The most popular crypto exchanges on the web obviously include Coinbase Pro and Binance. Here is an evaluation to compare which of the two platforms is more in line with the needs of crypto investors.
Coinbase Pro was born in 2018 following a series of changes that the main platform, the Californian Coinbase, born in 2015, has made over time.
Whereas Binance, with its current headquarters in Malta, was established in 2017 and immediately launched into trading but with territorial limits due to regulatory reasons, which, however, did not stop its emergence as the main crypto exchange.
On a territorial level, since Coinbase is American, only this autumn did Binance launch Binance US, an exchange separated from its parent company to be able to directly serve American users, according to the rules of the territory.
With this in mind, here are the numbers that the trading platforms report. According to a ranking by Coingecko, it is possible to affirm Binance’s supremacy in terms of trading volumes compared not only to Coinbase Pro, which is in ninth position, but to all the other crypto exchanges in the market.
The situation is different should one want to assess the volumes of Binance US which is, in fact, in 21st position managing an average daily volume of around $10 million, as opposed to Coinbase Pro’s $350 million daily volume.
Another comparative index for the two crypto exchanges is liquidity which is equivalent to the speed with which a crypto asset can be bought or sold without affecting its price. Obviously, exchanges with high liquidity can offer faster trading with better prices for users.
A good tool for calculating liquidity is offered by CryptoWatch which in its current ranking sees the main crypto-trading platform Binance ranking fifth after BitMEX, Bitfinex, HitBTC and Kraken futures.
Coinbase Pro is in eighth place with about 15 million US dollars of liquidity, against the 14th US Binance with its $4 million of liquidity.
As far as the crypto assets supported are concerned, Coinbase Pro offers 54 trading pairs for 23 coins against the 582 trading pairs for 78 coins of the Binance giant. Obviously, Binance US offers fewer crypto pairs (48 trading pairs for 28 coins) but still competitive with the American Coinbase Pro.
Another important difference between the platforms concerns the trading fees. While on Binance US the fees start at 0.1%, on Coinbase Pro they start at 0.5%.
While there may be discounts and trading incentives for users who invest millions of dollars, in general, average investors are able to keep their fees very low in both cases.
Finally, there are also similarities between Binance and Coinbase Pro, such as the fact that they are both centralised crypto exchanges and therefore manage users’ keys and are responsible for them.
In this sense, it is also possible to compare the security level of the two exchanges that have both suffered hacking attacks over time.
Binance was hacked for $40 million in May, but the company quickly recovered its losses without causing losses to users, while Coinbase managed to block a phishing attack in June without endangering any user account.
Conclusion
Overall, whether on US territory or not, the two platforms meet the valuation criteria very well, both in terms of trading volumes and in terms of liquidity proportional to their offer of cryptocurrency pairs.
Clearly, Binance is the main crypto trading platform on a global level, but when analysing the territories with the regulatory limits for which a separate platform had to be created, the situation changes.
This is why Coinbase Pro and Binance US can be much more competitive with each other on US territory. In any case, the two platforms remain distinct, with their own strengths.
Essentially, one could define Coinbase Pro as a more mature exchange that offers higher trading limits. Binance US, on the other hand, has a much more global background and offers lower trading fees.