Buying alts on BASE using Coinbase Wallet

I’ve been in crypto 4 years and the thing that still confuses the hell out of me is buying alts off-exchange.

So I went for something simple and using Coinbase Wallet with my Coinbase account I loaded up my wallet with USDC on BASE network. Ready to buy an alt on base.

When the price was low enough I tried to buy and was met with a “you need ETH”… eh? Why? I’m buying ALU on BASE, what has ETH got to do with it.

So I transferred $10 of ETH to my wallet and then it said the transaction will fail. Wtf?

Can someone with experience of BASE network help me understand how to actually reliably buy using Coinbase Wallet.

Please please don’t answer “use Uniswap” or some other wallet. I need this to be simple and minimal movement of funds. CB wallet pays for USDC transfer fees.

What I really don’t understand is when ALU was at 1.08 I bought some fine. When it dipped to 0.8 doing the same actions in CB Wallet, I got this “transaction will fail message”. So I missed the dip to load my bag. Grrr!

DEFI also seemed so unusable, risky and expensive to me that I don’t know whether there’s an easier way. Two years ago I was using 1inch but I don’t know whether it can be connected to your wallet.

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Yeah I had the same issue with 1inch. I spent so much on gas fees in converting/moving coins to even be in a position to buy the target coin, that it was just a waste compared to how much I was buying, and then selling would lose even more so I just have some coins stuck on wallets and chains that I just cannot be arsed to get back.

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