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

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371–380 of 429 posts

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

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As one of the btc nouveaux rich, help me understand something I see reoccurring among my other btc-rich friends. Generally, when you're up big (and in some cases extremely wealthy), you diversify your investments in order to preserver your wealth. However, almost without exception my btc friends are such believers that they are holding on for the ride forever. That's the idea. However, you have to understand that i…

> From your friend's perspective, if they sell $100K worth of bitcoin, then is it possible that they might end getting on the radar of the govt and could be on hook for more than $100K? You really have to be on the radar if you plan on reasonably enjoying that kind of wealth. There are plenty of legit ways of minimizing the tax burden of that kind of investment. Calling the top and bottom is a fools game. Diversifica…

If you currently hold bitcoins which you mined, then they are a highly liquid assets because tomorrow you could flee the country and still have this wealth go with you. now I don't think most people think that they need to flee the country any time soon, but either way, it ISN'T the same thing as diversifying your non-crypto assets.

I am merely trying to explain to whomsoever wants to know why these people won't sell their crypto even to diversification, please don't start yelling at me.

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

#372

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.

Or, bitcoin cash will crash before lawsuits are filed and people stop worrying about their missing 0.1%.

Seems somewhat unlikely after the surprisingly high rates BCH has been trading in past 36 hours (currently at ~16%), but wanted to point out the third possibility.

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's super unprofitable to mine BCH right now, at current exchange rates (assuming you could even sell BCH, which you can't). Miners stopped to wait for it to become profitable again, due to BCH's special difficulty adjustment. Details: https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjust...

Okay that sounds more reasonable. My original thought was that it's not very decentralized if all the miners can agree to stop mining at any point. Economic reasons seem much more reasonable.

It's not very decentralized. According to https://cash.coin.dance/blocks ten of the 16 blocks so far on this fork have been mined by "Genesis Block 269-273 Hennessy Road Wan Chai Hong Kong", 3 have been mined by ViaBTC, and only 3 by someone else. These two pools together have around 80% of the hash rate on this fork.

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

#374
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The organic state of a cryptocurrency fork is that all extant holders receive a new asset, which may or may not be worth anything. A company cannot seize that asset without consideration. So if I fork Bitcoin into Billycoin, this demands action by Coinbase?

Yes. (And as I stated in the comment - with a proviso that the price or adoption of the cryptocurrency pass a very low but nontrivial bar.)

Sounds like bdcravens and I should launch Billycoin, but only have it trade on an exchange we control, with no liquidity, so we could push its price through the roof.

I've also just sold 0.000001% equity in my startup to my dad for $10. Does anyone want to invest in my billion dollar idea? Am I a unicorn?

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

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that deals with political parties and regulatory regimes in many countries at once, diversify your political isn't silly at all. Or at least I feel like being unsubscribed from one countries politics has only given me advantages, even if it is less common to not be married to a political flavor.

> ...diversify your political isn't silly at all. It is, as most political differences are rooted in mutually exclusive ideas. If you are advocating for simply being open to considering alternative positions and measuring them against your own present position - then I agree with you, that is nice. But I would describe that as "diversify your politics", I'd describe that as being intellectually honest.

One way to diversify your politics is to get in bed with multiple mutually exclusive political parties. That way, no matter who wins, you'll have friends in high places.

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

#376
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one of the btc nouveaux rich, help me understand something I see reoccurring among my other btc-rich friends. Generally, when you're up big (and in some cases extremely wealthy), you diversify your investments in order to preserver your wealth. However, almost without exception my btc friends are such believers that they are holding on for the ride forever. Is it just that the risk-averse were initially drawn to b…

I've seen the same -- I know someone who got in early to BTC, then moved it all into Ethereum early, such that he has enough to comfortably retire today. But he won't cash any of it in except for a small amount each month to live on, while he lives rent free with others. When I explain the logic of hedging and mitigating risk and locking in gains, he was insistent that the right strategy is to hold because it's going…

Would he have to be well-versed to have enough BTC to retire? Surely you could just get on board the hype train at the right station, when it was cheap enough to buy a few, and maybe at the urging of a colleague, and go from there.

None of the few people I know with BTC are especially well-versed in it.

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

#377
post #260

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…

Regardless of the price, an exchange cannot seize customer assets by giving them 10 days notice for withdrawal. It doesn't matter if it's a separate currency - we have things resembling this in public markets, like stock splits. It doesn't matter if everyone can fork the cryptocurrency, that doesn't change the principle of a customer's asset. What Coinbase should have done is this: 1. Stood their ground on not suppor…

Who says it's without consideration? They're holding onto your BTC for you. That's not a free service. The bank analogy is holding customer cash at zero interest.

Their only obligation is to maintain your BTC balance with BTC defined as the longest chain. It doesn't matter how popular a fork is, it's not their problem.

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

#378
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have useless tokens. Value is perception.

And should Coinbase then be obligated to distribute those useless tokens?

No of course not. If the tokens are useless then nobody will blame Coinbase for not supporting them. But we're talking about BCH here, which is bigger than all other coins save Bitcoin and Etherium. There's a LOT of money at stake here.

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

#379
I thought that with Coinbase you really didn't "own" the coins. As in, if you bought a bitcoin via Coinbase you really didn't hold a bitcoin, you really just held a promise that Coinbase would give you a bitcoin at a later date. If that were the case, would they actually be liable for giving you anything related to bitcoin forks?

It's also not like they didn't give warning ahead of time either. If you really wanted to use BCC/BCH (whatever gets decided on) you could've just moved the funds out of Coinbase into an offline wallet and sent them back post fork.

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

#380
post #229

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 a…

As one of the btc nouveaux rich, help me understand something I see reoccurring among my other btc-rich friends. Generally, when you're up big (and in some cases extremely wealthy), you diversify your investments in order to preserver your wealth. However, almost without exception my btc friends are such believers that they are holding on for the ride forever. Is it just that the risk-averse were initially drawn to b…

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