They have been doing this since 2012 when Bitcoin was essentially free...I guess they took the money just in case.
Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
141–150 of 242 posts
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#142I'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…
I'm sure there are some "bitcoin purists" who think someday bitcoin will be used to buy everything, but that's certainly a minority viewpoint.
There's a more pragmatic way to think about it.
Bitcoin can coexist just fine with national currencies, and with other cryptocurrencies, and with precious metals. Bitcoin doesn't need to "win" by replacing any of these.
Bitcoin is valuable because it's a secure way to store and transfer value between people.
If bitcoin is never used to buy your morning coffee, that's OK. If only 1% of the population finds bitcoin useful, that's OK, too.
Dollars, euros and yen are better than bitcoin in many use cases, and bitcoin can do things that dollars, euros and yen cannot do in other use cases.
The simple fact is that many people find bitcoin useful, and that's what makes it valuable.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some places will allow immediate conversion to dollars. I know bitpay used to facilitate that.
Bitpay was cashing to fiat from unconfirmed bitcoin tx's? SMH If its a bitpay to bitpay tx its all internal and likely didnt actually touch the bitcoin blockchain.
This was merchant payments. Essentially bitpay guaranteed the USD you would get at the point the transaction occurred. They didn't send the USD, that happened a day later.
So buyer pays in btc, bitpay handle the transaction, probably sell the same amount on an exchange at that point, tx confirms and they pay out the USD. The BTC then goes into the bitpay reserve for the next merchant.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#144I'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…
Initially people did use to to buy stuff, but it there isn't really an advantage over credit cards. Now people just want to buy it because it keeps going up in price. Classic Pyramid get rich scheme.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#145Earlier 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.
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Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#146Earlier 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…
I'm not an expert on BTC or anything. In fact I'm not even long on BTC. I don't think it will work in the long term. That said I'm just answering questions as I understand them:
> 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?
The block chain supports values as small as 0.00000001 BTC (called a Satoshi). More terms will be coined as more common denominations eventually are used to buy things.
> How will other entities handle conversion and exchange? Will the general population have some compulsatory event to liquidate their own bank accounts into BTC funds?
There will be no single event, over time people will simply not use their local currency any more in favor of BTC. Slowly, over time, the population will lose trust in fiat and gain trust in BTC. This may occur over decades or more.
> Could this change asset valuation worldwide(Real estate, investment funds, etc)? If no government entity mediates currency value and printing can they tax your earnings if companies pay through some decentralized medium? What happens when nobody is paying taxes?
I'm not sure about these. Right now if you sell things for BTC I'm pretty sure you have to pay taxes on the "fair market value" of the BTC, which I have no idea what that would be (maybe the average price at the time of the payment?). I assume people long on BTC are hoping laws will adapt by the point when it is widely accepted.
> How about other cryptocurrencies, is there some kind of zero-sum game race to the top going on? Can they co-exist in the long term purist scenario?
I mean, a cryptocurrency is only as valuable as the trust people have in it. So all the same rules/theories apply to other cryptos the same as BTC. BTC just happens to be the most popular at the moment, and therefore has the highest market cap (not even sure if this term applies).
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Raise when you don't need it. VCs are desperate to part with cash ("use it or lose it"), and Coinbase probably has the best chance (after perhaps Stripe and Braintree) of becoming the de facto home for the crypto payment/trading industry.
Even so, a 1.6 billion dollar valuation of coinbase is certainly very high. Assuming that over the course of the long term they are comparable to something like intercontinental exchange (the owner of NYSE/EURONEXT, and controller of the clearing house for 50% of the worlds oil futures/derivative products). The total market cap of coins traded on their platform would need to be magnitudes larger to justify this valua…
By deduction they make about a million USD in fees a day. A startup making real cash along with huge growth potential. Seems valid.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#148I'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…
Buy and sell limits prevent using coinbase to trade BTC like a stock unless you're talking extremely low limits or extremely long term (like a retirement fund, which I wouldn't recommend)
So the liquidity is weird, I can turn less than $15K into USD in a few moments, but $15001 will take me two weeks and is scary given volatility. I would argue this intentional as in this is why coinbase isn't very useful for drug money laundering.
I once bought a commemorative Swiss Army knife with Debian Linux branding and spent like $200 on nickel and time fees to buy a $100 knife. The numbers are only slightly exaggerated. Transferring money is incredibly expensive.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#149Somebody stole my identity and created a Coinbase account with it. I made a ticket on their system over two weeks ago and they haven't even bothered to respond. I'm baffled that such a shady company is able to raise funds like this. I mean, imagine if your bank just one day stopped answering the phone.
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.
> 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.
This is utterly delusional.
You can't handle new clients, you STOP ACCEPTING NEW CLIENTS.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#150Definitely late to the game, but finally bought bitcoin this week. I've followed bitcoin since ~2010, but it's volatility and financial constraints had prevented any real action. Here are some notes if there are any other holdouts out there: I used Coinbase and Gemini. It was surprisingly difficult to get money into these places, which was a bit frustrating, but in the same sense reassuring that they are playing by the rules. I actually setup on Gemini because Coinbase kept cancelling orders on my debit card (Schwab), and I was able to setup wire transfer with Gemini, and then transfer that to Coinbase to fund the GDAX account. I set out Saturday morning to buy bitcoin and didn't ultimately have any until Monday afternoon when the wire transfer reached Gemini (standard account for ACH transfer is now approved on both platforms, Gemini took 2 days, Coinbase 4). Coinbase has a nice app to monitor accounts and price charts, but it doesn't seem to link to GDAX (their exchange), so you can't get a unified view of holdings in one spot. Gemini doesn't have an app, but has a web application which is annoyingly secure. It remembers a device for 24 hours, after which it requires 2 Factor SMS verification. Security is great, but it's a bit annoying when all you want to do is check account value once a day. Gemini trading volume seemed a bit low, and their API didn't offer any compelling features over GDAX, which is why I've transferred from Gemini to Coinbase (took about 1.5 hours to go through) and then GDAX (Coinbase to GDAX is instantaneous). Both offer websocket feeds and the APIs are well documented. The C# GDAX sample application was last updated in 2015 interestingly, but it still has many useful pieces. Another bonus for GDAX is their fee structure, which is simpler (and cheaper) than Gemini's, maker orders are 0% fees. I've always been intrigued by automated trading systems, but the barriers to entry are so high in the stock markets (data, platforms, high fees, account minimums, day trading rules), to the point where you can't really just 'try it out.' 6 days into this adventure and I'm maintaining my own order book and programmatically making trades with tiny amounts of money. Next step is to work on strategy.