How to Invest with Coinbase: A 15-Minute Beginner's Guide (2026)

[00:01] If you're looking to get into the crypto investing space in 2026, Coinbase is one of the best apps out there for this. I've personally been using them [music] for years now, talking about them here on YouTube and over on my blog,

[00:13] We're going to do a quick start guide to Coinbase here in about 15 minutes, to know to get started. But if you're looking for a full guide, check out my

[00:25] video in the corner, which is a much more comprehensive Coinbase walkthrough. Real quick, make sure you drop a like for the YouTube algorithm and hit that subscribe button for me because a lot of time and research went into making this

[00:37] video happen. With that said, let's jump into my Coinbase account now and talk about the best part, how you can get a free bonus. So, here's the deal. If you open a new Coinbase account using my link below or by visiting

[00:51] link below or by visiting ryanoscribner.com/coinbase, process. All you have to do is open the account, link a payment method, and then make any cryptocurrency purchase. The promotion does change from time to time,

[01:06] but it's usually a spin the wheel promo where you will get a random free Bitcoin amount up to $200. So, feel free to pause the video, click the link, and grab your free Bitcoin bonus. And this helps to support my channel in the

[01:20] process. So, thank you. Let's now talk about the account opening process [music] with Coinbase. Starting off with who can actually open an account. And if you want to skip ahead, feel free to use the table of contents down below. For

[01:32] starters, Coinbase operates in over 100 countries worldwide. So, there's a available in your location. But since most of my audience is from the US, let's talk about a few details surrounding that. In order to open an

[01:47] account, you need to be at least 18 years old with a US address. They will also ask you for the last four digits of your social security number and this might raise some red flags, but Coinbase is required to collect this information

[02:01] is required to collect this information under KYC or know your customer laws. This is going to be a required step to open almost any financial account today. being illegitimate or anything like that. Coinbase is also going to ask you

[02:16] for your name and address. And it's very important that this information matches what you have on your ID because if you plan to send or receive crypto or use the full functionality of the app, you will have to verify your ID later on.

[02:31] This will basically involve taking pictures of your ID and then recording a short video selfie. From here, that's going to bring us to our next step, which is going to be linking a payment method and depositing money to invest.

[02:43] In order to link a payment method, you're going to click on the three lines here in the top left. You're going to click on account and settings, and then you're going to select payment methods. I would personally recommend linking

[02:55] your bank account, which is going to give you higher transfer and buying limits. So, in order to do that, we're going to click here on add a payment method. And then from the list here, we're going to select bank account. And

[03:07] information on how this actually works. Coinbase partners with Plaid to securely link your bank account in seconds and this will allow for instant transfer availability. It does require you to enter your banking login, but as it

[03:21] mentions here, they do not store this and your data is fully protected. So, let's go ahead and click on continue and go through these steps together. For your name matches the name on your bank account and click here on got it. And

[03:35] now it's bringing up Plaid where it gives us some basic instructions. We're just going to click here on the continue button. And now you're going to enter going to click on continue. [music] And since I already had my information

[03:48] list of my financial accounts immediately. But if you haven't used Plaid already, it might prompt you to enter your bank login and password and then potentially your phone number as well for two-factor authentication. But

[04:02] I'm just going to select an account here from my list. [music] And then click here on the continue button at the bottom. And just like that, it's all account has been successfully added."

[04:14] bank account with Plaid. We're now going to click here on the done button. And we listed. Now that we've added a payment method, the next step here is going to be depositing money to invest with. From the home screen, we're going to click

[04:29] here on this deposit button. And this gives us a couple of different options. Deposit cash, receive crypto, or wire transfer. We're going to cover how to send and receive crypto later on in the video. So, for now, we're just going to

[04:42] click on deposit cash. And then, by default, at the bottom there, we can see the bank account that we just added. So, I'm going to go ahead and deposit $50. And if that looks good, we're going to select preview. And this is going to say

