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Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

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Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#201

Post by Globz »

djsumdog wrote: post #140
gwbas1c wrote: post #3

A good currency is fungible: It has a stable value and allows rapid exchange. Bitcoin does not meet these basic requirements. So many people forget that the original paper clearly states that Bitcoin is an experiment.

I've wondered about this. I haven't tried paying for any services with BTC, but I suspect many of them would change you the current real price (in euros, usd, gbp) and show you the equivalent btc in today's money. So some of these servers that were wise have only paid everything (servers, wages, etc.) using the real currency that comes in via credit cards and paypal and have just held onto the btc .. which makes it e…

I paid for a VPN service in 2011 for 0.19 BTC / (~5$ USD or something back then) which is now worth over $3300 USD at today's price...to me it shows that we are not dealing with a currency, if all you can do is hold and avoid spending it in fear of "losing" money then it has no real value except selling at the right time so someone else can buy your share, hold it and eventually sell it and so forth..

Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#202

Post by hinkley »

carc wrote: post #94
H99189 wrote: post #8

Coinbase should solve it's coinbase trust issue. I bought a small amount of litecoin almost 2 weeks ago, i'm well past my "delivery by" date, my funds left my bank account over 10 days ago, yet I still don't have my coins in my account.

To counter anecdote with anecdote, I've had no issues with coinbase and have found them pleasant to use. That includes transferring to gdax/selling/withdrawing, etc.

You can’t counter a bad experience with a neutral one man.

Example:

Ann Rule was on a first name basis with Ted Bundy before he was caught. He didn’t murder her or any of her friends once. Its probably fine to take a car ride from him.

Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#203

Post by UncleMeat »

dahdum wrote: post #130
carc wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To counter anecdote with anecdote, I've had no issues with coinbase and have found them pleasant to use. That includes transferring to gdax/selling/withdrawing, etc.

I've never had a single problem with Coinbase either. Most complaints seem to be from brand new signups getting delayed, people failing the AML/KYC checks. My USD withdrawals always show up in my bank account 2 days later.

So? Services that operate on money shouldn't just have an SLA where is works fine for some people. When you want a lot of nines, "it worked for me a few times" is not enough.

Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#204

Post by warbiscuit »

warbiscuit wrote: post #165
empath75 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you honestly think that smart contracts can't be hacked?

Oh, I definitely think they can. Didn't mean to imply otherwise! I do think the surface area for attack is much more limited, since the code is innately public (unlike centralized trading houses). That (in theory) should make them more secure, particularly if considered in terms of the transparency provided. I also think theorem proving, and languages amenable to it, can greatly reduce the surface area even further;…

Followup just to clarify: The reason smart contracts drastically mitigate "server compromise" is that compromising / altering the operation of the VM (and not merely exploiting a bug) requires a 51% attack on the entire network. That should generally be a MUCH more expensive undertaking than the value of any given smart contract (under the assumption that the network will be valued at least 2x more than any of it's participating apps).

Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#205

Post by nybble41 »

warbiscuit wrote: post #20
chollida1 wrote: post #2

EDIT Yuck, this blew up and I think alot of people took it the wrong way. I think Coinbase is great, and I'm sure everyone who works there is awesome and terrific at their job. Anyone who has worked on any half way successful project knows just how hard both uptime and security are and I'm in no way upset at Coinbase for having growth issues. I've done this for years and might not even get an interview with them. The…

1) No counterparty risk. Everyone can get hacked, but coinbase being hacked shouldn't every, under any circumstances result in me loosing any bitcoin they hold on my behalf. This point may prove to be very sticky. It might be solvable with smart contracts... consider ethereum's https://www.etherdelta.com , which operates as an auditable smart contract. Your money literally can't be stolen without your private key; ev…

>> 1) No counterparty risk. Everyone can get hacked, but coinbase being hacked shouldn't every, under any circumstances result in me loosing any bitcoin they hold on my behalf. > This point may prove to be very sticky. It might be solvable with smart contracts...

Shouldn't be that hard, even using just the features available in Bitcoin today. You'd need a 2-of-2 multisignature wallet for each account holder, with one key held by Coinbase and the other by the user. When the user wants to spend some coins, he or she signs a transaction which Coinbase prepares and counter-signs; neither the user nor Coinbase—or an attacker with access to Coinbase's keys—can transfer the funds unilaterally.

The only thing missing is a convenient UI.

Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#206

Post by ufo »

meritt wrote: post #96
empath75 wrote: post #37

Until the situation with bitfinex pumping billions of unbacked tether into the ecosystem is resolved, doing anything involving bitcoin right now is insane. They’ve released almost $200 million worth of tether in the last day .

