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

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#131

Post by canoebuilder » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:50 AM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #120

canoebuilder wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you think that some future economy will run on cryptocurrency (not totally far fetched IMO) and that currency will have network effects (I don't really see this yet, apart from deflation via speculation, which will stop eventually, it's not stable) then there's a possibility of a winner takes all outcome. But it's very easy to doubt any specific currency will be the final winner.

This is what I've always thought, to find a real footing there has to be some economy to which bitcoin/some cryptocurrency is the lingua franca, the closest we've seen in that regard is silk road, et al. and ransomware, if you want to call those economies.

But here's the problem with this idea as being some buoy for bitcoin/cryptocurrencies, once an economy of this sort develops with some semblance of structure, that market is going to seek out inefficiencies. First on the chopping block? A massively inefficient distributed currency system.

For this reason I think any sustainable use case of a bitcoin like system is necessarily rather niche, and rather 'seedy' or worse, ransomware, etc. But if all the bitcoin dreamers fade away, it becomes much easier to counteract the use of btc-like systems for ransomware extortions and the like.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#132

Post by rexf » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:51 AM UTC

gt_ wrote: post #126

ethagnawl wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

While coinbase & BTC seems to be doing well, I've anecdotally seen a bunch of people who can't get a response from coinbase support over long periods of time. Doesn't make relying on coinbase seem like a good idea.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#133

Post by jerkstate » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:52 AM UTC

zkms wrote: post #95

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.

> That's just training people to get scammed. Yes. All the work of "don't enter your bank password on any website that isn't your bank" went down the bloody trash once this awful workaround to the awfulness that is ACH happened. It's very sad.

boy, somebody ought to work on a replacement for that awful ACH system

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#134

Post by namelost » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:57 AM UTC

etr-strike wrote: post #107

nextstep wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Maxw…

> Increasing block size results in longer validation times as well as slower block propagation

Processing more transactions requires more resources. That's not a bad thing. One might note that currently Bitcoin Cash is usable as a medium of exchange, whereas Bitcoin is not.

They can reduce the bandwidth requirements by implementing e.g. compact blocks.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#135

Post by CydeWeys » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:58 AM UTC

zkms wrote: post #95

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.

> That's just training people to get scammed. Yes. All the work of "don't enter your bank password on any website that isn't your bank" went down the bloody trash once this awful workaround to the awfulness that is ACH happened. It's very sad.

I don't disagree, but this takes seconds instead of 2-3 business days in the case of ACH verification. 2-3 business days is an absolute eternity in the world of Bitcoin speculation.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#136

Post by TAForObvReasons » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:58 AM UTC

rexf wrote: post #132

gt_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

While coinbase & BTC seems to be doing well, I've anecdotally seen a bunch of people who can't get a response from coinbase support over long periods of time. Doesn't make relying on coinbase seem like a good idea.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#137

Post by Frogolocalypse » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:59 AM UTC

namelost wrote: post #134

etr-strike wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Maxw…

> Increasing block size results in longer validation times as well as slower block propagation Processing more transactions requires more resources. That's not a bad thing. One might note that currently Bitcoin Cash is usable as a medium of exchange, whereas Bitcoin is not. They can reduce the bandwidth requirements by implementing e.g. compact blocks.

Feel free to implement your code changes on the alt of your choice. Bitcoin node users remain unaffected.

It's over right? The whole attempt to sideline the bitcoin development team failed, and now that uncertainty has been removed, the price of bitcoin is skyrocketing. That's because bitcoin is valuable for what it is, not for unproven use-cases that decrease bitcoin security. We will get to those use-cases through layering bitcoin, and will not have to sacrifice security to do it.

Accept it. Move on.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#138

Post by thisisit » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 5:00 AM UTC

fourstar wrote: post #87

thisisit wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum has better use case than Bitcoin with it's smart contract implementation. Though the fallout of crypto kitties is proving that improvements can still be made.

Thoughts on EOS?

Short answer - I am not a fan of EOS.

Long answer - I had a chance to interact with one of the founders - Daniel Larmier back in 2013/14 during his Bitshares days. My impression is that while he has all these grand ideas, he doesn't know how to follow through. Then there seemed to be a lot of nepotism during the Bitshares build.

And then there is this:

> What features, uses or attributes do EOS Tokens have? Can the EOS Tokens be used on a blockchain adopting the EOS.IO Software?

> block.one is building the EOS.IO Software but it will not configure and/or launch any public blockchain platform adopting the open source EOS.IO Software (the “EOS Platform”). Any launch of an EOS Platform will occur by members of the community unrelated to block.one. Third parties launching the EOS Platform may delete, modify or supplement the EOS.IO Software prior to, during or after launching the EOS Platform. The EOS Tokens do not have any rights, uses, purpose, attributes, functionalities or features, express or implied, including, without limitation, any uses, purpose, attributes, functionalities or features on the EOS Platform.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#139

Post by _pdp_ » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 5:01 AM UTC

Unless you buy with credit cards, good luck making bank transfers work on Coinbase.

EDIT: Downvoting with no explanation will not change my experience. I believe that cryptocurrencies are the future but having to wait weeks for a simple bank transfer only to find out that your funds will be returned with no explanation why apart from a cryptic message that has something to do with your bank account name not matching your coinbase name is rather annoying. Match how? What do you compare? An extra dot at the end of your middle name will throw off the system without any reasonable explanation.

Honestly, if Coinbase improves their messages in this situation, it may actually reduce the overhead on their customer support but I gather that this might be intentional.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#140

Post by stanmancan » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 5:01 AM UTC

gt_ wrote: post #126

ethagnawl wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

From my experience that seems to be the case with pretty much all the exchanges and resellers lately.