[04:55] that it's available to trade instantly, available to transfer instantly, and we can verify which account it comes out of. And if everything looks good, we'll click here on the deposit now button. So, just like that, we have deposited

[05:07] $50 to our account. If I click here on done, we can now see that it is reflected there in our balance on the home screen. Now, before we go ahead and actually purchase a cryptocurrency, I want to show you how to research cryptos

[05:20] using the Coinbase app. So, if we scroll down here under watch list, we're going to click here on Bitcoin, which is the most popular. And this is going to bring up the current live price here for Bitcoin, as well as the price over

[05:33] different periods of time. We can look at the weekly, uh, over the last month, over the last one year, and even the all-time price history. And if you also hold your finger down here, you can see different prices at different dates and

[05:47] times, which can also be useful. Below that, it's going to show your balance if you already own this particular token in your Coinbase portfolio. So, in my case, I had about 10 cents left over here from a previous tutorial. And we can see both

[06:01] today's return listed as well as my total return or unrealized return listed as well. Below that, you can also see your average cost, which is going to tell you your cost basis or essentially the price you paid overall for your

[06:15] whether or not you're making money with your crypto investment using Coinbase, that's how you're going to track it. But if you do end up receiving Bitcoin to your Coinbase account from an external address, it won't be able to track the

[06:29] performance because it won't know what your cost basis is. Below that, you're going to see a list here of your transactions. So, anytime you buy, sell, send, or receive, you're going to see that listed here. And then if you scroll

[06:42] this is going to be one of the most useful sections of the app. Under the happening now section, it gives you an AI generated summary of what's happening right now with this particular asset. So if we click on read more here, it

[06:56] mentions that Bitcoin's consolidation is nearing a historically significant 60-day window as large investors quietly accumulate despite tariff-driven uncertainty. and you can scroll down to get additional info, but this is going

[07:09] to be available for most of these cryptocurrencies giving you a summary of what is going on with that particular token. And below that, there's also click here on view more, it's going to tell you more about this particular

[07:23] token. I think people have a pretty good understanding of Bitcoin, but if you're looking at other tokens on the platform, this might be more useful. But what a here. If you click on the back button and we take a look here at the key

[07:36] stats, we're going to click on the see all button and this is going to give us some pretty important information. For starters, we can see the total market cap and the trend over the last 24 hours. And we can also see the trading

[07:50] volume. So trading volume is actually up 145% in the last 24 hours. You can see the circulating supply, the fully diluted market cap, and we can also see

[08:02] the all-time high for Bitcoin, which was in October of 2025. And we're currently down a little over 25% from that all-time high. Uh, Bitcoin is number one in popularity, and we can see the performance over the past year, uh, the

[08:17] comparison to Ethereum, and the comparison here to the overall crypto market just to get a couple of different benchmarks. So, that's how you can research different cryptocurrencies using the Coinbase app at a basic level.

[08:30] Moving on now, the next step is going to be actually purchasing a cryptocurrency. helpful so far, make sure you hit that subscribe button for me. From the home the buy and sell button, and we're going to select buy crypto with cash. And it's

[08:47] going to bring up a list of all of the different tokens available. If you to see all of the different cryptocurrencies available through Coinbase, and it's well over 100. But for this video, for demo purposes, we're

[09:00] actually going to be purchasing Solana, which is going to be listed here towards the top. We're using Solana because of the exceptionally low transfer fees and how fast this overall network is. But the good thing is if you're trying to

[09:13] buy Bitcoin or something else, it's going to be the exact same process. Now, by default, it shows us our linked bank account. So, you don't actually need to deposit money to invest. If you don't want to, you can just have it draw right

[09:26] deposited, we're going to click here on this arrow and select our USDC wallet. And we have $50.75 available. So, we're looking to buy $50 worth of So, before I put the order through, I want to show you the

[09:41] different order types here in the top right. So, by default, it's set to a one-time order, which mentions that the order executes as soon as possible at the current price. If you're familiar with the stock market, that's going to

