Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by MichaelGG » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

kijin wrote: post #155

MichaelGG wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then muddying the waters is the argument that larger blocks are going to centralize it because poorer people won't be able to run a full node in their homes. (Versus paying $10 for a VPS to do so.) Conveniently ignoring that no one wants to run a full node for a settlement layer between big financial companies. But further screwing it up is ASICBoost, which isn't compatible with other proposals like Segwit. That…

> So doing even 1000/sec means around 1.8Mbps (plus overhead) just to get the flow of transactions. Huh, maybe we should come up with a cryptocurrency where you are awarded new blocks for the storage and bandwidth you contribute to the effort, rather than for how many hashes you can calculate per second. After all, if we're hoping to handling transactions on the scale of Visa, and we don't like centralization, we nee…

They don't need to store everything. All that's needed is the list of addresses and balances (UTXOs), and the last few blocks. A hash chain of 10 years of 10 minute blocks is only a few MB, so it should be something we can distribute reliably. UTXOs are a couple GB but will grow.

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

#182

Post by lawn » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

pera wrote: post #137

lawn wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handling a potentially large of money and keeping it secure? How to store the key? What happens if I loose my phone/computer? How can I protect myself from fire and theft? Which wallet to choose? How can I be certain I don't have a virus waiting to steal my coins? Did i copy my address correctly? That's a lot of uncertainty for "it literally can not be simpler".

Being able to easily handle a potentially large amount of money is exactly the reason why Bitcoin was created in the first place, so you don't need to depend on entities like banks. But even then, if you don't want to do that, there are other exchanges and online wallets that can do all that for you.

Uh, you literary did not respond to any of my remarks on why someone might find it scary.

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

#183

Post by mrb » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

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.

2 blocks were mined right after you posted on HN:

Block 478571 on Aug 2, 2017 16:20:19 AM UTC (4.7MB! since it holds ~12 hours worth of transactions)

Block 478572 on Aug 2, 2017 16:36:31 AM UTC

http://blockdozer.com/insight/blocks

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

#184

Post by marcc » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #90

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's other cryptocurrencies with a nontrivial market cap out there; Coinbase only supports three. Then there's fiat currency, of which Coinbase's support is also limited. Again, where do they draw the line?

They should quit representing themselves as bank holding your coins/private keys, which is not what they are doing. They are issuing IOUs for a certain amount on a particular blockchain. It would be more honest to be explicit about this in their marketing and website copy, and would avoid this problem, but that's not sexy and doesn't get VC funding. I have no sympathy for their plight.

When you put your fiat currency into a traditional bank, the bank doesn't hold it for you either. They also issue IOUs.

Coinbase is more similar to a bank than it is to a wallet.

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

#185

Post by lawn » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

pera wrote: post #124

lawn wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Non sequitur, but anyways: I could hard-fork the blockchain any day and sell each mined altcoin to myself to then sue Coinbase for not supporting my fork. How that makes any sense?

Did you not read my comment? What is confusing?

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

#186

Post by Alex3917 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

lawn wrote: post #74

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?

As others have said, it really depends on the value of the fork. If you make a fork worth nothing, nobody's going to care. But as right now Bitcoin Cash is worth $634 and regular Bitcoin $2727 per coin according to coinmarketcap.com. That's 23% the customers are loosing out on instantly. And the defense that the users should be responsible to withdraw your coins if you want to keep it on both forks is disingenuous. T…

> That's 23% the customers are loosing out on instantly.

That's not even remotely true. Right now there are zero exchanges that support depositing BCH. The only BCH that are trading are the ones that were created by the exchanges.

So unless you're arguing that Coinbase should be liable for not creating an exchange for BCH then the argument that anyone has lost out on money has zero merit. Even if Coinbase had already given everyone BCH, no one would have been able to sell on any exchange.

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

#187

Post by yebyen » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

lawn wrote: post #88

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's other cryptocurrencies with a nontrivial market cap out there; Coinbase only supports three. Then there's fiat currency, of which Coinbase's support is also limited. Again, where do they draw the line?

It's irrelevant if Coinbase supports trading of the coin. What they should do is allow the customers to withdraw their Bitcoin Cash coins. What other cryptocurrencies have been forked of another coin gaining such a large value, placing the exchanges in the same spot? I can think of only one: Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. The same thing happened there. Coinbase was forced to allow the customers to withdraw their Ethe…

The fork has literally existed for 36 hours only.

It is easily too soon to say whether it will survive. You may have read or done technical analysis that came back supporting the conclusion that it will survive, but if Coinbase is taking the position that it won't survive, IMHO it is much too soon to say whether or not the same thing is happening here.

As a matter of fact, this can't be the same thing...

Ethereum Classic was the original chain. Ethereum(') is what the developers answered with, after the famed failure of the DAO, before 28 days had passed and the damage would become irreversible.

If anything, your comparison is reversed, but in my opinion it is nowhere near close to the same thing. Eth Classic tokens are called classic because it was the original chain (with the bug in it, "just like we agreed to," if I understood the story fully.)

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

#188

Post by vocatus_gate » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:38 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #46

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…

8 MB blocks = 1.15GB per day, or 420GB per year. Sure it might be feasible to run a node if you're in a first world country with fast internet and cheap storage (cost of living wise), but even in rural america, 34.5GB is a significant chunk of bandwidth. Not to mention they eventually plan to raise it to 32MB, which works out to 4.6GB a day or 1.63TB/year.

This whole pipe dream of little Jimmy running his full Bitcoin node on a raspberry pi in order to protect against the big bad bankers/government/whatever was never based in reality. Bitcoin was always destined to end up centralized. Either in the form of powerful companies controlling it (development, Lightning Network, etc) or large concentrated groups of miners.

Whichever path it ends up going down, centralization is guaranteed.

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

#189

Post by lostmsu » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:39 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #101

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a hint that customers should withdraw their BTC from Coinbase before the split and (if they want to) move it back afterwards; the people that are suing knew this, and knew that Coinbase wasn't going to support it (at first), and yet kept their BTC hosted in Coinbase's wallets.

You can't be released from liability for doing something stupid and harmful just by warning people that you're about to do something stupid and harmful.

Except they did not do anything stupid and harmful. They just did not do something clever and beneficial for customers.

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

#190

Post by uncoder0 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

barkingcat wrote: post #172

fosap wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The difference is Coinbase clearly announced their position that they will NOT honour Bitcoin Cash ahead of time https://blog.coinbase.com/update-for-customers-with-bitcoin-... Basically, they said "if your pregnant cow gives birth, we will not give you the calf. If you want your calf, take your cow away from Coinbase and keep it on your own pasture!" And their customers heard it, said ok I'll keep the cow with you,…

The problem is they have a 48 hour timer on cold wallets. Which leaves you 2 days to move those coins and if you have a withdrawal limit of $10k but you had 20 BTC in cold storage you were only able to get ~4 btc out of coinbase in time.