My theory on tether is their goal is to absorb as much downward (selling) pressure as possible on the BTC/USD market and encourage only upward movement of BTC (equally applies to any other crypto) 1) Someone who wants to sell $1M USD of BTC may be happy to take $1M USDT instead for legal/tax purposes. This transaction would have zero impact on the BTC/USD price. 2) Tether receives $1M worth of BTC they can slowly dis…

> Someone who wants to sell $1M USD of BTC may be happy to take $1M USDT instead for legal/tax purposes.

This sounds extremely foolish. Why would anyone intentionally wish to hold such a large amount of a token that all evidence points towards being actually worthless? (Tethers can only be used to purchase cryptocoins in Bitfinex, which is most likely insolvent -- it is not possible to redeem them for USD).

> 4) BTC price becomes stable or only moves upward and attracts more outside money and speculation. Repeat the cycle.

I think this is the most likely explanation for Bitfinex's behavior. They know that there will inevitably be a bank run when Bitcoin's prices show a sign of going down and that will unravel the scam they have been running so at this point the only thing they can do is continue to push up the price at all costs.

Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#207

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

nostrademons wrote: post #74
blhack wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about this is WTF? Please explain, in detail, how somebody with $10M in BTC should store it.

I think the WTF is that the original point of cryptocurrency was that it was supposed to be decentralized , with no big institutions that you must trust. Coinbase Custody is essentially reinventing the exact institutions that bitcoin was supposed to cut out of the loop. You're supposed to store $10M in BTC on the blockchain, which - after all - records ownership of every bitcoin ever mined. And keep access to it in a…

Centralization offers many benefits that some people value. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with that.

Bitcoin offers the choice and makes trusting a 3rd party completely optional.

For some institutions, they already have legal departments and experience with valuable contracts, so this service presents nothing new. Securing the private keys of a cryptographic currency, however, is not something they have experience with.

There is certainly some truth about reality vs. the cypherpunk vision, but I also think this is largely a strawman; many people in the Bitcoin community don't believe in overthrowing governments or that everyone will participate in completely decentralized systems. Bitcoin can still offer value alongside traditional financial markets and the legal authority of the state.

Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#208

Post by 659087 »

ufo wrote: post #206
meritt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory on tether is their goal is to absorb as much downward (selling) pressure as possible on the BTC/USD market and encourage only upward movement of BTC (equally applies to any other crypto) 1) Someone who wants to sell $1M USD of BTC may be happy to take $1M USDT instead for legal/tax purposes. This transaction would have zero impact on the BTC/USD price. 2) Tether receives $1M worth of BTC they can slowly dis…

> Someone who wants to sell $1M USD of BTC may be happy to take $1M USDT instead for legal/tax purposes. This sounds extremely foolish. Why would anyone intentionally wish to hold such a large amount of a token that all evidence points towards being actually worthless? (Tethers can only be used to purchase cryptocoins in Bitfinex, which is most likely insolvent -- it is not possible to redeem them for USD). > 4) BTC…

> This sounds extremely foolish. Why would anyone intentionally wish to hold such a large amount of a token that all evidence points towards being actually worthless

Yep. Which makes the "institutional investors are handing Bitfinex hundreds of millions of real dollars in exchange for Tether" claims people are pushing even more ridiculous.

Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#209

Post by shanusmagnus »

ultraluminous wrote: post #198
shanusmagnus wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think is sort of funny is that you've just described two poles, but seemingly can't grasp the infinite gradient in between those poles where people with different risk tolerances and security requirements can exist.

What he's describing is that the overwhelmingly vast majority of people (who are supposed to replace fiat with ctypto in the future) reside on one end of the pole. The end with all the real-life, non-ideologically-constrained usability.

This is akin to assuming that internet users are a bunch of neckbeards and grad students who like to muck about configuring routers, just because that was where it started.

Who knows what will wind up being the dominant use case in the future, or who will be the dominant user population. Maybe the ones who drive early adoption, and who govern the philosophical and technical direction, will turn into a tiny faction of stakeholders in the end, but maybe they continue to dominate technical development because they are the best stewards of the idea. Or maybe they're overthrown and it turns into something else, run by small business owners. Or the governments of third world countries.

The point is that nobody knows how it will shake out. Acting like the current state of things is somehow 'wrong' is arrogant and historically uninformed.

Re: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

#210

Post by sushid »

carc wrote: post #94
H99189 wrote: post #8

Coinbase should solve it's coinbase trust issue. I bought a small amount of litecoin almost 2 weeks ago, i'm well past my "delivery by" date, my funds left my bank account over 10 days ago, yet I still don't have my coins in my account.

To counter anecdote with anecdote, I've had no issues with coinbase and have found them pleasant to use. That includes transferring to gdax/selling/withdrawing, etc.

I've used Coinbase since 2013 but I had a very important transaction simply disappear about a year and a half ago (despite being confirmed 10s of times) until I showed support that the transaction definitely went through. No explanation whatsoever. Just showed up a day after they replied to me.
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