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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

#91

Post by fosap »

barkingcat wrote: post #73

Haha why is there "fiduciary" duty when Coinbase is not a bank, not a security agency, and not any type of share that people bought into (ie customers are not shareholder). Coinbase can do anything they want! Also, I suggest it's people's own fault for storing their bitcoins at a place that does not give access to their own private keys. This fork has been a long time coming. Everyone and their mother was warned to k…

>Coinbase can do anything they want!

That's no how laws work. Not even remotely. Thankfully.

Consider you order somebody (X) to transport your pregnant cow. At the destination the cow arrives. It's not pregnant anymore and X refuses to give you the calf because... well, because he can do anything he wants.

That's theft.

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

#92

Post by runeks »

chrisabrams wrote: post #60
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?

It's a good way of looking at it. Another perspective, which makes this issue so complicated, is that we could compare this to: a company on the stock exchange splitting into two companies, investors should be getting shares in both companies, but the brokerage decides they are not going to recognize the second company and thus the investors don't get their shares in the second company.

This really doesn’t make sense, because literally anyone can create an altcoin and declare that the initial holders are as per Bitcoin block 486559, and then fork from there, thus transforming all Bitcoin holders into holders of this altcoin.

From the point of view of Bitcoin, Bitcoin didn’t split; someone made a copy, so the initial balances are inherited from the Bitcoin blockchain.

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

#93

Post by mikeash »

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?

I imagine the line gets drawn at a certain value. If Bitcoin Cash were trading at two cents a coin, this wouldn't be happening. Your fork would probably be at that end of things.

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

#94

Post by fauigerzigerk »

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.

There's something I don't quite get (being a cryptocurrency newbie). Why can coinbase users not simply import their private key into some other wallet that supports both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash?

My understanding is that Bitcoin Cash recognises the old Bitcoin blockchain as their own up to the point of the fork. So as of Aug 1st all Bitcoin balances are Bitcoin Cash balances as well. Or is that not how it works?

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

#95

Post by lawn »

pera wrote: post #62

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 walle…

> Third, "Bitcoin Cash" is an altcoin, and anyone can create a similar fork from the Bitcoin blockchain, should Coinbase support them all??

Good luck creating a fork with currently 20% of the value of Bitcoin.

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

#96

Post by StavrosK »

legohead wrote: post #52
JohnTHaller wrote: post #9

They had the opportunity to move their funds and plenty of notice.

4 days on Coinbase is not enough time. The transactions there are unbelievably slow. It took me 2 days to transfer my bitcoin away, and this was a month ago. I can only imagine how slow it was during this fork process.

I bought some bitcoins on July 28th or so, and it took two hours for the transaction to appear on the blockchain.

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

#97

Post by jo909 »

jncraton wrote: post #58
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #34

What I think all the press isn't making very clear is that to the best of my understanding for every Bitcoin you own, you get a Bitcoin Cash coin. There is no "conversion", it is free money for all BTC holders. Everyone who owned BTC, now owns BTC+BCC. Of course if your BTC is not real, but is held by an exchange such as Coinbase, how you get your BCC isn't at all clear.

> Of course if your BTC is not real, but is held by an exchange such as Coinbase, how you get your BCC isn't at all clear. Your BTC should still be "real", but the exchange holds the keys instead of you. Your point stands about it being unclear how you would access your BCC. If you aren't allowed access to your BCC, there's nothing preventing exchanges from dumping the BCC for cash as far as I can tell from a purely…

There is also nothing preventing exchanges from dumping "your" BTC for cash from a pure technical standpoint.

Because technically, all you have is the promise of the exchange to transfer you the right amount of BTC out of your account whenever you request them, or the same market value in another (supported) crypto/fiat currency. This is not only a pinky-swear promise but one protected by some laws and contracts.

But it is very questionable to me if there is (or should be) any obligation for any exchange to pay you any amount of BCC that magically appeared overnight.

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

#98

Post by vocatus_gate »

Alex3917 wrote: post #65
abhi3 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think an argument against that is that 10 days is a pretty short deadline to act to prevent a potentially large financial loss. Especially if you were on vacation, not following the news about bitcoin, etc.

Coinbase doesn't have to support trading BCC, they can simply provide a withdrawal function so people can claim their BCC and move on with their lives. Their decision to ignore it entirely is going to get them sued and it's going to cost them.

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

#99

Post by apk-d »

jncraton wrote: post #58
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #34

What I think all the press isn't making very clear is that to the best of my understanding for every Bitcoin you own, you get a Bitcoin Cash coin. There is no "conversion", it is free money for all BTC holders. Everyone who owned BTC, now owns BTC+BCC. Of course if your BTC is not real, but is held by an exchange such as Coinbase, how you get your BCC isn't at all clear.

> Of course if your BTC is not real, but is held by an exchange such as Coinbase, how you get your BCC isn't at all clear. Your BTC should still be "real", but the exchange holds the keys instead of you. Your point stands about it being unclear how you would access your BCC. If you aren't allowed access to your BCC, there's nothing preventing exchanges from dumping the BCC for cash as far as I can tell from a purely…

Exchanges don't keep a real BTC wallet for each user. When one Coinbase user sends funds to another, the transaction is entirely virtual (which lets them avoid paying the network transaction fee).
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