Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#121

Post by tdurden » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:32 AM UTC

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #116

tdurden wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are spending fiat though with that debit card, like every debit card. Transactions are off-chain.

That makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. By your logic, people using coinbase to hold their coins aren't holding bitcoin. It is exactly the same. Bitcoin from my wallet is being spent. It is increasing in value while i don't spend it, because it is in bitcoin. It is no different than an American using their cc in europe.

> By your logic, people using coinbase to hold their coins aren't holding bitcoin

Exactly, they aren't. Coinbase owns the private keys, thus the bitcoin.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#122

Post by sillysaurus3 » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:34 AM UTC

kleer001 wrote: post #105

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.

And it's very hard to get anyone to take this seriously. But as far as I can tell, it's a real possibility.

I had to talk some sense into a friend who was saying she was fed up with being poor and was going to put her $7k life savings into bitcoin. I told her to treat it like gold, hold it, and be very careful to keep it secure. And off Coinbase. And my advice made her hesitate, and now she missed the 100% growth over the last 30 days.

But almost everybody is starting to think that way. And if the entire world starts down that mindset, there isn't a top.

People have already noticed that wealthy Saudis' money is safer in BTC than in banks. Ditto for Zimbabwe. How long until the rest of the world follows?

We have to be thinking of ways to stop this, not merely to benefit from being prescient.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#123

Post by droidist2 » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:35 AM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #115

droidist2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not unless they either have physical check from you, OR are enrolled into MSP (merchant service provider). But MSPs will monitor fraudulent activity just like providing CC in any online store gives them access to empty your CC doesnt mean they will get away with it :)

But isn't the same the info you provide to companies like Coinbase (account and routing number) on the bottom of all of your checks? Oh, but if they're a merchant they have different abilities?

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#124

Post by benbreen » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:36 AM UTC

lpa22 wrote: post #48

benbreen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am on my fifth month of waiting for my account to be unfrozen so I can withdraw my funds. I managed to get through once by phone (was assured that the issue was being resolved) and once via email (same) but for the past two months, nothing. I believe the CEO and probably several other employees are on HN so if any of them see this - please get your act together. Scaling is great but customer support needs to come a…

Haha they made you a lot of money by waiting this long!

It went from being two figures to three figures, so we're not talking about a lot. I'm more mad about having spent a total of around 5 hours waiting on hold at this point - makes my experiences with Comcast customer service seem hyper efficient by comparison!

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#125

Post by stephengillie » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:36 AM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #110

droidist2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is like transactions are in P-time and disputes are in NP-time.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#126

Post by gt_ » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:38 AM UTC

ethagnawl wrote: post #117

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…

Based on my experience* over the past ~week, "robust" is not a word I'd use in the same sentence as "coinbase". *In addition intermittent outages which prevented me from accessing their site, I sent some Satoshi from my local wallet to coinbase (10 days ago at time of writing) in order to unload some; transaction was marked "pending"; they've since sold the coins; customer support has stopped responding to my emails.

I ran into a problem using them, realized their customer support appears to have given up, and decided it was time to get my money out. That was this morning. As of now, the BTC transaction I initialized is reported as “complete” on my Coinbase account, which now has a balance of 0, and the transaction has not even registered on the blockchain. This is certainly not my definition of “robust.”

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#127

Post by Redoubts » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:39 AM UTC

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…

> Coinbase makes crypto currencies trading/investing/purchasing as robust and seemingly as safe as possible.

4 Years Ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#128

Post by Frogolocalypse » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:43 AM UTC

tdurden wrote: post #121

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. By your logic, people using coinbase to hold their coins aren't holding bitcoin. It is exactly the same. Bitcoin from my wallet is being spent. It is increasing in value while i don't spend it, because it is in bitcoin. It is no different than an American using their cc in europe.

> By your logic, people using coinbase to hold their coins aren't holding bitcoin Exactly, they aren't. Coinbase owns the private keys, thus the bitcoin.

I completely agree. That why the money on my bitcoin debit card is only a fraction of the total amount of bitcoin I own, and I put money on the card when I want to. Because I understand the risk of putting bitcoin on an exchange, and am prepared to accept that risk for that amount, for the convenience of being able to spend my bitcoin whenever I choose.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#129

Post by cloakandswagger » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:44 AM UTC

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…

Coinbase is only supporting Bitcoin Cash because there was a large and very legitimate class action lawsuit headed their way if they didn't.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#130

Post by Frogolocalypse » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:49 AM UTC

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…

Balance budgets. Invest in productivity improvements. Buy back debt. Then the currency being devalued against the deflationary currency of bitcoin becomes worth more in comparison.

Can't see it happening though. I believe that bitcoin is going to swallow all of the fixed-asset debt in the world. It is the pin that pricks that bubble. Consumer banks are dead and they don't even know it yet. Investment bankers are going to make out like bandits.