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

Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 355 posts

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#101

Post by canoebuilder »

drawkbox wrote: post #18

With the frenzy out there, Coinbase makes crypto currencies trading/investing/purchasing as robust and seemingly as safe as possible. This could be a signal, now that we have some reputable market players that crypto currencies are really just starting and there is a very high ceiling. Getting in before coinbase you had to mine your own (that party ended quickly - Butterfly Labs, cex.io for cloud mining etc) or be pa…

that crypto currencies are really just starting and there is a very high ceiling

Starting at what?

What is the value proposition that is actually in play here, for which there is some hard evidence of it's existence, other than a speculative frenzy?

It's a bit galling how many people this go 'round are just outright saying "yeah, it's a ponzi, come on guys hop on! there's a high ceiling! hope you get your chair when the music stops!"

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#102

Post by droidist2 »

joering2 wrote: post #83
stephengillie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You had to provide your bank user/pass to Coinbase? I only had to provide routing and account numbers, then verify the ACH amounts (edit: and driver's license photo). But I'm only in the shallow end of the kiddie pool here.

ACH does not work in read or in write-only mode. Once you provide someone your ACH info, they can deposit you money.. or empty out your bank account! I had few rough service providers who tried to come up with some magical charges (technical fee of $500 per year) after agreement was signed and had to change bank numbers to make sure they wont take the money out since it would be more than $500 to fight them in court.…

So if you write someone a personal check they can empty your account?

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#103

Post by zkms »

droidist2 wrote: post #102
joering2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ACH does not work in read or in write-only mode. Once you provide someone your ACH info, they can deposit you money.. or empty out your bank account! I had few rough service providers who tried to come up with some magical charges (technical fee of $500 per year) after agreement was signed and had to change bank numbers to make sure they wont take the money out since it would be more than $500 to fight them in court.…

So if you write someone a personal check they can empty your account?

Of course. There's no inherent technical countermeasures against someone doing so.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#104

Post by stevenwoo »

damontal wrote: post #90
marssaxman wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the fuck ? There is no way, never, ever, that I would even consider doing that. How the hell is it a good idea for any company to try to convince people that it should be normal to share login credentials with a third party for any service, much less something as sensitive as one's bank account? That's just training people to get scammed.

Hasn't Mint been doing this for ages?

I entered one account on Mint and found myself with OP, and decided I didn't want to enter a bunch of different login credentials into a different app.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#105

Post by kleer001 »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #92

I posted this earlier today, and earlier than that as an Ask HN. I promise after this I won't post it again, at least for awhile. This seems sufficiently important that it's worth a slight annoyance. What should we do about the destabilizing potential of Bitcoin? There are two facts about Bitcoin worth worrying about: 1. There is no upper bound on the price 2. Everyone who thought the price won't continue to exponent…

Yes, Bitcoin might very well eat all money on Earth. No joke, no freaking joke. I'm thinking along the lines of a financial black hole.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#106

Post by ucha »

aaavl2821 wrote: post #77
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only derivatives and forex. Stock is still office hours and out of regular hours (+-1 hour I think) is reserved for the big boys.

Stock futures are 24 hours. I believe the vast majority of equity volume is in stock futures rather than stocks themselves. Institutional investors drive this volume

Your three statements are false.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#107

Post by etr-strike »

nextstep wrote: post #94
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brian Armstrong has quite the history of being on the wrong side of every argument to do with safe and scalable crypto implementation. He has been a champion of centralization and attacks on bitcoin governance. He was a vocal proponent of four out of the five failed fork attempts of bitcoin over the past couple of years. He, and coinbase investors, are very lucky they had people like Charlie Lee managing the technica…

I’m not sure if you’re willfully misinterpreting what happened or just unware, but the debate over how to scale bitcoin (basically, on-chain vs off-chain) is know being played out with Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash. And it’s looking like big blocks is actually a solution for scalability (lower fees, faster transactions), at least in the short term. (For those not aware, Bitcoin Cash is a fork of Bitcoin that removes segwit…

Bitcoin Cash is the brute force solution to scaling. Increasing block size results in longer validation times as well as slower block propagation. Both of these things lead to centralization. The entire purpose of bitcoin is to be as decentralized as possible.

Anyways, here's a video released today of a lightning transaction happening on mainnet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k

Here's a video of Greg Maxwell explaining how slight propagation delays can lead to drastic increases in centralization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHIuuKCm53o

And here's rootstock, an ethereum compatible solution for smart contracts: https://www.rsk.co/

Bitcoin Cash is like trying to solve traffic congestion by adding more lanes.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#108

Post by wmf »

droidist2 wrote: post #102
joering2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ACH does not work in read or in write-only mode. Once you provide someone your ACH info, they can deposit you money.. or empty out your bank account! I had few rough service providers who tried to come up with some magical charges (technical fee of $500 per year) after agreement was signed and had to change bank numbers to make sure they wont take the money out since it would be more than $500 to fight them in court.…

So if you write someone a personal check they can empty your account?

Yep, and this happened to Donald Knuth: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#109

Post by ethagnawl »

fpisfun wrote: post #49
drawkbox wrote: post #18

With the frenzy out there, Coinbase makes crypto currencies trading/investing/purchasing as robust and seemingly as safe as possible. This could be a signal, now that we have some reputable market players that crypto currencies are really just starting and there is a very high ceiling. Getting in before coinbase you had to mine your own (that party ended quickly - Butterfly Labs, cex.io for cloud mining etc) or be pa…

Actually there was circle they were very similar to coinbase, I used them for a while. They decided to get out of Bitcoin for some reason and I have no idea why.

Circle still sells BTC, just (generally) not to consumers. It's addressed in _Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots_ #250: http://giantrobots.fm/250

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#110

Post by balls187 »

droidist2 wrote: post #102
joering2 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ACH does not work in read or in write-only mode. Once you provide someone your ACH info, they can deposit you money.. or empty out your bank account! I had few rough service providers who tried to come up with some magical charges (technical fee of $500 per year) after agreement was signed and had to change bank numbers to make sure they wont take the money out since it would be more than $500 to fight them in court.…

So if you write someone a personal check they can empty your account?

Yes but I believe with ACH you have 60-days to dispute the fraudulent debits.
Post reply on HN