Is Coinbase One worth it? 1 Week Review.

Coinbase One is a new feature from Coinbase for $30 a month (first month free) that offers free trades, priority customer support and up to 1M in insurance on your crypto.

Priority Customer Support: To my knowledge, Coinbase's standard customer support is non-existent. So to actually have customer support is a step up. They refer to it as "priority" support.

I decided to test it out so I actually called them the first day I enrolled and was thrilled that I only had to wait about 2 minutes before I had a live, native English-speaking agent on the line.

She was nice and answered most of my questions, however, there were a few she didn't know the answer to. She seemed kind of green, which I can forgive since it's such a new service. She didn't seem like someone who was into crypto in her private life. She also told me that she works for a call center, not Coinbase. So I don't really know how much we can expect to get from them support-wise.

It seemed like they were more there just to take case notes and answer only basic questions, but I could be wrong. I'm going to call a few more times over the next couple weeks to test and I will report back.

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$1,000,000 Crypto Insurance: To me this is huge! Like many people, my biggest fear is getting hacked and losing my crypto. I've long waited for a platform that offered some kind of insurance. I know that CDC recently began offering it, but they are not available in New York so I'm out of luck. Yes, I know I should self-custody, and maybe I will some day, but for now I feel much more comfortable having my crypto insured.

As far as making a claim goes, the process is pretty straight-forward. You have to completed all your KYC, including photo i.d. You must have been a customer for at least 30 days. And if you experience a loss, you must file a report with Coinbase, answer any question they may have, and file a police report. You also have to have 2FA set up with an authenticator app, not SMS.

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No Trading Fees: I was really excited about this too, until I learned that it only applies to market orders. Limit orders are not eligible. I was afraid I'd lose money on the spread so I decided to test it out. For my test I opened two windows, one of Coinbase and one of Coinbase Pro. I set the amount to $25 and strangely enough, the Coinbase orders gave me a better deal than the CP! Not by much though.

For example, $25 on Coinbase with no fee got me 0.0005295BTC, while $25 on Coinbase Pro got me 0.0005124, plus a $0.15 fee. I've tested it a few times and so far have gotten similar results.

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Conclusion: Is it worth it?

It depends a few things. How much crypto do you buy each month? I try to save form $500-$1,000 per month. On Coinbase Pro, $1,000 worth of BTC would cost me $6 in fees.

Since the first month of Coinbase One is fee, I'm going to continue testing it out this month before I make a final decision. I plan on calling customer support a few times just to test the wait times, the quality of service and the knowledge of the staff.

Lastly, for me personally, the insurance is the real value proposition. Having that piece of mind helps me sleep easier, not to mention actual customer support. When I deduct what I would have spent on fees, it brings the price down to $24 a month for the Coinbase One service. So that's worth it to me, but maybe not to a lot of people who may only spend a few hundred or less each month.