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

321–330 of 355 posts

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#321

Post by zeep »

zeep wrote: post #255
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…

In my experience, Coinbase/GDAX becomes unavailable every time the cost of Bitcoin drops significantly in a really short period of time... it happened again this morning a little before 7am... Not sure if they are trying to control the drops or if their servers can't handle the load.

and here is another big drop now... and GDAX is down again...

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#322

Post by tome »

lend000 wrote: post #223
marcosscriven wrote: post #222

I bought £100 of Bitcoin in September via Coinbase, pretty much just to have a play with Bitcoin itself, and try a couple of transactions. To my horror, I discovered that transaction wasn't actually in the blockchain, and that Coinbase essentially has an internal system you just have to trust, which seemed to be contrary to the whole idea of a global ledger. I setup my own wallet and transferred it to that (thus achi…

Would it also horrify you to learn that when you transfer money from your savings to your checking account (at the same bank), those transactions are not cleared by the Federal Reserve?

I doubt it would, firstly because that hasn't been touted as the "point" of dollars, and secondly because FDIC insures deposits.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#323

Post by tome »

kgwgk wrote: post #279

Slightly offtopic, but this is so funny: (From today’s “money stuff” https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/shale-sha... ) Happy Bitcoin 13,000 Day. I mean, that was yesterday. A few hours after I sent out Money Stuff saying Happy Bitcoin 12,000 Day, which was also yesterday. At this rate we'll have Bitcoin 25,000 before my "Bitcoin 25,000 Before Dow 25,000" hats get here. Happy Bitcoin 14,000 Day. That w…

> I can see why you'd be skeptical of your futures exchange turning into a bitcoin exchange.

The futures are cash settled, so I doubt that's a problem.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#324

Post by aussie1233 »

Support is horrible, here is my story - not sure how common that problem is. Would be interested if others have the same valdation issue.

I have a case open for multiple weeks to get my address validated. I was able to buy initially, but now it pops up a "quiz" (that's how support calls it), where i have to enter my address and then it says that it's not a valid permanent address. Which is funny because that is the same address the accepted when I signed up and validated my ID. There support literally tells me, "sorry your problem, but you can try the quiz again- and maybe one day it will work". To me thats an unbelievable statement.

I think they have to stop onnoarding customers and solve some of their basic flows first. What if I wanted to sell? It is just not possible within Coinbase.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#325

Post by njarboe »

beefield wrote: post #190
njarboe wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize "safe" is a feeling, an emotional response. I have yet to see "safe" defined in some probabilistic way and that is what you would have to do to have it not just a feeling.

> I have yet to see "safe" defined in some probabilistic way https://www.moodys.com/sites/products/DefaultResearch/200710... Of course, when you start defining "safe" in a probabilistic way, you end up very quickly estimating the degree of safety instead of binary safe/not safe.

Correct. I'm sure its has been done, but the general public does not think about it that way.

Nice subtle joke(?) with that link to a Moody's March 2008 report on rating bonds given that rating agencies were probably the closest single thing you could point to as the fraud that caused the mortgage bubble and 2008 collapse. Yes, sometimes a feeling can be closer to the truth than a lot of complicated math done with wrong assumptions.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#326

Post by ni-hil »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #307
hectorr1 wrote: post #276

I have a ton of respect for Coinbase. It seems like their implied priorities are: 1) Security 1a) Compliance ... 57) Customer Service While annoying, this was both sufficient and necessary for the business to date. Security is necessary for obvious reasons. Compliance is necessary because to be able to do business with US banks (card processing, ACH, wires...) they had to be aggressive about complying with US regulat…

Agree with almost everything you've said, and unfortunately if past experience is anything to go by, they'll crash/go down during the next big price dip.

