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

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

#221

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:14 PM UTC

bdcravens wrote: post #214

thefalcon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine they'll continue to ignore the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Also it would be crazy for them to have encouraged their users to withdraw BTC prior to the fork if they were insolvent. I imagine it will all work out, though Coinbase loses lots of reputation points from me for by insisting on being so slow and reactionary instead of proactive like several other exchanges.

It won't be that large for long. Only reason why it's so high is the few places you can sell it aren't accepting BCH deposits; the only way you can sell is if you had BTC there prior to August 1. There's a ton of pent up demand to sell; once those exchanges allow deposits, there will be a ton of dumping and the price will fall substantially.

[deleted]

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

#222

Post by dsacco » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:14 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #197

Coinbase will either cave in on this or be sued and lose. Especially since they're sluggish about large withdrawals. The real risk for Coinbase comes if they don't have 100% of the Bitcoins on deposit. If they don't have all those Bitcoins, like Mt. Gox, we're going to find out.

I agree. Frankly I'm shocked it even got this far. Who on Coinbase's legal team gave the okay for such an insane directive? You can't just give customers a 10 day ultimatum to withdraw their funds or forfeit them. An exchange in the public market that attempted that would be sued into oblivion.

Furthermore how are they getting by on their justification? You don't need to allow trading for new cryptocurrencies to be disbursable. You just need to send them to customers.

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

#223

Post by bdcravens » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:16 PM UTC

Coinbase will likely allow users to withdraw their BCH, but not exchange it, so they'll have to go elsewhere. They did the exact same thing with Ethereum Classic (after the price dropped like 80% from the initial spike, no less), and they ended support for those withdrawals at the end of 2016. To handle this fork differently could invite another lawsuit.

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

#224

Post by blhack » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:17 PM UTC

Just to clarify: bitcoin cash (BCH) is only sortof worth $700. There aren't any mainstream exchanges accepting BCH deposits right now, so the market for BCH is limited mostly to people on kraken trading BCH with one another there only.

The exchanges that are accepting BCH require 20 confirmations on your BCH deposit before they let you withdraw the BTC/XBT you traded them for. 20 confirmations right now would take multiple days. The exchanges offering this also seem to have pretty lax identity requirements, which is not a great sign.

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

#225

Post by undersuit » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

SnowProblem wrote: post #179

undersuit wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No not witdrawals. Is there a Coinbase imposed limit to how many Bitcoins I can send to another wallet? And was that recently implemented? Coinbase certainly has conversion limits, but anyone that wanted their Bitcoin into Dollars knew about this limit far before the warning of Coinbase only supporting one side of the split, and converting into Dollars means you don't want to risk the split and you should have been d…

Yes. Coinbase calls BTC transfers withdrawals, and it screwed me over a lot when I found that out.

OK, good to know I was just having issues with the terminology.

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

#226

Post by lorenzfx » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

If the only difference between bitcoin and bitcoin cash is that bitcoin cash has larger block sizes (true?), why does bitcoin cash not go "back" to the bitcoin blockchain since it is now much longer and should also be a valid bitcoin cash blockchain?

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

#227

Post by matthewbauer » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

Jenya_ wrote: post #4

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.

The delay in mining was required to trigger drastic difficulty reduction (20%). More details at https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6r33fz/difficulty_adju...

I'm confused. You're saying that the delay was intentional?

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

#228

Post by bdcravens » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

Big point to remember: the current high price is artificial. There are only a few exchanges selling BCH, and they aren't accepting deposits. The only sellers are those who had BTC there prior to August 1. So it's a sellers market. There's a ton of demand to sell. Once those deposits are enabled, you'll see a flood of dumping, and the price will crash.

So let's say Coinbase allows BCH withdrawals. Unless they enabled trading it (which they didn't with ETC when ETH forked), all those Coinbasers wouldn't be able to sell anyways. They'd be waiting like everyone else, so that $700 price wouldn't matter.

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

#229

Post by blhack » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

Coinbase is in a bad situation here. If they set a precedent that all BTC forks will be available to their users, then they open themselves to some pretty obvious DOS attacks.

10 new "bitcoins" could fork every day. Are we really going to expect coinbase to support them all? That's absurd.

I think it's pretty obvious that they're going to just issue the BCH to people eventually.

Here's another thought experiment: I am a now-extremely-wealthy bitcoin early adopter, and I am so happy at bitcoin's success that I am going to distribute $100 of USD cash per bitcoin to every person who can show me that they own a bitcoin.

To claim your $100, send me a Self-addressed-stamped-envelope proving your bitcoin ownership, and I will mail you back the cash.

Does coinbase have an obligation to send a bunch of SASEs to me? Are the coinbase customer's "owed" that $100?

I personally don't think so. I think that's the tradeoff you're making by having coinbase securely store your coins for you.

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

#230

Post by pera » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:23 PM UTC

lawn wrote: post #185

pera wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is nothing confusing, your reasoning is simply unsound: the market price (not the value) of some traded altcoin is completely irrelevant to Bitcoin. Even the price of Bitcoin itself is irrelevant to the Bitcoin protocol. There is no law, anywhere in the world, mandating cryptocurrency exchanges to adopt altcoins after they reach some price point, and exchanges are not obligated to trade new altcoins either (which requires adapting their infrastructure, so it makes sense if they decide to not doing it), so, why exactly should it matter that Bitcoin Cash is being traded somewhere else for X% of the current price of Bitcoin? It simply doesn't.