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Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#91

Post by trjordan »

joering2 wrote: post #78
ryanSrich wrote: post #67

Hopefully they spend all $100mm on support. I've never experienced such bad support.

At this point me and many of friends with Coinbase account came to conclusion that there is NONE. I don't believe a single person works in customer support. I also heard that it is such a big issue that some California attorney is advertising heavily in top 5 states to gather traction for a class-action lawsuit regarding this problem. Unfortunately I haven't stumbled upon his advertisement yet, but wouldn't be surpri…

According to LinkedIn, they have 7 people who work in support.

At a company of ~200 people, that's not an unreasonable number to have. It feels mean to say they have none.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#92

Post by aresant »

jorvi wrote: post #79
aresant wrote: post #64

Edit - Moved to comment I was trying to address -

> Crypto could become the "people's" wealth vault, and undercut nations ability to tax & control markets by truly privatizing wealth. All it takes is MOST of us to decide. You say that like its an admirable goal we should strive for. Taxes built the roads and bridges you drive on, the crystal-clean water that flows from your tap, the lines that your internet runs over, and the (admittedly glacial) bureaucracy that pr…

I am illustrating use cases, not advocating.

The minute you realize the use case around privatization of global wealth you can begin to underwrite its probability.

Because the crypto platform provides the OPTION for that to happen at scale.

And crypto gives people globally the opportunity to make the decision and vote with their personal wealth (and mining power).

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#93

Post by mtgx »

stanmancan wrote: post #35

I'm pretty naive on the subject of Bitcoin so I might be missing something here, but can someone explain to me how it's used right now? Aside from treating BTC like a stock that is. The value of it fluctuates so much that actually buying/accepting it seems incredibly risky. The price can go down just as fast as it goes up. As a someone looking make purchases with BTC; if the value of a BTC is going up, why would I us…

Even though Bitcoin was initially called a cryptocurrency, I think it's now becoming more clear that cryptocurrencies are more like "cryptoassets" [1] or crypto commodities.

Some of the people who started calling it digital gold a while back got it right. Using Bitcoin is more like using gold (not necessarily physical gold) to pay for stuff. Gold's value also fluctuates significantly over one year's time.

[1] - https://medium.com/@cburniske/why-i-like-the-term-cryptoasse...

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#94

Post by celticninja »

45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #66
ryanlol wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The value of it fluctuates so much that actually buying/accepting it seems incredibly risky. The price can go down just as fast as it goes up. Why? If someone sends me 1BTC I'll just instantly sell 1BTC, it is tremendously unlikely that I'm gonna get screwed even if there's a 1-2 second delay. >if the value of a BTC is going up, why would I use it to buy anything? Because you want things and not numbers on the inter…

There is no 1-2 second delay tho; bitcoin transactions take 1 hour to confirm. At best, you might have 7 blocks between receiving, sending and being credited on the exchange. Of course, this is possibly things like Litecoin are more stable as you can 'get in and out' in 15 minutes.

Some places will allow immediate conversion to dollars. I know bitpay used to facilitate that.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#95

Post by joering2 »

trjordan wrote: post #91
joering2 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point me and many of friends with Coinbase account came to conclusion that there is NONE. I don't believe a single person works in customer support. I also heard that it is such a big issue that some California attorney is advertising heavily in top 5 states to gather traction for a class-action lawsuit regarding this problem. Unfortunately I haven't stumbled upon his advertisement yet, but wouldn't be surpri…

According to LinkedIn, they have 7 people who work in support. At a company of ~200 people, that's not an unreasonable number to have. It feels mean to say they have none.

Mean to say something? I guess its not mean not to answer to customer support request.

I guess when someone steals your wallet you don't chase them, because that would be mean and not a behavior of a gentleman.

Please point me to Linkedin verification page - you know, where it says that whatever people put on LinkedIn is always true, because so far my experience is contradictory. I worked with many people and they LinkedIn profile is nothing like they responsibilities were.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#96

Post by ktta »

lightbyte wrote: post #65
ktta wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By volume, sure, AlphaBay was definitely a bigger successor, but Silk Road was unprecedented. Something like AlphaBay was inevitable after Silk Road (Next was Hansa, but turns out was already a honeypot by that time). Silk Road was the first to bring forward the notion of how cryptocurrencies can be used for something much more malicious than coffee. The news it made, and with a face to the organization made it a big…

> isn't the all secure operation you think it was I did not say that at all. Though since you brought it up, the FBI and Dutch Police's explanation for how they busted the site is very suspect. It does not sound legitimate at all, it's much more likely they cracked the site in another (more illegal/unethical) way and used parallel construction to hide what they did.

