to go mainstream.

Perhaps rather than putting down those who are less knowledgeable but are interested enough to start venturing in our direction, and taking advantage of their ignorance to make a buck, we embraced these people with open arms and readily shared all of our secrets with them in order to better the community as a whole. Just a thought.