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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

#201

Post by cobbzilla »

njarboe wrote: post #155
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 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.

I would guess they also have some kind of insurance. iirc one of the larger exchanges was hacked and lost millions, but the insurance paid out and made whole the users who lost coin. it's a dynamic market.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#202

Post by Frogolocalypse »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #196
Frogolocalypse wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What you're promoting is a totally centralized cryptocurrency vision for the vast majority of the world, where the very rich and large institutions alone get to use their private keys with any frequency. It utterly contradicts the title of Bitcoin's white paper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

Nodes are peers. If you don't own one, especially if you can't run one, and you don't use it to secure your transactions on the blockchain, you aren't one.

You skipped right over the peer part, even though the word is used twice, and started talking about the cash part.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#203

Post by latchkey »

40acres wrote: post #2

Coinbase seems to be the quintessential "sell shovels during a gold rush" company. Definitely provides a good case study about how to create a successful business during new industry booms.

In my opinion, selling the miner hardware is more like selling the shovels. Coinbase is more like the laundry service.

I'm sure someone else can poke holes in this as well. =)

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#204

Post by b1daly »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #122
kleer001 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ove…

Holy crap, there is a top. To realize these gains, owners of bitcoins are going to have to convert back to fiat. US dollars have a built in floor as government issued fiat, which is that they are required to pay taxes.

The money supply of a country is a precious resource, and the government has a responsibility, and incentive, to maintain some level of control. Look how serious the Secret Service is about counterfeiting.

There are many tools the government has to control the use of bitcoin, the simplest being to just outlaw it.

They already treat individuals who sell bitcoin as a business activity with a heavy hand.

Libertarian geeks who haven’t thought things through seem to think that because it will be hard to impossible to completely shut down a distributed system, that means the government can’t control it.

Wake up! Look at Ross Ulbricht! The fact that he conducted his illegal business with bitcoin was used against him. It protected him zero amount.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#206

Post by snarfybarfy »

mrb wrote: post #179
rexf wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Funny how they are coping with signing up users just fine. Takes about 5 mins for somebody to check your ID and create an account. Support however seems not to be a priority to them.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#207

Post by MichaelGG »

mifeng wrote: post #16
Cookingboy wrote: post #4

Coinbase has a key difference from traditional brokers such as Charles Schwab, Scottrade, etc. It doesn't charge a flat fee for buy/sell crypto currency, but a 2-3% fee based on the transaction value. So even though I'm sure they've been making cash hand over fist this past 12 months, it makes any sort of future prediction extremely difficult. They not only have to predict customer growth (which leads to transaction…

I bet Coinbase makes more money from their exchange (GDAX) which does $1 billion each day in volume. While limit orders are free, market orders cost 0.25% of transaction value.

Why would anyone ever want to use a market order versus a limit? In any exchange, for any kind of trading? If you're really ok with e.g. selling for 0.01, set that as your limit.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#208

Post by likelynew »

blhack wrote: post #145
thisisit wrote: post #68

Does anyone know the hot/cold wallet address for Coinbase, like the below one for Bitfinex? https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/3D2oetdNuZUqQHPJmc...

It seems likely that coinbase has many cold and hot wallets which are geographically and technically distributed across many vaults and key generators.

Good for them that they can spend bitcoin cash without people noticing.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#209

Post by Kiro »

_pdp_ wrote: post #139

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…

Never heard anyone have that problem. You're in minority so please don't speak like this is some major problem.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#210

Post by makomk »

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

Segwit2x attempted to replace the existing Bitcoin software and network with something the entire current development team thought was a terrible idea. It relied on the premise that the reason almost every person who had experience deploying changes to Bitcoin opposed it was because they were part of a secret conspiracy to cripple Bitcoin. The software was developed by a single guy, was to be deployed on a ludicrously tight schedule with no real code review, and had bugs that would've caused chaos if t wasn't cancelled at the last minute due to opposition. Hostile takeover seems accurate.

Oh, and BitPay (the payment provider Steam used) tried to trick users into switching to it via a blog post telling them they needed to upgrade to it because of Segwit and their money was at risk if they didn't. Every user who followed their advice will now have a client that doesn't work.

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