Coinbase makes Bitcoin buying more accessible with ‘instant purchases’

The purchase of virtual currency Bitcoin has slowly become easier over the years, and now the Bitcoin wallet service Coinbase has added the ability to “buy up to 50 Bitcoins instantly” for verified accounts.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that has seen a lot of activity in recent months. But it hasn’t always been easy to purchase the currency. Just a few years ago, buying Bitcoins was an often questionable process. Sometimes you’d just PayPal money to a stranger who mined Bitcoins and hoped that he or she would send you Bitcoins in return.

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Things are different today, with VC-backed startups like Coinbase making the buying, selling, and holding of Bitcoins easier. Coinbase claims to connect to “any U.S. bank account” and let you use that to buy and sell Bitcoins. Now Coinbase lets you buy up to 50 Bitcoins faster than before, when you’d sometimes wait a day or more to get them.

To get in on the “instant” Bitcoin buying action, you have to be a verified account holder on Coinbase. The service now requires identity verification for instant and high-limit purchases. If you are just a casual buyer and seller of Bitcoins, Coinbase says it will still let you do business with an unverified account.