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Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

nytimes.com

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Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#171

Post by zkms »

jerkstate wrote: post #133
zkms wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

UK has Faster Payments; which runs 24/7 and has times measured in seconds, unlike ACH (doesn't run on weekends, takes days), and charges no costs to end-users. This is a well-solved problem, the issue is that USian banks make far too much off overdraft fees to want to upgrade their infrastructure at the cost of making less money from parasitic fees.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#172

Post by Frogolocalypse »

drawkbox wrote: post #164
njarboe wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase does give one the sense of security and ease of use. It does not seem sketchy, is American based, has KYC procedures, etc. If they lose coins or go under, a lot of "normal" people will lose money. Not sure what regulations might be passed in Congress if that happens, but the cryptocurrency Wild West would likely be over in America at that point.

Agreed. Maybe one day they will be so big that they are deemed "too big to fail" like the over-extended failed big banks and the bailouts/TARP of the Great Recession.

Sounds like a justification for seizing it. For safety and security. But the government wouldn't do that, would they?

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#173

Post by mrb »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #119
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…

Nothing wrong with my memory http://bitcoinist.com/coinbase-ceo-brian-armstrong-announces... Not to mention being a signatory to the nya, being the attempted hostile takeover of bitcoin via 2x that crashed one block before the fork. And let's not forget : http://www.coinfox.info/news/persons/5012-brian-armstrong-ca... Losing side. Every time. And no one is interested in a centralized alt like bch, which is why it has…

I dislike it when people like you try to paint segwit2x as a "hostile" attempt to take over Bitcoin. It was not. A few confrontational segwit2x supporters made it look this way, but in reality the people at the center of the movement genuinely cared about simply making Bitcoin scale.

See also a longer explanation I wrote at: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7508mh/comment/do7umhy

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#174

Post by zkms »

CydeWeys wrote: post #135
zkms wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can do what Gemini does -- credit the account with fake money once the user requests ACH transfer, let them make trades with it, and only let them withdraw any proceeds of it (whether bitcoin or fiat) once the ACH transaction fully settles.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#175

Post by snoman »

Frogolocalypse wrote: post #72
stale2002 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's safe if you keep your money in coinbase.

Completely false. The number one rule of bitcoin is never store your bitcoin on an exchange. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 You wait and see what happens when coinbase has 500 billion or a trillion dollars worth of hard currency on their platform, and the us dollar is three years into its slide. The temptation to raid that will be far…

Bitcoin is no less safe than any other asset re: civil forfeiture. One might even make the argument that it is moreso because there aren't the established communication mechanisms that exist between law enforcement agencies and banks that allow them to hold funds as quickly as they do.

Per your other argument: a whole host of executive orders spanning 2 years, nearly 100 years ago, designed to work around the federal reserve ratio, doesn't hold much water.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#176

Post by Frogolocalypse »

canoebuilder wrote: post #101
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…

> What is the value proposition that is actually in play here,

Debt-fueled inflation resistant money. It is right in the statement in the genesis block detailing a bank bailout.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#177

Post by chrisco255 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #163
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's just store all of our money with the government then, eh?

With a bank, yeah. Even as somebody who is savvy specifically in security I trust a bank to keep my savings safe more than I trust myself. Threat models and risk balancing are important.

Banks are basically just retail fronts for the Federal Reserve anyway. And IRS has such tight hooks into the banking system...all they have to do is snap their fingers to freeze your account.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#178

Post by avenoir »

stale2002 wrote: post #59
nikolay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As as safe as possible" - are you out of your mind?!

It's safe if you keep your money in coinbase.

I think it's subjective. I personally don't have much invested in Bitcoin and if I did I'd probably keep at least half of it in a personal wallet and half in Coinbase in case I wanted to cash out at any given moment and not lose everything. At least in my experience, transferring coins from personal wallet to Coinbase can take days. Just enough to lose everything when it hits the fan. Or maybe i'm just a catastrophist. :)

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#179

Post by mrb »

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.

Coinbase is simply suffering from insane growth pains. I mean, come on, they are adding half a million new users per week! Of course support isn't going to be very responsive.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#180

Post by Frogolocalypse »

mrb wrote: post #173
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong with my memory http://bitcoinist.com/coinbase-ceo-brian-armstrong-announces... Not to mention being a signatory to the nya, being the attempted hostile takeover of bitcoin via 2x that crashed one block before the fork. And let's not forget : http://www.coinfox.info/news/persons/5012-brian-armstrong-ca... Losing side. Every time. And no one is interested in a centralized alt like bch, which is why it has…

I dislike it when people like you try to paint segwit2x as a "hostile" attempt to take over Bitcoin. It was not. A few confrontational segwit2x supporters made it look this way, but in reality the people at the center of the movement genuinely cared about simply making Bitcoin scale. See also a longer explanation I wrote at: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7508mh/comment/do7umhy

Is Armstrong involved in it? It's an attack. I have nothing against the business of coinbase. They provide a service and are compensated for it. He needs to just butt his head out of technology governance.
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