This is an anonymous post from an Elpha member.

What's your favorite platform for investing in cryptocurrency? Vote: Coinbase🔵 Robinhood✅ Webull🌀 Kraken💜 Gemini👗 Something Else🤔

Shirleen84·May 09, 2021

Posted in:Advice Resources Vendors & Products Money

I'm not looking to trade often - just looking to buy & hold long-term to diversify my portfolio (would be investing 1% of assets in my portfolio). Would continue to dollar-cost average in 1% of what I invest in the market. I would ideally want to do it from within Fidelity or Vanguard but I guess that's not possible yet. Priorities would be low fees and good customer service.I haven't opened up any account(s) yet, so would love to get everyone else's perspective! Please comment if you have experiences or opinions to share.

teresaman·May 09, 2021

A quick note - changed your emojis so that there's a match in the reactions! :)

renaobrien·May 19, 2021

@shirleen84 while the emoji responses are a great idea, ultimately with financial advice you're going to miss out on the most important aspect - information for you to make an informed decision about your money.You're asking about where to put your money in an increasingly volatile market - and I can assure you that anyone you ask (myself included) will have some sort of bias. With that being said, I broke down some of my opinions below for you, I hope this helps (and well aware that it falls in the 'nobody asked' category :D) Coinbase - you're going to pay higher fees unless you use pro, but it's incredibly user friendly. Parking assets or not - buyer beware that they have had some issues in the past during the peaks and the platform suddenly "going down" (in other words, assets we're skyrocketing and nobody could sell) .Robinhood - Nope. Nope. No. They should be shut down and boycotted. I will never recommend anyone to them. While all the other options are also centralized, to me, Robinhood represents the worst of the institutions. Webull - Limited experience, I have the app for tracking purposes only, but I would say that there isn't an all in one (fiat x crypto) portfolio that's done it right yet, and Webull has been accused of some manipulation. Kraken - Always enjoyed using Kraken, easy on/off ramp for getting my money into my bank account, lots of good trading options too. Their fees kind of suck.Gemini - This may be my top pick. With Gemini in the US I believe that you can not only purchase and hold but also pool for interest. In the long term this could be a good option. I'm Canadian so I have a Blockfi account for interest and a bit on other exchanges (Binance being one) - I haven't used Gemini for a couple of years so can't really speak to the fees or user experience. One thing I'm going to write in all caps - NOT YOUR KEYS, NOT YOUR CRYPTO. With any of these exchanges, you don't actually own the crypto sitting on it. Until it's in a cold wallet, you don't own it. Period. A couple of years back it was definitely more of an issue in the crypto wild west, however it's always wise to DYOR. Get a spreadsheet, create columns for the exchange (and a cold wallet), average fees, minimum transaction amounts, average to transfer in/out of the bank and the assets that you want to be able to hold. This will give you an overview and help you to make the most informed decisions!I hope some of this is helpful, and please let me know if you have any questions!

Shirleen84·May 20, 2021

Thank you for this! I was hoping to spark a discussion and not just the voting, so I really appreciate all of the detail.Based on all of the research and opinions I could find, I ended up opening a Coinbase account and immediately then opening a Coinbase Pro account to be able to access the lower 50bps fees. I am genuinely shocked that the leading crypto exchange doesn't track your cost basis for you! What a bizarre interface. I'll definitely HAVE to create an Excel spreadsheet.Already experienced the Coinbase trading blackout issue you described. I was simply attempting to login when the price dropped (I could've potentially bought more), but even Coinbase Pro was temporarily down during the crash today. To be fair, Kraken and Gemini had the same problems this morning so there doesn't seem to be a "good" option.As far as asset storage, I'll likely be purchasing a hardware wallet. Is there a brand you recommend? Won't this thing itself become obsolete and unusable one day? (As an alternative, are there ANY software wallets that are good?) It's so strange that the recommended strategy is effectively "hide it under your mattress." Wild west indeed.Will also be diversifying across exchanges per other advice received by those who responded here. Have you tried Kraken Pro? It looks like their fees are only 16-26bps for small $ value trades. Gemini I agree seems nice, but their fees look crazy high. Binance.us has come up a lot too and their fees seem reasonable if you live in one of the states where you can use it.The thing I don't like about Blockfi is that you could be earning a bunch of interest that you need to pay taxes on, but then the crypto markets could crash and you've lost all of your principal but are still paying taxes on the random interest you earned. It seems like the worst of both worlds to me: volatility with tax obligations. I'll be interested in it when I can do it in my Roth IRA, haha.It quickly became clear that Robinhood doesn't make sense since you aren't buying the crypto assets. And I guess no one here actually uses Webull, so they must have just been advertising a lot in Reddit the week I posted this 😃

renaobrien·May 28, 2021

For asset storage - because I've worked in crypto I have both Trezor and Ledger wallets. Mostly use my Ledger. The reason to have cold storage is none other than security. Anything that sits on an exchange is NOT YOUR MONEY (apologies for caps, no other formatting available to underscore the importance of this fact). Software wallets are prone to bugs, hacks and bad actors. Think of it as having a handy leather wallet with BTC in it, under your bed with a passphrase only you know, vs having a file on your phone, connected to the internet 'acting' as a wallet. Again, we've come a long way, but after being in crypto for years, I'm always wary. :)

Shirleen84·Jun 17, 2021

What are the reasons you use your Ledger more often than your Trezor?Also, if I KNOW I'm the kind of person who loses physical things (such as a leather wallet under my bed), is there anything I could do instead of keeping the hardware wallet myself? For example, having the financial advisor I already pay keep it in a lockbox for me? That was the main appeal of the software wallet.

renaobrien·Jun 17, 2021

No real reason at all, purely arbitrary. I like the size of the Ledger. And yep, whatever works to keep you from losing it. But remember to keep your keys separate!