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You probably know the routine. You uploaded your driver’s license. Then a passport. Then a selfie holding the passport. Then a utility bill. Then something called enhanced due diligence happened and your account sat frozen while a compliance team decided whether you were allowed to touch your own money.
Here is the part most “Coinbase alternative” articles skip: Coinbase is not bad. It is a publicly traded company with real insurance, deep liquidity, and security infrastructure most banks would envy. The problem is the price, and the price is you. Your documents, your biometrics, your full transaction history, and a standing ability to freeze everything you hold there. So this page does both halves honestly: what Coinbase genuinely does better, and when a no-KYC swap is the right tool instead.
The one-sentence verdict: use Coinbase to move between dollars and crypto; use CoinVast once you hold coins and want to swap them with no account, no documents, and a spread printed on the quote.
✓ and ✗ mark what’s better or worse for you, not a feature checklist. Coinbase cells trace to its own published documentation, filings, and public user reports; the URLs are in the Sources section.
| Feature | Coinbase | CoinVast |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts and identity | ||
| Account required | ✗ Yes, with full KYC before you can do anything | ✓ No, and there is no account to create |
| Identity documents | ✗ Photo ID, selfie, proof of address; source-of-funds checks on flagged accounts | ✓ Never requested at any point |
| Biometric data | ✗ Selfie or live video matching during verification | ✓ None. There is no upload form to put a face into |
| Data shared with chain-analytics firms and authorities | ✗ Yes, per its own privacy policy and regulatory obligations | ✓ We hold no identity data to share. Order records exist and a valid legal demand for them is answered |
| Custody and freezes | ||
| Who holds your keys | ✗ Coinbase, for everything on the platform | ✓ You. Coins pass through us only for the minutes a swap runs |
| Can your funds be frozen | ✗ Yes, account-wide, at any time, per the terms you accept at signup | ✓ No. Screening runs before the exchange; pass or refund are the only outcomes |
| If compliance flags you | ✗ Withdrawals blocked while a review runs; user reports describe days to months | ✓ The swap never starts and coins auto-return minus the network fee |
| Sanctions-list match | Account restricted under law | Held and reported, the single stated exception to auto-refund |
| Fees and rates | ||
| Published pricing | Roughly 0.4 to 0.6% maker/taker on Advanced Trade; the simple interface costs casual users more | ✓ Flat 2% spread, fixed at quote time, printed on every quote |
| Network fee | Charged on withdrawal, varies by coin | ✓ Its own line on the quote, shown in the payout coin |
| Fiat deposit and withdrawal | ✓ Bank, card, and wire, with fees varying by method | ✗ No fiat at all, by design |
| Coins and features | ||
| Assets listed | ✓ 200+ on a full exchange with order books | ✗ 136 coins on 86 networks, every pair live |
| Privacy coins | ✗ Monero never listed; privacy assets restricted or delisted in many regions | ✓ Native XMR, ZEC and DASH |
| Staking and earn products | ✓ Yes, a mature ecosystem | ✗ No. We swap coins, that is the whole product |
| Country coverage | ✗ Unsupported or restricted across large parts of the world | ✓ No geo wall on a crypto-to-crypto swap; sanctioned regions excepted |
| Own blockchain nodes | Runs its own infrastructure at institutional scale | ✓ Self-hosted BTC, LTC, BCH and DASH nodes |
| Trust signals | ||
| Operating since | ✓ 2012, publicly traded on NASDAQ since 2021 | ✗ 2026. We are the new kid and we know it |
| Insurance and audits | ✓ FDIC pass-through on USD balances, crypto insurance, quarterly audited filings | ✗ None yet. Proof of reserves for wallet balances is planned, not live |
| Regulatory standing | ✓ Licensed in the jurisdictions where it operates | Operating entity in formation; details publish on /trust when registered |
This is the big one. Coinbase takes you from dollars, euros, and pounds into crypto and back, with linked bank accounts, debit cards, and recurring buys. No KYC-free swap can do this, ours included. Fiat rails require banking relationships, and banking relationships require KYC. Anyone telling you otherwise is about to introduce you to a very sketchy peer-to-peer marketplace.
Coinbase moves billions in daily volume across real order books. Market orders fill instantly with minimal slippage, and Advanced Trade gives you limit orders, charting, and professional execution. A swap service quotes you a rate and runs one conversion; it is not a trading floor and should not pretend to be. If you trade actively, the order book wins.
