Originally posted on 09/19/2021:
Pretty much everyone wants detailed KYC - when you're buying. Kraken, Gemini, CB... they all want your SSN and even selfies while holding a date/name written on a piece of paper. It's OK to do this for buying, IMO. Nothing wrong with buying - gotta buy the stuff to get anywhere....
Yes, Coinbase Pro much better than Coinbase. If you've got a Coinbase account, you've got a Coinbase Pro account.
https://pro.coinbase.com/trade/BTC-USD
Once you have some BTC or ETH or whatever, use places like Kucoin for trading into other coins. Kucoin has a wide selection of alts and all you need to do business with them is an email signup and a way to do 2FA (Google Authenticator app). With just a email address, you can transfer up to 5 BTC/day. Any more than that and they will want more KYC for higher transfer volume.