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Coinbase down for maintenance

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Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#191

Post by Beejeepa »

fullshark wrote: post #37
tome wrote: post #27

Now what would happen if Coinbase went down at a time when Bitcoin was going through a short period of decreasing value?

This is exactly my question. What happens when these exchanges face the inevitable panic/bank run?

Bank runs are bad when there isn't a full reserve. Coinbase should carry a full reserve.

Fractional reserve banking is a prisoner's dilemma, we all marginally benefit from the status quo of credit/debit/interest, but in a crisis, the first people to pull out win, and everyone else loses.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#192

Post by Beejeepa »

ceejayoz wrote: post #144
igorgue wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hope you know Coinbase is only 8% of the total Bitcoin volume each day. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

A run on one bank frequently has knock-on effects on other banks.

Bank runs are bad when there isn't a full reserve. Coinbase says it has 100% reserves.

Bank runs are how fraudulent exchanges are caught: Bitcoin is self-auditing, and either you have it or you don't, there aren't IOUs or paper receipts.

Fractional reserve banking is a prisoner's dilemma, we all marginally benefit from the status quo of credit/debit/interest, but in a crisis, the first people to pull out win, and everyone else loses.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#193

Post by FooHentai »

DINKDINK wrote: post #68
sk2code wrote: post #7

I never want to reuse my comments from other thread but this time I just can't resist. No one really anticipated what we all are currently experiencing and Coinbase is not different. It seems Coinbase struggling to cope up: $0000 - $1000: 1789 days $1000- $2000: 1271 days $2000- $3000: 23 days $3000- $4000: 62 days $4000- $5000: 61 days $5000- $6000: 8 days $6000- $7000: 13 days $7000- $8000: 14 days $8000- $9000: 9…

>No one really anticipated what we all are currently experiencing Actually, those in the Bitcoin economic space have been saying this was going to happen for ~3 years Hyperbitcoinization - Daniel Krawisz - March 29, 2014 http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/hyperbitcoinization/

The article you've linked to does not address the situation being described.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#194

Post by nikanj »

chickenfries wrote: post #186
Klathmon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Stripe or Whatsapp, but I know coinbase has had an average of 30,000 new users a day for a while, with spikes of over 100,000 new signups in a single day around thanksgiving. It's absolutely bonkers amounts of growth! Edit: more concrete numbers: In January of 2016 they had around 2.6 million users. On November 29th they announced they had over 13 million users.

Whatsapp famously had ~450 million users when they were acquired by Facebook. I assume that the average user sent quite a few texts, some pictures, occasional video... they also supported voice calls... I don't know how much computing power is actually needed when you're just buying BTC. When I used Coinbase recently to take a small BTC position, I only made maybe 4 transactions in total. Is this really a lot to hand…

There’s a lot less dangers involved in double-delivering Whatsapp messages, delivering them out of order, etc. Less constraints=easier optimizations.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#195

Post by gist »

viraptor wrote: post #151
gist wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think it would be difficult for someone to setup a website and scam newbies into buying 'bitcoin', handing over credit card info and taking wire transfers. Perhaps even act legit to start and then segue into only processing part of transactions as real. Quite a ponzi. I don't think is a stretch either. There isn't anything comparable that people would give you money for and the key really is the overwhelming…

You can't easily pull a scam like that using credit cards. Wire transfers could be potentially easier as we know the union transfers are hard to revert (but there's work being done there as well). Essentially, if you interact with banks and have too many chargebacks or complaints, you'll be dropped. Or your fees will get massive. And that's if you find a payment processor who's happy with you taking money for cryptoc…

True but if you are running a ponzi and you have enough money coming in then you can handle redemptions if you need to.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#196

Post by Klathmon »

chickenfries wrote: post #186
Klathmon wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Stripe or Whatsapp, but I know coinbase has had an average of 30,000 new users a day for a while, with spikes of over 100,000 new signups in a single day around thanksgiving. It's absolutely bonkers amounts of growth! Edit: more concrete numbers: In January of 2016 they had around 2.6 million users. On November 29th they announced they had over 13 million users.

Whatsapp famously had ~450 million users when they were acquired by Facebook. I assume that the average user sent quite a few texts, some pictures, occasional video... they also supported voice calls... I don't know how much computing power is actually needed when you're just buying BTC. When I used Coinbase recently to take a small BTC position, I only made maybe 4 transactions in total. Is this really a lot to hand…

I don't have any experience in this area, but I imagine that fintech is a bit different than messaging. It's not the amount of data, but the nature of the data.

I'd imagine you can't use scaling tricks like eventual consistency or simple sharding here. Traders are going to be pissed if their most up to date information from the exchange is a second behind what they can see.

It's already at the point where they have a line in their FAQ for the GDAX API that tells people where to colocate from for the lowest latency.

And all of that data needs to be stored damn-near indefinitely, and securely. And integrated with traditional financial systems.

I'd love to see some information on what it actually takes, as i'm just guessing here, but seeing as there aren't any bitcoin exchanges that can seem to keep the servers running smoothly during spikes, i'm guessing it's not a trivial problem to solve.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#198

Post by tomjakubowski »

smokeyj wrote: post #117
Animats wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But did it result in an exchange actually transferring millions of dollars out of the exchange to a real bank? That's the question.

Compared to national currencies bitcoin is now top 20 in terms of market cap.

What kind of currency is measured in market cap? Isn't that a chicken-egg problem?

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#199

Post by wbl »

Klathmon wrote: post #196
chickenfries wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatsapp famously had ~450 million users when they were acquired by Facebook. I assume that the average user sent quite a few texts, some pictures, occasional video... they also supported voice calls... I don't know how much computing power is actually needed when you're just buying BTC. When I used Coinbase recently to take a small BTC position, I only made maybe 4 transactions in total. Is this really a lot to hand…

I don't have any experience in this area, but I imagine that fintech is a bit different than messaging. It's not the amount of data, but the nature of the data. I'd imagine you can't use scaling tricks like eventual consistency or simple sharding here. Traders are going to be pissed if their most up to date information from the exchange is a second behind what they can see. It's already at the point where they have a…

And yet the NYSE keeps on ticking.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#200

Post by Klathmon »

wbl wrote: post #199
Klathmon wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any experience in this area, but I imagine that fintech is a bit different than messaging. It's not the amount of data, but the nature of the data. I'd imagine you can't use scaling tricks like eventual consistency or simple sharding here. Traders are going to be pissed if their most up to date information from the exchange is a second behind what they can see. It's already at the point where they have a…

And yet the NYSE keeps on ticking.

... from 9 to 5, monday through friday, with a fairly predictable load, and decades more experience.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but the amount of growth they have seen is substantial and unprecedented. Nobody could have predicted it, and the rate of increase just keeps going up.

They are clearly new in this space, as all cryptocurrency companies are. I don't think that means that they should just give up and go home because they couldn't keep the servers up during spikes of insane activity...

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