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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

#131

Post by 45h34jh53k4j »

sspring1 wrote: post #61
45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im sorry this happened, but you might want to get on to their security team, rather than the regular customer support queue. Imagine if your bank suddenly had millions of new clients join in a 2 month period. I think they would stop answering the phone too.

no, they'd answer the phone.

even if every line was already jammed with the millions of new customers? Humans only scale so far.

I think coinbase can do a better job with support, but expecting the same quality of support as a heavily regulated and $T industry from a startup is foolish.

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

#133

Post by fpgaminer »

45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #121
fpgaminer wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

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

It's being defacto established that when a cryptobank gets robbed, the funds are repaid to customers using local currency, not BTC, priced at the time of the loss.

So, from the underwriter's perspective, it's just insuring whatever total USD value Coinbase currently holds, with consideration given to Coinbase's ability to prevent theft. Not any different from a bank insuring itself against loss due to cybertheft.

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

#134

Post by mrb »

utexaspunk wrote: post #118
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…

Can I get a bank account which works like a normal bank- accepts EFTs in dollars, has a debit card which pays in dollars, but where my balance is stored in BTC and everything is exchanged to/from BTC at the current rate on the fly? With enough of a balance, it seems like I'd be able to weather any fluctuations in the exchange rate and my funds would for the most part appreciate at a much greater rate than the measly…

The Coinbase Shift card does this. It's not a bank account, but just a debit card that exchanges USDBTC in real time to settle transactions.

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

#136

Post by stanmancan »

ringaroundthetx wrote: post #124
stanmancan wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 invoi…

Interesting, thanks!

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

#138

Post by nosuchthing »

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…

What is Bitcoin doing? The BTC network is a service. At the time of this writing, there are upwards of 30-100+ functioning cryptocoin networks which offer the same distributed ledger functionality of BTC wallets and a few with more unique features and trustworthy dev teams.

The arbitrary supply of and rules which define how minted coins are rewarded is an important aspect of each of these cryptocurrencies, and if the limited edition deflationary aspect was valuable then maybe we should all buy into that BTC clone with 42 coins in "circulation".

BTC isn't rare, it's just the AOL of cryptocoins right now. Slow and over priced. There are better alternatives.

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

#139

Post by nradov »

skizm wrote: post #55
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…

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…

Of course that will never happen in our lifetimes because in the real world people and companies have to pay taxes. The larger sovereign states — which exercise effective monopolies on violence over geographic areas — won't agree to accept payments in cryptocurrencies which they can't control. Even if you conduct transactions in BTC or something similar you'll eventually have to exchange it for the local fiat currency to pay taxes.

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

#140

Post by IgorPartola »

burger_moon wrote: post #103
IgorPartola wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe during a gold rush the people who consistently come out ahead are those selling shovels.

the analogy doesn't really hold to coinbase though. Shovels are a utility for mining gold. That would correlate to GPUs and other computer hardware. In that regard perhaps the VCs should be investing in AMD or Nvidia.

I imagine if you are a VC investing in this space, hedging between hardware, currencies, and exchanges/merchant services would probably be smart. If the market cap of BTC drops, does the market value of e.g. Intel or Coinbase drop proportionally?
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