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Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

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Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#61

Post by Klathmon »

MichaelGG wrote: post #40
Klathmon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Coinbase was pretty good about getting pretty much all of the massive exodus of coins out of their system and out of cold storage in time. And they were pretty explicit that they wouldn't be supporting the BCC chain. I get it people are upset about possibly missing out on money, but Coinbase handled this about as good as they could.

No they didn't. They could have offered withdrawals of BCC, eliminating all uncertainty. That would be handling it "best". Or even a clear policy as to under which circumstances they will offer BCC would be better. (If they said they'd do withdrawals if the price stays over 0.1BTC, that'd have placated a lot of people.) Giving notice so as to not totally screw customers is sort of the least they could do. How they ge…

Even the exhanges that support just about every currency out there still don't allow deposits/withdraws of BCC right now. There really is a lot of uncertainty around this whole situation, and due to the nature of a split a mistake in one of the coins can cause the user to lose both of them. It's not an area that I want my services rushing into and making mistakes.

If I were in Coinbase's position, I'd make sure that I'm doing everything to fully support and secure the currencies that I officially support, and maybe support some forks later if there is massive demand or there are more stable/secure methods of handling it. I mean right now the biggest "wallets" for BCC are rushed, filled with bugs, and have significant issues in some areas.

If they had said "we will allow you to withdraw BCC" and they didn't allow it right away, people would be significantly more upset (rightfully so in my opinion). At least the way they handled it they clearly and publicly announced that if you wanted to deal with BCC, you should move your funds out of Coinbase, and they gave multiple notifications over multiple days about this.

And mind you, they did offer a clear explanation of when they will offer BCC, They won't. That's about as clear as you can get. They might change that in the future, but you can't say they didn't warn you if they never do.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#62

Post by pera »

From the class-action lawsuit website "FAQ":

> Coinbase allowed users to withdraw BTC prior to the hard fork

> The process of transferring Bitcoin can be complex and potentially very risky even for experienced users. Additionally, creation of a new account or wallet on a different exchange is often a lengthy and difficult process. While Coinbase did suggest to users that they could move their BTC to a different wallet in order to obtain BCH, the procedure can be seen as prohibitive by a significant portion of users. Finally, many users reported slow or non-responsive site when trying to move their BTC from Coinbase prior to the lock-down that preceded the hard fork.

First, transferring founds from one wallet to another is trivial in Bitcoin, and in fact it is easier than any other money transfer method that I know of. Second, if it really was that difficult then why they are, at the same time, accepting donations using Bitcoin and Ethereum on the same website?. Third, "Bitcoin Cash" is an altcoin, and anyone can create a similar fork from the Bitcoin blockchain, should Coinbase support them all?? because that would be ridiculous.

I can not believe these people are serious...

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#63

Post by pat2man »

galfarragem wrote: post #53
npongratz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the fork, BTC and BCH are distinct and independent. So buying BTC after the fork would gives the buyer zero BCH.

So who owns the correspondent BCH (assuming that the seller was a coinbase user before the fork)? Coinbase? The previous owner?

Coinbase has the keys for them, they have stated that if they ever accessed those coins they would make them available to the wallet holders.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#65

Post by Alex3917 »

abhi3 wrote: post #56
btzll wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a random fork. This is a fork with almost $400 million 24 hour volume. Coinbase should allow users to withdraw their BCC, since they are sitting on a huge pile of BCC units, which belong to customers.

And if the price of BCC were to crash to single digit USD in a week it takes for Coinbase to come to a decision then the customers would have lost a fortune.

They already came to a decision. They told people who wanted BCC to withdraw their coins before August 1st. Everyone who wanted BCC already has them.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#66

Post by PretzelPirate »

yebyen wrote: post #35
MichaelGG wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read up on it all over. But the short answer is Bitcoin Cash forked Bitcoin and has 8MB blocks, which would have eliminated congestion and lowered fees on Bitcoin during the past year. Both sides (small Vs big) have economic incentives behind them, making the argument extra vitriolic. But larger blocks allow on chain growth, keeping it peer to peer without requiring any 3rd parties. (And the answer that 8x mo…

It doesn't make anything infeasible today. But if you think both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are going to be around in 20 years, and you want to support both, now you've just added 800% to your annual storage growth rate. (Assuming that BCC always mines full blocks, which I will admit seems unlikely) I have to be honest, I was keeping a cold wallet with some ~1-2 BTC in it until the price reached record high territory i…

Syncing the blockchain is optional, unless you store your coins in a wallet generated by a full node. Even then, things such as UTXO commitments would make syncing the current state almost instantaneous, though it would either requiring pulling the commitment from multiple third parties or having the protocol updated to require a UTXO commitment every Nth block.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#67

Post by reefoctopus »

jstanley wrote: post #2

Meanwhile, it's 12 hours since Bitcoin Cash actually mined a block. The only reason the price is so high is because people can't make transactions to send their BCH to exchanges. EDIT: My mistake. Originally said 20 hours. It's only 12.

This also conveniently prevents people from dumping BCH to drive down the price. The number of confirmations required by most exchanges in order to guard against double spending Sybil attacks will take days. The price will continue to rise as it makes its way into the news. By the time people can dump their BCH it is likely there will be substantial momentum behind it. The launch has been brilliantly orchestrated.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#68

Post by holtalanm »

alekratz wrote: post #54
bdonlan wrote: post #42

It's an interesting situation, but assigning liability to coinbase for this seems like it'd be a problem long term. Unlike traditional securities, there's nothing stopping me from going out and making my own fork tomorrow - and then would all exchanges be required to add support for that fork, too? Where do you draw the line?

Yeah, that's how I feel about this. It's not coinbase's responsibility to act as a host to all cryptocurrencies. The article states, > An activist group, which claims Coinbase's decision is akin to a brokerage withholding new shares from its investors, ... which is not at all what it's like. Coinbase isn't the only source to buy/sell BCC. I think it's ridiculous that a company could be sued because they don't offer a…

That is not the issue at all.

The issue is that Coinbase is _withholding_ the BCC from its customers. Technically, Coinbase has been awarded the BCC for all of the wallets they are in control of, but are refusing to distribute it.

It really is akin to a brokerage refusing to award shares to customers due to a company split/stock split.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#69

Post by chrisabrams »

btzll wrote: post #50
bdonlan wrote: post #42

It's an interesting situation, but assigning liability to coinbase for this seems like it'd be a problem long term. Unlike traditional securities, there's nothing stopping me from going out and making my own fork tomorrow - and then would all exchanges be required to add support for that fork, too? Where do you draw the line?

This is not a random fork. This is a fork with almost $400 million 24 hour volume. Coinbase should allow users to withdraw their BCC, since they are sitting on a huge pile of BCC units, which belong to customers.

It took me maybe 15-20 seconds to "claim" my BCH from BTC. I don't think its a technical issue here, so not sure why Coinbase would create such a negative situation. Simply provide an input to paste a withdraw wallet address for BCH and everyone can move on.

Even if BCH had only been worth $0.10 people would still want to claim their free money.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#70

Post by jbb67 »

brianberns wrote: post #41

As an outsider, the remarkable thing about this to me is that one can (for now) sell the same bitcoins twice, right? If I own 1 bitcoin pre-fork, I can sell it for $2700 and then sell the exact same bitcoin again as Bitcoin Cash for $700. Crazy.

Well, you could if there was any practical way to sell the bitcoin cash version at the moment. I personally think it likely that once you can, you'll be lucky to get $7 for one.
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