[09:54] be like a market order. The next order type here is a limit order. And this is where you're specifying a set price or better that you're looking to purchase at. So, if we click on that here, we could say we want to buy $50 of so, but

[10:08] it's currently 13410. And let's say you only wanted to buy at 130 or better. It shows us that the price would have to drop about 3% for this to fill. But that would mean that if it hit 130 or cheaper, the order would go through. But

[10:23] your order wouldn't be filled. So that can be helpful if you're looking to get very specific about the price you are buying or selling cryptocurrencies for. And the final order here is going to be a recurring buy. And this is going to be

[10:37] automated investments on either a daily, weekly, or two times a month or monthly schedule where you can put a recurring investment into a cryptocurrency and follow the strategy of dollar cost averaging. But just to keep things

[10:51] back button. We're going to go for a one-time order and we're going to buy $50 worth of so. And one more time, I just have to select my USDC wallet. We're now going to click here on review order and this is going to give us

[11:05] information about the fees and availability. So this is going to be available to trade instantly, available to transfer instantly. And we can see here that this price includes a 1% spread as well as a 92cent fee. And then

[11:19] if this looks good, we can go ahead and click on the buy now button. And it says order submitted. If we click here on done and then uh click here under crypto, we can now see that we have $4859

[11:32] worth of so. So that's basically the amount we have after the spread and the dollar amount fee. Now that we've purchased some Solana, we can now send this cryptocurrency to another wallet address. We're going to send this over

[11:45] to my Gemini account and we're going to have to locate our Gemini wallet address for Solana. Your wallet address is basically like your Venmo handle or username, and it's what people would use to send you money. It is safe to share

[11:58] this with other people, but it would allow people to see your past transactions if they wanted to. Since most blockchains are public, anybody can look up a wallet address and see the previous activity, but it's just a

[12:11] doesn't share your identity or anything like that. What you don't want to share is your private key or recovery phrase because this would give someone full access to your account. Since Coinbase is an exchange, you don't hold the

[12:26] private key or recovery phrase. But they do offer a separate app called Bass, which does allow for this. That would give you self-custody of your crypto, but it does come with additional risks. You can check out my full base tutorial

[12:40] Gemini account, we're now going to locate my address for Solana. And we're going to do that by clicking here on explore. And then we're going to type in the symbol, which is S O, and then

[12:52] select Sana. And then if we click here on the transfer button, we want to now click here on receive. And then we're going to select the network. Since be Solana. And then we are going to click on this copy button here to copy

[13:08] our destination wallet address. Back here on Coinbase, we're going to select crypto and we're then going to select our Solana. At this point, it prompts us with allow paste functionality and it mentions this is coming from Gemini as a

[13:22] click here on allow paste. They've screenshot or record this section. So, I apologize about that. But what you're going to do is select paste from clipboard below the search bar. And then

[13:35] you're going to then select the address below the search bar that you're looking to send it to. And on the following screen, you're going to type in the From here, you're just going to click on preview. And then on the final screen

[13:48] here, it mentions the address, the network, and the send time, which in our case is 21 seconds. And if everything looks good, including the 1 cent network fee, we're going to click here on the send now button. And just like that, we

[14:01] have sent our Solana. And at this point, we're just going to wait for that balance to come over to the Gemini account. All righty, guys. So, we can now see that Solana listed here in my Gemini account. So, it was successfully

[14:13] sent over. So, that's how you send cryptocurrencies. But now, I want to talk about how to receive cryptocurrencies to your Coinbase thing we're going to do here is locate our Sana wallet address. We're going to

[14:28] click here on crypto and then at the top here, we see Solana and then we have the click here on that, we now want to select receive crypto from another wallet. And it does mention here that we have to use the Solana network, which is

[14:43] totally fine. And we're going to click here on the copy button. Back over here in Gemini, we're now going to select our Solana from the list here and we're then going to click here on the transfer button and we want to send this so and

[14:58] then we have to add the recipient address. So if we click in here, we can actually select this and paste and then click here on the continue button. So now we have the address listed here at the bottom. We're going to try to send

