Regulated, easy apps for buying your first Bitcoin or Ether with a bank card or transfer.
We funded a Coinbase account by card and bank transfer, bought and sold four coins, staked ETH and withdrew to a hardware wallet. Onboarding was the smoothest of any exchange we tested and the legal record is clean, but the simple buy and sell screen still costs far more than it needs to.
Crypto.com bundles stocks, predictions and crypto into one app with a Visa card that pays up to 5% back in CRO. Getting that rate now means locking up $500,000 in CRO for a year, so we tested the app itself and priced what the rewards program actually demands.
We opened a Kraken account, bought BTC through Instant Buy, moved funds into Kraken Pro, staked ETH and pulled coins back out to test the fees Kraken does not headline. Here is what beginners and traders each actually pay.
We opened a Gemini account and ran the ActiveTrader fee schedule against a $1,000 order before writing this. Gemini backs its SOC 2 audits and $125 million hot wallet insurance with fees higher than most rivals, and UK, EEA and Australian users lost access entirely in April 2026.