Page 1 of 2

Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2018 4:48 am
by alim
TLDR: Coinbase won't accept SEPA confirmation in £, looking for alternatives. Answers gratefully received.

I love that Prohasing has been ProActive and found a way to pay out in BitCoin through Coinbase.

Coinbase are a highly reputable company and I believe one of the most innovative. Right now, I am gutted that the company in which I placed my trust (and pay hefty commissions to) has a major gap in their service.

For UK bank account holder ONE KEY FAIL is that IF you do not have a EURO account, you cannot never get £££ out of Coinbase. If you want cash, you have to pay your bank £15 (cheapest I found) to send a confirmation in Euros.

In a nutshell, Coinbase have written off some 20 Million ++ potential customers (noting that about 20% of all EU financial services jobs are in the UK). That market is there for the taking.

I seek Alternatives:
  • ]
  • Litecoin Local - seems legit - I'm looking for other options.
  • Revolut may become an option when they get a banking licence.
How can I find others? Any recommendataions?

Re: Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2018 6:41 am
by alim
I have persevered with Barclays. I'm going to Pay It Forward in the hopes that someone else might be Successful on their First Experience.

Barclays: If you use the online/mobile app you can send a payment for free (minimum £1 send).

It has literally taken all the time since I posted this to get the verification payment to go through because Barclays' international payment process is broken, I have tried to make a £1 payment more than 50 times.

The issue is that Barclays guarantee a rate for 90 seconds.

How to increase your chances of success:

1. Log into the pin sentry/mobile pin sentry and on the respond screen/page.

2. As soon as you Get the Exchange rate, type the 8 digit number slowly enough that their system doesn't drop input.
3. Then type in the pin sentry number.

4. & 5. THEN you need to press the CONFIRM button TWICE (scrolling down the page for the 2nd time. THAT is when the Payment process begins.

Should the exchange rate change (assume only if it go against you), the transaction will fail and you need to start from the . The two advisers in Manila say they did nothing, but I suspect they assisted by getting the payment through quickly just to get me off the phone.


IBAN/BIC: If you are looking for the IBAN Generator tool for Barclays, do not look on the International Settlements page as their Help page directs. Rather, search on Google - you don't need to be logged into your account/find a statement. You do need the sort code and account number. The BIC code can be found on the internet.

Re: Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 3:02 pm
by Darzl
Hi Guys,

I found this recently through reddit London Block Exchange lbx.com they are UK based and transfer from a UK account. They only have an iPhone app at the moment but the android and Web page is due soon.

You will need to upload, bank statement, form of id and holding id with a selfie.

They have 3 membership tiers

Standard free which has an higher withdrawal 2.45%
Premium £10 a month 0.95% withdrawal
And corporate which I haven't looked at

They are making a referral program in a week or so but don't mind if it helps someone now ;) if it works out send a penny or two
Ldarrenum1g7SiD3CswBU65xQKuJhomYoP

Re: Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 7:18 pm
by alim
Darzl wrote:They have 3 membership tiers

Standard free which has an higher withdrawal 2.45%
Premium £10 a month 0.95% withdrawal
And corporate which I haven't looked at
Darzl wrote:
This seems quite high. EG giving 3% of £1000 is £30, so the "best option" is £10/month + 1% which would be £20 minimum.

I will wait until they build their fees page which is surprisingly blank.

Re: Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 2:16 am
by Darzl
alim wrote:
This seems quite high. EG giving 3% of £1000 is £30, so the "best option" is £10/month + 1% which would be £20 minimum.

I will wait until they build their fees page which is surprisingly blank.
It's better than I had recently when I did a test trade with a Dutch company, I sold 1 ltc when it was at £106 and by the time it got to my bank 3 days later I received £98 that's a 7.5% loss

Re: Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 2:30 am
by alim
Darzl wrote:
alim wrote:
This seems quite high. EG giving 3% of £1000 is £30, so the "best option" is £10/month + 1% which would be £20 minimum.

I will wait until they build their fees page which is surprisingly blank.
It's better than I had recently when I did a test trade with a Dutch company, I sold 1 ltc when it was at £106 and by the time it got to my bank 3 days later I received £98 that's a 7.5% loss
Take your point - on small trades, if the 3% includes the selling commission, then it does not look so bad. I hate the high commissions on Coinbase, so I have not yet withdrawn cash, but will test it shortly.

Thanks for the input.

Re: Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 2:52 am
by Darzl
The 7.5% loss was due to my bank converting from the euro payment and I guess it will be the same for coinbase when its transferred from one of their European banks. I am not certain why LBX charge so much for a technically free service in the UK but I might ask the question through their support pages

Re: Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 3:42 am
by Darzl
I found another way to transfer earnings to the UK https://transferwise.com/u/darrenw139

Borderless account, have a UK, US and EU account so transfer coins to coinbase transfer to new US account, transfer with 0.35% fee to UK account with market rate exchange and then 50p transfer to UK bank. Also you can get a debit card and spend directly up to £200 a month free. Simple :)

EDIT: even though I set up a US account because my original account with coinbase was registered as UK I had to add a EU account which was straight forward, just add a few euro send with verification details from coinbase and cheaper money transfer.

I will wait for LTC price to go up and transfer out to the bank to see what it costs.

EDIT2: OK that put a stop to it, when adding a recipient they recognised the bank and said this "Unfortunately TransferWise is unable to support payments for Bitcoin or other Cryptocurrency Services"

EDIT3: OK so back to https://anycoindirect.eu/en but now being able to transfer to a EU account in EUR via transferwise and then transferring to the UK one and then to my bank, hopefully the exchange will be OK and again I will wait for the price of LTC to go back up before I test.

Re: Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 9:09 am
by wonderminer
Do you need trading platform or new broker only? There are wonderful P2P marketplaces like LocalBitcoins or Paxful where you can easily buy/sell major crypto (BTC, mostly) in local currency. For trading, honestly, idk other reputable exchanges similar to Coinbase. Hope, this will help.

Re: Alternatives to Coinbase in the UK (and you are not a WHALE)

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2018 2:55 am
by Rundgau
As for me, cex might fit you best. The site allows paying for crypto with credit/debit cards, wire transfers or Crypto Capital. Exchange supports GBP, for sure. You can check the key features via cex.io review here https://www.katiewager.org/cexio-review and compare this platform with all recommended by others. Be ready to find negative reviews from people who don’t like high fees but that’s ok. CEX.IO utilizes Fill-or-Kill procedure, which guarantees the best price, so they charge extra fees for convenience. Apart from listed on the site, there’s a standard 7% fee included in the price on the main page («Buy/Sell» section). Check trading screens to find more coin pairs and better value such fees are ok to you. In case if you have any questions, feel free to ask me.