They are down right now

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#327

Post by PeterisP »

mbrock wrote: post #311
PeterisP wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about the USA banking system, which is pretty much stone age compared to everyone else. (paper checks? really?) For example, in EU the requirement for banks to open up APIs to everyone is coming in force next year, a bit closer than a million years - and it's not happening because of competition from blockchains, it was put in force (before blockchains boomed) for reasons of consumer rights and restric…

I'm not sure the EU directive will open up APIs to everyone. More likely it will be to a regulated class of businesses, right? If it really means I will be able to directly access and manipulate my own personal and business bank account with curl, then I'm really excited. If I have to go through a bureaucratic approval process, then it's still pretty cool, but not what I really want (permissionless innovation).

Yes, the main intent is not for end-users to access those APIs directly - most consumers don't want that, and the larger business who want it already have such access, pretty much every bank here offers a cash management solution that allows you to automatically access your account data and send transactions from your system to the bank. The big expectation is that it will open up the market to fintech service providers / tool makers who can then provide services using that API to every customer of every bank; but there certainly could be (or you could make) a service provider that offers exactly what you describe - a consumer friendly API for direct access, handling the authentication in some manner that's compatible with isolated curl requests. You wouldn't have to get permission from the involved banks to do that, but you would have to get the permission from the customers, of course.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#328

Post by aloukissas »

mancerayder wrote: post #294
aloukissas wrote: post #186

Coinbase is getting away with murder charging outrageous fees, cashing in the bitcoin frenzy. Kinda like the shady brokerages in the 80s.

Maybe, but how are they supposed to hire employees to build and run the infrastructure and rent datacenter space / cloud VPSes / etc. if they do it for free? I'm not being facetious, I'm genuinely curious - hey, the fees seemed high to me, too. Luckily the appreciation of the coins made those icky feelings disappear quickly.

AFAIK, running a full-on brokerage (e.g. Schwab, Robinhood) is probably more expensive as it's highly regulated, with non-trivial compliance costs, for example. Cryptocurrencies are supposed to be new, digital "securities", without the fat of the incumbents. I'm probably oversimplifying this here, but at the age of easy cloud scaling, where their main job is a secure digital wallet storage, their fees are mostly taking advantage of the BTC craze.

To clarify: their % fee isn't that high - the fact that it's uncapped though is pretty outrageous. A $10K trade on Schwab costs a few dollars; on Coinbase, a couple hundred.

I guess once BTC futures are out and one can speculate on BTC in the open market, they'll have to feel the pressure and adjust their pricing.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#329

Post by module0000 »

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…

For what it's worth, you can expose yourself to BTC in the futures market later this month. That's regulated to the same degree all commodity futures are regulated(which is "a lot"). Your profits(and losses) are guaranteed by the clearinghouse(not the exchange), which mitigates your exposure to another mtgox-ish/btc-e/yadoxi event.

In terms of "always on", the futures market is always on. You can trade softs, metals, currencies, bonds - you name it. The leverage available is 200:1, 50 times greater than the SEC's limit on security margins(eg the stock market). This means you can make(and lose) catastrophically larger amounts than you began with. Controlling your risk is no longer done by a broker limiting your leverage, it's done by you and involves methodical discipline.

The downside: you are trading against pros with deeper pockets and more experience than you could possibly imagine. You won't be out smarting, out trading, or getting "an edge" on anyone except the other retail players.

Re: Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy

#330

Post by tome »

kgwgk wrote: post #279

Slightly offtopic, but this is so funny: (From today’s “money stuff” https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-07/shale-sha... ) Happy Bitcoin 13,000 Day. I mean, that was yesterday. A few hours after I sent out Money Stuff saying Happy Bitcoin 12,000 Day, which was also yesterday. At this rate we'll have Bitcoin 25,000 before my "Bitcoin 25,000 Before Dow 25,000" hats get here. Happy Bitcoin 14,000 Day. That w…

> If you collected 25 percent margin from someone who was short bitcoin on Monday, they would have blown through it by this morning

Futures are settled daily, so the risk is only of a 25% move in one day. I agree it's a risk, but much less of a risk than if the futures were settled every 4 days as you were suggesting :)

Post reply on HN