>>> isn't the all secure operation you think it was

>I did not say that at all.

You didn't, but I said that to show that it didn't earn it's place as the bigger competitor, it was just bound to happen no matter who braved it.

>Though since you brought it up, the FBI and Dutch Police's explanation for how they busted the site is very suspect. It does not sound legitimate at all, it's much more likely they cracked the site in another (more illegal/unethical) way and used parallel construction to hide what they did.

Mostly agree. But I don't think there's anything illegal about cracking the tor network, AlphaBay's servers or one of its admins' computers. There was probably a warrant for whatever they did, especially since it was at the international level involving multiple agencies. It might also be a vulnerability in the tor network, but I bet we would most likely never know.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#97

Post by eliribble »

jorvi wrote: post #79
aresant wrote: post #64

Edit - Moved to comment I was trying to address -

> Crypto could become the "people's" wealth vault, and undercut nations ability to tax & control markets by truly privatizing wealth. All it takes is MOST of us to decide. You say that like its an admirable goal we should strive for. Taxes built the roads and bridges you drive on, the crystal-clean water that flows from your tap, the lines that your internet runs over, and the (admittedly glacial) bureaucracy that pr…

Just because tax enable those things in the United States right now does not imply that is the only way they could be provided

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#98

Post by fpgaminer »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #58

Coinbase makes a killing with their fees. The spread between the buy and sell prices on coinbase are 1-1.2%. On top, their bank transfer charges are proportional to amount transferred instead of standard flat fee. I wonder why they need another $100M ! For people who want to buy, I would recommend Kraken - they have much higher volume and sane pricing. There are others too like Bitfinex, Poloneix, etc.

It's important to note that Coinbase also operates an exchange, GDAX, that anyone can get access to. The fees for limit orders on GDAX are currently 0%, and there are no transaction fees for withdrawal (at least on USD->Bank account or BTC withdrawals). I'm not sure if GDAX has any deposit fees.

Buying/selling directly on Coinbase is merely for convenience, and obviously you're going to pay for that convenience. I'm glad that Coinbase offers that option, because there are a lot of people for whom the fees are worth the ease of use.

But if you're one of those people for whom the fees aren't worth it, and you want to get your hands dirty, by all means use GDAX and pay no fees at all.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#99

Post by puranjay »

UndeadAuraS wrote: post #77

Bitcoin purists will say that, eventually, there is no "cash out" phase. 1 BTC = 1 BTC and who cares about what the dollar equivalent happens to be. Once everything is in BTC you will never exchange it for dollars.

This is just about the most absurd belief any smart person can actually hold.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#100

Post by tenaciousDaniel »

aresant wrote: post #90
stanmancan wrote: post #35

I'm pretty naive on the subject of Bitcoin so I might be missing something here, but can someone explain to me how it's used right now? Aside from treating BTC like a stock that is. The value of it fluctuates so much that actually buying/accepting it seems incredibly risky. The price can go down just as fast as it goes up. As a someone looking make purchases with BTC; if the value of a BTC is going up, why would I us…

Fascinating how many questions / comments in this thread question if crypto currency macro even has a use case in this world. And for good reason. Is it a currency? Yes and no. Is it a store of value? Yes and no but sure is volatile. Is primary use case illegal transactions? Definitely, sometimes. Is it a anarchist mechanism to shelter wealth and detach from any nation state? Yes absolutely, probably most of the Chin…

Exactly. Though I think that so many people having invested so much money at such an early stage in this technology's development is the reason why the scrutiny is off the charts. Everyone, from naysayers to evangelists, need to cool off a bit and realize that this stuff is brand new. I'm 110% confident that cryptocurrency in general will yield some very interesting things in the next few decades. But I'm 0% confident that anyone today has a grasp on what those things will be specifically. We should all just be having fun with it and seeing what we can make.
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