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Coinbase down for maintenance

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Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#201

Post by simonsarris »

woah wrote: post #184
simonsarris wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slapdash startup-ism in an exchange for a Brave New Currency is just as scary as a conspiracy. It may be more scary. At least with the Cabal theories you know someone knows what's going on. You might even have someone to blame/jail at the end of the tunnel!

You really seem to be wringing your hands pretty hard about an overloaded NGINX instance. Wouldn't a conspiracy that was stealing everyone's money be a lot worse?

No I'm saying that any reply approximating "its fine guys, they're new to this and won't anticipate everything" is disquieting when lots of coin is on the line.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#202

Post by yongjik »

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…

This unfortunately reminds me too much of stellar evolution timetable[1]:

> Star burns through a succession of nuclear fusion fuels:

    Hydrogen burning: 10 Myr
    Helium burning: 1 Myr
    Carbon burning: 1000 years
    Neon burning: ~10 years
    Oxygen burning: ~1 year
    Silicon burning: ~1 day
(...and then it goes supernova.)

I hope Bitcoin's end is not as violent. :/

[1] http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit3/supe...

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#203

Post by FireBeyond »

bhouston wrote: post #130
TFortunato wrote: post #64

I do wonder if after the Ether "flash crash" recently ( https://blog.gdax.com/eth-usd-trading-update-5d8142b5bdc1 ), if Coinbase / GDAX instituted some sort of "circuit breakers" on their exchange to prevent this type of thing from happening again. Bitcoin and the other cryptos, trades at a pretty low volume relative to their market cap, so if a lot of people we're trying to dump large orders this morning to take a p…

Circuit breakers do not matter if other exchanges continue to trade the same currency. It would just cause the exchanges that do the circuit breaker to possibly hurt their customers. The only effective circuit breaker is some form of synchronized method, but will the different exchanges cooperate? They really should put in circuit breakers this week across all exchanges so that when really bad stuff the panic doesn't…

> They really should put in circuit breakers this week across all exchanges so that when really bad stuff the panic doesn't destroy tons of people.

"Decentralized! Deregulated! But coordinate to protect us from ourselves, don't let us lose money!"

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#205

Post by wonderwonder »

iopq wrote: post #181
Klathmon wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is what happens if that growth stops? What happens if bitcoin tanks right after you hired 300 new customer service reps and tripled your server hardware? It's a gamble no matter what, but moving too quickly or moving too slowly results in the company going under. In that case, I think straddling the line of "overwhelmed when there is a big spike" is a good spot to be in all things consitered.

You have layoffs and turn servers off. This isn't rocket surgery. They're skimming a ton of money off these trades every day, down time is a loss.

The optics on "servers are down due to a massive spike in volume" are much better than "Coinbase had another round of layoffs today..."

Currently they are signing people up at a dramatic rate despite their server issues. If they start laying people off because they spun up to fast they could start a panic that would kill them.

They have to weigh all of this in when deciding on an infrastructure spend.

I would also like to think from a purely personal level that they don't want to hire and fire people like that as these are real people with real families involved.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#206

Post by nikanj »

appdrag wrote: post #176
haburka wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol scaling is not a solved problem. Garbage collection is a solved problem. Scaling is always a challenge.

Scaling is by design, seems it was not designed to scale (serverless architecture and db)

Alas, those silver bullets don’t work either. Scaling still remains a multi-faceted, complex problem with a lot of variables.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#207

Post by heartbreak »

Beejeepa wrote: post #191
fullshark wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Coinbase isn’t a bank it’s an exchange. Why would they carry a reserve of anything?

It stores your shares for you, but it’s not loaning them out. The only way you get money out of Coinbase is if someone buys your shares.

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#208

Post by TFortunato »

FireBeyond wrote: post #203
bhouston wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Circuit breakers do not matter if other exchanges continue to trade the same currency. It would just cause the exchanges that do the circuit breaker to possibly hurt their customers. The only effective circuit breaker is some form of synchronized method, but will the different exchanges cooperate? They really should put in circuit breakers this week across all exchanges so that when really bad stuff the panic doesn't…

> They really should put in circuit breakers this week across all exchanges so that when really bad stuff the panic doesn't destroy tons of people. "Decentralized! Deregulated! But coordinate to protect us from ourselves, don't let us lose money!"

Haha, yeah I can't see the BTC crowd all being on-board with this.

That said, while I don't think the exchanges need to (or realistically could) coordinate on circuit breakers, I do think it's entirely reasonable for there to explore this type of mechanism on a per-exchange basis in the case of GDAX and other exchanges where margin is allowed, to prevent the whole "cascading margin call" thing that happened with ETH to happen again. That could take a lot of forms, including limiting the size of market orders to not eat 30% of the book, or not allowing 1 market order to trigger margin calls if (insert criteria here)

(That said, they could also just say "that's how margin and trading goes on low-volume, highly volatile assets" and technically be correct, but much like their decision to reimburse some traders, this is more of a business decision and wanting to keep your customers. Not sure what the "right" answer is.)

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#209

Post by [deleted] »

pcf wrote: post #163

My friend thinks the exchanges also go down when assets "flash-crash", because it means normal users can get in to sell their assets. And when they can't get in, they also can't cancel their stop-loss orders, so it means a TON of assets are available to buy cheaply (by the exchange and/or certain VIP users/collaborators) as the value goes down. Then these are bought up, and the price quickly increases again, before t…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase down for maintenance

#210

Post by thedragonslayer »

igorgue wrote: post #121
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?

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

Yes but what is the % of withdrawls? I know most U.S. members transfer from the exchanges over to Coinbase to withdrawl so they need them eventually
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