[15:11] the maximum amount of so and then we have to select the sending network. So, if we select this here, Solana is the only option and it's going to be a fee of 32. And then we're going to click here on the review button. And on this

[15:24] screen here, we can see the final transaction details. And if everything looks good, we're going to click here on the confirm button. And then we just have to quickly verify that this is me. And just like that, we have now sent our

[15:36] Solana back over from Gemini over to Coinbase. But let's say that you're now looking to sell a cryptocurrency that you either purchased or received. Here are the steps involved with that. From the Coinbase home screen, you're going

[15:49] to select crypto to see a list of your cryptocurrencies. And I'm going to sell off this very small amount of Ethereum I have left over from a previous demo. So, then you're going to have the option here at the bottom right to buy and

[16:05] sell. If we select that, we're now going to select sell crypto for cash to bring up this menu here. On this screen, you can either type in the amount that you want to sell in US dollars, or you can click on the sell all button if you're

[16:18] looking to do that. And that's then going to bring you over to this screen here where you have a couple of options in regards to where you are selling this to. If you click on this dropdown, you can see that we have the option to

[16:30] can see that we have the option to either sell it to a USD wallet or USDC. Let's say you're looking to sell a cryptocurrency and cash out to your bank account. In that case, you're going to choose USD wallet. But if you want to

[16:43] keep that money within Coinbase, you have the option to sell it off to USDC, which would put this in a stable coin. And the benefit here is that you can actually earn rewards on this balance, similar to earning interest on a high

[16:57] though, we are just looking to sell this to cash out to the bank. So, we're going to select this menu again, choose our USD wallet, and then we're going to click here on the sell now button. And just like that, it says order is

[17:11] submitted. If we click here on done, and then navigate back to the home screen. For starters, we can see that the Solana did come back over. So, that's now listed here under our crypto. But we also have no longer the Athereum listed

[17:24] and instead under the cash balance, we have $6.14 in our United States dollar wallet. The next step I'm going to show you here is how to cash out from your USD wallet back to your bank account. From the home

[17:38] screen, you're going to select cash, and that's going to show your USDC balance and your United States dollar balance. We're going to click on United States dollar. And on this screen, we're now going to click on the withdraw button.

[17:51] And once again, during this section, unfortunately, I won't be able to share functionality. What you're going to do on this screen is enter the dollar value that you're looking to cash out to your bank account. And it's going to show you

[18:04] what you have available. And then you can choose your bank account below that by clicking the arrow, or it might already be selected. And then you're here to initiate that transaction. The

[18:16] use the advanced features within the Coinbase app. Everything I've showed you so far has been through the basic version of the app, which is designed to be very beginnerfriendly. But if you're looking for more advanced charts and

[18:29] research tools, they have this built right into the app from the default. And setting. If you click on the three lines here in the top left once again under the trade menu here, you're going to see advanced. And all you have to do is

[18:44] toggle this on. This is going to get you access to a lot more research tools and data, as well as more advanced order types that you wouldn't see in the basic version of the app, and it's going to be popular for those who are looking to do

[18:56] more active trading surrounding cryptocurrencies. In addition, there aren't any extra subscription costs or anything like that to use this section of the app. So, it's really cool that they have this built right in and you

[19:08] can take a look here at different technical indicators and different types of charting and utilize these features if you're looking to do more advanced trading strategies. And then if you want to get back to the basic version of the

[19:20] app, all you have to do is click on the three lines once again and toggle this off. There you have it, guys. That's a full rundown here of all of the important features on Coinbase. I hope this helps you to get started with the

[19:33] app. And if you have any questions, leave me a comment down below. If you sure you hit that subscribe button for me. And don't forget to grab your free Bitcoin bonus using my Coinbase link below. Also, if you want to learn about

[19:47] the base app, which is also from Coinbase, be sure to check out my card in the corner. You can click below to watch my full Coinbase tutorial to learn about even more features on the app. and I'll see you next time.