Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 204 posts

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#101

Post by thisisit »

qeternity wrote: post #90
thisisit wrote: post #27

It seems Coinbase's go to strategy every time markets are volatile. In case people are wondering why is this a recurring problem - this simply perils of Market Making in a volatile market. As a market maker for customer orders Coinbase needs to fulfill both sides. So to make money they buy from customers at low price and sell back at a high price. So they are collecting spread between bid and ask to make money. But w…

Coinbase are not market makers...

Not on GDAX sure.

But, when buying and selling from users, yes they are. They don't create a two way market on coinbase.com. If they did, it will be called an "exchange".

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#102

Post by 659087 »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #47
blhack wrote: post #3

There is something that feels extremely fishy to me about what has happened at coinbase over the last few days. For years I've told people to just store their coins on coinbase. I've been a big fan of their "vaults", and I've been saying that they are the shining beacon of legitimacy in this whole thing. I honestly don't know that I still agree with that. This whole rollout of BCH has made me honestly start questioni…

Storing your coins on coinbase (or any other exchange) is pretty much always a bad idea. If you don't own the private keys, you don't own the coins. Coinbase is not immune from failure, government intervention, or fraud. The insurance no doubt has limits, and if you've ever filed an insurance claim you'd know that if something goes wrong you'll probably be up a creek without a paddle. Insurance companies almost alway…

> Storing your coins on coinbase (or any other exchange) is pretty much always a bad idea. If you don't own the private keys, you don't own the coins.

The problem here for most of the people currently FOMOing in, is that there are no "good ideas" as far as coin storage goes. Storing on shady exchanges is risky, but due to lack of knowledge / technical skill, many/most would also be at risk of losing their coins one way or another if they held the keys themselves.

What this tells us, is that this technology isn't ready for mainstream use.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#103

Post by akhatri_aus »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #47
blhack wrote: post #3

There is something that feels extremely fishy to me about what has happened at coinbase over the last few days. For years I've told people to just store their coins on coinbase. I've been a big fan of their "vaults", and I've been saying that they are the shining beacon of legitimacy in this whole thing. I honestly don't know that I still agree with that. This whole rollout of BCH has made me honestly start questioni…

Storing your coins on coinbase (or any other exchange) is pretty much always a bad idea. If you don't own the private keys, you don't own the coins. Coinbase is not immune from failure, government intervention, or fraud. The insurance no doubt has limits, and if you've ever filed an insurance claim you'd know that if something goes wrong you'll probably be up a creek without a paddle. Insurance companies almost alway…

> Insurance companies almost always win, that's how they make money

Not exactly. They make money off pricing their insurance higher than the chances of it happening.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#104

Post by aviv »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #45

Coinbase is the one exchange that's looked like a legitimate business. Between insider trading and execution problems, it's pretty alarming. (Who am I kidding? Clearly this is actually good for Bitcoin somehow.) Worth noting Coinbase has two kinds of systems risk. There's the technical risk of writing and running code correctly. And there's also the financial risk of them making the market in Bitcoin. Both of those t…

I think their biggest risk is a compromised/rogue employee.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#105

Post by sean_anandale »

thisisit wrote: post #80
smaili wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this essentially implies Coinbase needs to manipulate the market in order to ensure their profitability?

How does it implies any kind of manipulation? Check out these videos for what a market maker actually is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqK6H1JPjv0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Guqs3eOgm6o

Declining to allow trades during high volatility times is definitionally market manipulation - you're capping the volatility of the market, unpredictably.

Volatility is traditionally where many styles of traders actually make money.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#106

Post by thisisit »

Blackthorn wrote: post #86
thisisit wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted my comment before I read this. So repeating from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15988939 It seems Coinbase's go to strategy every time markets are volatile. In case people are wondering why is this a recurring problem - this simply perils of Market Making in a volatile market. As a market maker for customer orders Coinbase needs to fulfill both sides. So to make money they buy from customers at l…

Coinbase is market making the exchange they run, seriously? That's one hell of a conflict of interest.

My bad. I realised, I said exchange. I didn't mean GDAX rather the coinbase site. Corrected now.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#107

Post by brndnmtthws »

659087 wrote: post #102
brndnmtthws wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Storing your coins on coinbase (or any other exchange) is pretty much always a bad idea. If you don't own the private keys, you don't own the coins. Coinbase is not immune from failure, government intervention, or fraud. The insurance no doubt has limits, and if you've ever filed an insurance claim you'd know that if something goes wrong you'll probably be up a creek without a paddle. Insurance companies almost alway…

> Storing your coins on coinbase (or any other exchange) is pretty much always a bad idea. If you don't own the private keys, you don't own the coins. The problem here for most of the people currently FOMOing in, is that there are no "good ideas" as far as coin storage goes. Storing on shady exchanges is risky, but due to lack of knowledge / technical skill, many/most would also be at risk of losing their coins one w…

The technology is there, it's simply a matter of disseminating knowledge.

It's not as if people are born with innate knowledge of personal finance skills. These are skills which must be learnt like anything else.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#108

Post by mr_spothawk »

slg wrote: post #56
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think it's fishy and you have no way to know if something is going on behind the curtain at coinbase but you don't want regulation? Regulation is what lets you peek behind the curtain and know that Coinbase is or isn't doing something fishy.

I can't help find it funny as the libertarian cryptocurrency fans slowly realize why we have all these dang laws. There are plenty of financial regulations that could use updates or tweaks, but an overwhelming majority are put in place to protect people and try to ensure transactions are as fair as possible. Cryptocurrencies too often throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Meanwhile, the libertarians in the crowd are nodding, having expected this... and protected themselves from the fallout ahead of time.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#109

Post by SilasX »

abakker wrote: post #41
conanbatt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not what bank regulations have achieved.

Are you sure of that? In many ways bank regulation has achieved exactly that. We have an SEC, we have mandatory filings, we have disclosure requirements, conflict of interest requirements, bank capital requirements, stress tests, and many rules about types of financial products which cannot be sold. Those create much more uniformity and trust in the system. (of course this comes with some cost, but, arguably the thin…

... and then we had 2008, where you can violate all of that with reckless abandon and still get bailed out.

Re: Coinbase says buying and selling temporarily disabled amid price rout

#110

Post by edejong »

ceejayoz wrote: post #95
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several reputable apps for both iOS and Android that provide secure, easy to use wallets, which do not centralize the storage of a user's coins whatsoever. I've told friends for years about Bread[0], a wallet app for both smartphone platforms that I've used before with great success. [0] https://breadapp.com/

That's just changing the threat from "compromised exchange" to "compromised phone". I'd trust Coinbase to get it right before I'd trust the average Android phone not to be hacked. Only 0.5% of Android devices are running the latest OS. https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html#

It’s all about opportunity, risk and reward. Hack a phone and you win some bitcoins. Quickly patched. Hack an exchange and you’re rich beyond belief.
Post reply on HN