Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

blog.coinbase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 242 posts

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

#121

Post by 45h34jh53k4j »

fpgaminer wrote: post #105
45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #50

Coinbase is positioning themselves to be the first legit cryptobank. Fidelity now feeds their customer portfolio data (on BTC, LTC and ETH holdings) from their user cold storage holdings at coinbase. Its extremely risky to hold client keys that hold money. Making a CryptoBank is like making a regular bank on hard mode.

> Making a CryptoBank is like making a regular bank on hard mode. Back in "the old days" bank security was based around metal vaults and guns. That I would also consider doing banking on hard mode. Coinbase just needs good specialist engineers and a good insurance policy. Not much different from a traditional bank. At least Coinbase has an advantage over traditional banks. Good engineers would probably rather work at…

Insurance on cryptocurrency holdings? might be hard to find a provider that would accept that level of risk and volatility. Would the premiums increase with the value of the BTC?

What if there just isn't enough bitcoin in circulation to cover the loss (there is a 21 million cap on BTC).

Bank robberies don't usually leave the bank with nothing :-) Exchange gets rolled, it might not even afford the claim.

Agree about advantage as being a great place to work vs traditional banks. They will attract better talent for sure.

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

#122

Post by Empact »

mrisoli wrote: post #113
skizm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Do you spend dollars today wondering if tomorrow the Euro will be worth more or less? No, so why would you care what the dollar equivalent to a BTC is when everything you buy is priced in BTC? This is long…

Can you elaborate on how that is going to happen? Not trying to flame, I can see a world where people use BTC for everything, but I am confused at how that will happen with current valuation. BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? will there be some adjustment? How will other entities handle conversion and e…

Most wallets have started communicating values in "mBTC" - whose price is within an order of magnitude of a dollar.

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

#123

Post by mrb »

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…

"As a someone looking make purchases with BTC; if the value of a BTC is going up, why would I use it to buy anything? It's gone up $700 in the last week; up $200 in the last 24 hours alone. I'd feel incredible silly spending bitcoin in a growth phase."

If it goes up so much, isn't it incredibly silly for you to not buy any? See, the reason why you haven't bought BTC yet is the same reason why BTC is still used to buy things. BTC might go down tomorrow, so why not spend it today and get more bang for your buck now.

Case in point: I've personally spent ~100 BTC over the years (buying domain names, Steam games, paying my CPA, buying on Newegg, eating at Charlie Shrem's bar in NYC, etc.)

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

#124

Post by ringaroundthetx »

stanmancan wrote: post #117
ringaroundthetx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For an entire half-decade there have been payment processors that made it seamless for businesses to accept bitcoin and cash some or all of it out immediately if they wanted to. If it takes a $100 million fund raise article for you to ask why everyone else isn't crazy, c'est la vie. People look for validation all manner of ways. Coinbase also has merchant services that allow for immediate cash outs. This is probably…

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying in the first two sentences? Neat to know that you can cash out immediately though; that makes more sense. Are the vendors that accept BTC pricing their goods based on the current exchange rate for 1 BTC? ie. I price product A at $1500USD, I then say I accept BTC, so when someone puts it in the shopping cart it converts $1500USD to BTC and charges them that amount? Sorry, just…

Some vendors and some listing sites show at least two exchange rates. National currency and the cryptocurrency of choice.

Stripe and Coinbase give the options of automatic conversion to the cryptocurrency exchange rate when displaying it.

Some merchants, usually more established ones like Microsoft, Newegg, Namecheap, typically won't show the bitcoin price until you chose that option and they generate the timed invoice.

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

#126

Post by azinman2 »

mrisoli wrote: post #113
skizm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Do you spend dollars today wondering if tomorrow the Euro will be worth more or less? No, so why would you care what the dollar equivalent to a BTC is when everything you buy is priced in BTC? This is long…

Can you elaborate on how that is going to happen? Not trying to flame, I can see a world where people use BTC for everything, but I am confused at how that will happen with current valuation. BTC is worth thousands of dollars, so if everyone starts using BTC will people pay irrational fractions of BTC for bread and milk at the supermarket? will there be some adjustment? How will other entities handle conversion and e…

Bitcoin is deflationary by design. This is problematic for any country to then adopt, as it removes a major economic lever.

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

#127

Post by fpgaminer »

pedrocr wrote: post #87
zjaffee wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of these things are no different than holding large amounts of normal cash(of any currency really) or something such as gold, with the exception of their being a ledger of all trades that have occurred. Also bitcoins can certainly be seized by the government should they size control over any accounts you hold coins in, take your computers, ect (it's just harder to do so). Also I think your missing the biggest us…

>crypto currencies are by far the best digital payment solution when it comes to the time it takes for transactions to clear Isn't paypal much faster than crypto currencies at doing the same? The normal banking system is quite slow (in part for good reasons) but the digital currencies that came before the crypto currencies are much better at this already, and better than bitcoin will ever be.

You missed the salient word: "clear"

PayPal transactions never really clear. You can probably reverse a 3 year old PayPal transaction...

But Bitcoin payments are irreversible after only 1 hour. There are no other systems that accomplish that online.

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

#128

Post by 45h34jh53k4j »

avian wrote: post #83
45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a block is just a header, a ref to the previous block, a set of tx's and a nonce to satisfy the work function. It being digital is just its encoding. An analog cryptocurrency could be carved into trees or anything.

Are you confusing digital with electronic? Ones and zeros carved into a tree are still a digital record. Digital refers to the fact the you operate on a set of discrete values, in contrast to a continuum of values. Medium is irrelevant. Just to be clear. I do agree with the argument above that "cryptocurrency" is a much more fitting term than "digital currency".

Yeah, I think I am confusing the two.

I suspect there are chemical compounds that when reacted can perform analog arithmetic. If you used that to create signing, hashing and propagation logic I dare say analog cryptocurrencies could exist.

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

#129

Post by dahdum »

fpgaminer wrote: post #98
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…

No deposit or withdrawal fees for GDAX, and it's instant to move funds to/from Coinbase wallets.
Post reply on HN