Cryptocurrency platform Coinbase has been rapidly expanding their product line in 2018. They want to broaden their appeal to institutional investors with new products bundled as Coinbase Suite. This line of products includes Coinbase Custody that allows institutions to buy and store bitcoin that otherwise may be currently restricted due to regulation or policy. Coinbase Prime will provide advanced trading functions while Coinbase Markets will provide liquidity for larger purchases. They announced a crypto index fund, currently only available to accredited investors. On the heels of those announcements, Coinbase felt it was time to address retail investors. Coinbase Pro debuted on May 23, 2018 with a new slick interface. Targeted at retail investors and traders, the new interface will arguably impact greater numbers of bitcoin and cryptocurrency investors than the institutional products.

Just like with GDAX, traders will only be able to buy and sell bitcoin (BTC), litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), and bitcoin cash (BCH), at least until Coinbase decides to add new coins to their offerings. Advanced trading options are available for all four of those currencies, and trading pairs include fiat trades with US dollars, euros, and British pound sterling. If you are not familiar with all of the various order types and their advantages and disadvantages, please refer to our Getting Started with GDAX article or the more advanced GDAX Orders and Trades post.

Remember that to use Pro, you must first open a Coinbase account and go through the verification processes. You can navigate to the home page anytime to open an account, or you can use this link.

GDAX support to end June 29, 2018

“Dear GDAX Customer:

On Friday June 29, we say goodbye to GDAX and hello to Coinbase Pro. To take full advantage of this upgrade, we recommend you start using pro.coinbase.com now.

Coinbase Pro is a new interface built on top of the existing GDAX trading engine. As a result, your entire account history and all balances will be shown on Pro. No action is necessary from you.

Any balances in your GDAX wallets will automatically be shown on Coinbase Pro Any trading history on GDAX will automatically be shown on Coinbase Pro Accessing GDAX.com after June 29 will result in being redirected to Coinbase Pro

GDAX API Integrations:

There will be no disruption to the gdax.com API during this time. GDAX APIs will continue to function until December 31, 2018. We encourage Coinbase Pro users to begin migrating their API usage away from api.gdax.com to api.pro.coinbase.com.

Coinbase Pro is currently live and we encourage all users to update their bookmarks and try our upgraded trading experience today.”

Coinbase Pro Trading Interface

Let’s dive into the new interface. Once logged in, you are presented with a fairly comprehensive trading page display (fig 2.) While the interface retains the overall look and feel of GDAX, there are a few notable differences. Trading pairs can be selected in the top left menu. Hover over the “Select Market” option, and the menu opens up (fig 3.) Mobile users simply tap the same menu to open. The dropdown menu offers tabbed selection between the available pairs. Choose an option and you are returned to the trading screen.

Once a trading pair is selected, the order entry section of the page remains on the left. Options for placing Market, Limit and Stop orders are unchanged. Order entry is done exactly as before in the GDAX interface. None of the options and settings appear to have been modified. This means users familiar with GDAX should be able to quickly adapt to the setup. Market orders (fig 4) are set by default. Traders must select Limit or Stop to place those orders (fig 5.) Using the Advanced tab allows traders to select duration of Limit orders as well as control Maker fees just as in GDAX.

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Charting options on Coinbase Pro

There is no significant change in the number or types of charts available on the main trading page. However, the appearance has been enhanced slightly with sharper graphics and better contrast between charted information and the background. Just as with GDAX, price and depth charts can be toggled with their respective menu selection. Options for price chart settings include choosing between line and candle charts along with changes for duration of time included on the display. Moving averages can be found in the Overlay menu option.

Coinbase Pro Orders Summary

Figure 8 below demonstrates the My Orders page. This is accessed by selecting My Orders on the top right of the main trading page. Once you’ve navigated to this page, you can select the specific currency you want to review on the left-hand side of the page, and then review current open orders or previous filled orders for each coin using the tabbed selection in the main portion of the page.

Note that order information can also be access in the main trading page on the bottom right side. You can toggle between Open and Filled orders there. Remember that your trading pair selection from the first section will determine which orders are displayed on the main page. For example, if you have selected BTC-USD, only BTC orders will display here. You must change trading pairs if you wish to review your other open orders.

Coinbase Pro account options menu

Account options can still be found in the top right corner of the screen. Open the dropdown menu to access a tabbed menu offering information on Fees, Limits and API settings. Simply scroll the window to access the provided info. Users can edit their profile by selecting that option on the left-hand side of this screen (fig 9.) Note this image has been edited for this article to remove personal information.

Coinbase Pro mobile interface

There isn’t a Coinbase Pro app at the moment. However, the mobile interface is very easy to use and offers all of the benefits of an app. The mobile interface uses a tabbed menu at the bottom of the screen, exactly as found on the GDAX mobile interface. The order entry page (fig 10) functions like its desktop counterpart. Entering Market and Limit orders is done using exactly the same method.

The mobile order book (fig 11) limits display to just open Buy and Sell orders and last trade price to keep things clean. This means that you will need to tab between the Order Entry screen and the Book if you are trying to place Limit Orders strategically around the current orders in the book. However, it is very responsive with no delay when moving between the display options.

Mobile charts (fig 12) look much sharper than on GDAX, with a cleaner font, better resolution and the darker background. There is a lot of information available in the various chart options. Coinbase has done a good job here with keeping the display uncluttered while still allowing for all of the various choices needed by traders.

Coinbase Pro final thoughts

While GDAX has offered a pretty clean interface along with powerful cryptocurrency trading tools, Coinbase has managed to improve on that with Pro without breaking functionality. By focusing on making adjustments to an already good product rather than insisting on wholesale design changes, the Coinbase Pro interface is a good evolution for the trading platform. There has been no word from Coinbase on when the GDAX platform will close, but traders shouldn’t be concerned about moving to Pro. Moving to Coinbase Pro will feel natural.

Comments, questions or critique? Register for a free account and post in the forums. Happy trading.