Stake ETH, SOL, and other proof-of-stake assets without running a validator, and get paid small amounts of crypto for watching educational videos. Lower yield than DeFi, dramatically less homework. We offer nothing like it and have no plans to.
USD balances carry FDIC pass-through coverage per Coinbase’s own documentation, crypto holdings carry insurance, and the whole company files audited quarterly reports as a NASDAQ-listed business. If the platform were ever breached at scale, you have a realistic path to recovery. With any young swap service, us included, you do not, which is exactly why our model holds your coins for minutes instead of indefinitely.
Cold storage for the vast majority of customer funds, hardware security modules, multi-signature controls. Coinbase’s security team is genuinely among the best in the industry. The catch is built into the compliment: all of that protects coins that are theirs to hold and therefore theirs to restrict.
Everything above is real. So is the bill. Coinbase’s model requires something from you in return, and what it requires is close to everything.
Full legal name, date of birth, residential address, government photo ID, a selfie or live video for biometric matching, proof of address, employment status and source of income. For higher tiers or flagged accounts, per public user reports: tax documents, payslips, and written explanations of where your money came from. This is a mortgage application, except the mortgage at least gives you money. All of it to trade an asset class that was invented to avoid exactly this process.
Coinbase is custodial. It holds your keys, so it can restrict your account at any time, and its own help pages document the restriction process. Public reports name common triggers: large sudden movements, sending to addresses associated with mixers or privacy tools, unusual logins, expired documents, flagged inbound deposits. During a freeze you cannot withdraw crypto or fiat, and reviews run on their clock, not yours. User accounts of days, weeks, and occasionally months are easy to find on Trustpilot and Reddit. And here is the sting: you agreed to all of it, on page whatever of the terms, because the app was shiny and the signup was smooth.
Per its own privacy policy, Coinbase collects your transactions, logins, device fingerprints, location data, biometrics, linked bank accounts, and tax identifiers, shares data with blockchain-analytics partners, and complies with government requests. None of this is hidden and none of it is optional. The link between your identity and your on-chain history, once created, does not expire. For some people that trade is fine. For anyone who thinks financial privacy is a right rather than a perk, it is the whole problem.
Large parts of Africa, Asia, and South America are unsupported or restricted. Tokens get delisted regionally without much warning, staking products shrink under regulatory pressure, and privacy coins are simply not on the menu: Monero has never been listed, and privacy assets have been removed in multiple regions. If you live in the wrong country or want the wrong coin, Coinbase will politely explain that your money is welcome but your choices are not.
Our own fine print, stated just as plainly: CoinVast screens every deposit before the exchange starts. Pass means the swap runs and is final. Fail means it never starts and your coins auto-return minus the network fee, no documents. The one exception is a government sanctions-list match, which the law requires us to hold and report. We print that exception everywhere, including here, because a no-freeze promise without it would be a lie.
You already own crypto in your own wallet. You want a different coin. That is the entire job. Use CoinVast: pick the pair, paste a payout and a refund address, send one payment. Screening runs before your coins move, the spread is printed on the quote, and most swaps land in 5 to 30 minutes. Documents uploaded: zero.
A crypto-to-crypto swap has no account to geo-block and no fiat rails to license country by country. You paste an address, you send crypto, you receive crypto. Your passport’s country of issue never comes up, because nobody asked for your passport.
Coinbase does not list Monero and has restricted privacy assets in multiple regions. CoinVast supports native XMR, ZEC and DASH, with BTC, LTC, BCH and DASH deposits verified on our own self-hosted nodes rather than a third-party API.
Maybe you simply believe a corporation should not hold a complete record of your financial life tied to your face, your home address, and your tax number. Use CoinVast for crypto-to-crypto and a DEX for on-chain trading, and most of your crypto activity never creates a searchable identity-linked record at all.
We promised honesty, so: if you are starting from zero, Coinbase is one of the best fiat doors in the business. CoinVast cannot do this and never will, deliberately, because fiat rails are where the regulatory surface explodes. The practical play is the split: KYC once at the fiat step, withdraw to your own wallet, then swap here for everything after.
Four steps, no onboarding. The whole thing takes about as long as ordering a pizza, and the pizza place asks more questions.
Choose from 136 coins on 86 networks. The rate, our flat 2% spread, and the network fee are on the card before you commit to anything. The rate locks when you create the swap, so it cannot drift before you send.
Payout address plus a refund address. Screening runs at order creation, so the decision about your swap is made before a single coin moves.
From any wallet, to the deposit address on your order page. No account, no email, nothing to verify.
Most swaps complete in 5 to 30 minutes depending on the chain. Every step shows on the order page with transaction hashes. Bookmark the link, it is your receipt.
Not exactly, and pretending otherwise would be silly. CoinVast is crypto-to-crypto only, so it cannot replace Coinbase's fiat on-ramp and off-ramp. Think of it as a replacement for what you do after you already hold coins. Instead of swapping through a custodial account with KYC and freeze risk attached, you swap here with no account, no identity documents, and screening that runs before you send rather than after.
No. No account, no email, no documents. The deposit itself is screened before the exchange starts, which checks the coins, not you. If screening passes, the swap runs and a completed swap is final. If it fails, your coins auto-return to your refund address minus the network fee, and nobody asks for a passport. The single exception is a sanctions-list match, which the law requires us to hold and report.
Yes. Coinbase is custodial, meaning it holds your keys, and the terms you accept at signup let it restrict accounts pending review. Public user reports describe freezes triggered by large movements, flagged deposits, expired documents, or logins from unusual places, with reviews running days, weeks, and in some reported cases months. During a freeze you cannot withdraw crypto or fiat. That is not a scandal, it is how custodial compliance works. It is also exactly the mechanism CoinVast was built without.
No, and not because we promise to behave. The system has no step where it could happen. Screening runs before the exchange starts, so a deposit either passes and the swap completes, final and never clawed back, or it fails and the coins auto-return minus the network fee. There is no stage where exchanged funds sit waiting for a verdict. The one legal exception is a direct sanctions-list match, which every financial service on Earth must hold.
136 coins across 86 networks as of June 2026. That covers the majors, BTC, ETH, SOL, LTC, USDT, USDC and more, plus the privacy coins Coinbase will not touch: native XMR, ZEC and DASH. BTC, LTC, BCH and DASH deposits are verified on nodes we run ourselves. If you need some long-tail token from Coinbase's 200+ list, we honestly do not carry it.
CoinVast charges a single flat 2% spread, fixed the moment you create the swap, with the network fee printed as its own line on every quote. There is no floating-versus-fixed choice to weigh; the rate you see is the rate you get. Coinbase Advanced Trade runs roughly 0.4 to 0.6% maker/taker, and casual users on the simple interface typically pay more in spread and convenience fees. For active traders hitting volume tiers, Coinbase can be cheaper on pure trading cost. For a straight swap, our number is printed before you commit and you can check it against any price index in ten seconds.
In most jurisdictions, yes. KYC obligations sit on businesses, not on you as a customer, and swapping coins you already own is not a crime. Two honest caveats: rules differ by country and keep moving, so know your own jurisdiction. And taxes do not vanish because nobody asked for your passport. A coin-to-coin swap is a taxable event in plenty of countries, and that part is between you and your tax office.
For some people, absolutely. A DEX gives you maximum sovereignty: your wallet, a smart contract, no company in the middle at all. The trade-offs are gas fees, the learning curve, and the fact that most DEXs live on one chain, so swapping BTC for XMR is not something Uniswap can do. CoinVast sits in the middle: cross-chain swaps including Monero, no account, no documents, and a printed spread, without needing to learn what slippage tolerance means. Use whichever fits the swap in front of you.
The swap never starts and your coins return automatically to the refund address you gave at order creation, minus only the network fee. The order page shows the refund transaction hash so you can verify it on any block explorer. No emails, no document requests, no three-week investigation. The one exception is a sanctions-list match, which we are legally required to hold and report rather than return.
Depends what you are defending against. Against platform hacks, Coinbase is safer: cold storage at institutional scale, insurance, audited books, fourteen years of operation against our zero point five. Against account freezes and data breaches, the math flips: we never hold your coins longer than a swap takes and we never collect the identity data that makes exchange databases such juicy targets. Different threat models, different tools. Plenty of people sensibly use both.
Claims about Coinbase trace to the pages below, read during our June 2026 research sweep, or are hedged in the text as user reports. If a fact changes, tell us at [email protected] and we will fix the page.
Once your coins are in your own wallet, swap them with no account, no documents, and the spread printed on the quote.
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