Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support) • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#111

Post by e40 » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

danuker wrote: post #24

syzygyhack wrote: post #17

You want to use Bitcoin to make international payments without headaches... so you open an account on a custodial service? I don't understand what you expected to happen. All you had to do is download a wallet and transfer your Bitcoin directly.

> and transfer your Bitcoin directly OP was trying to get the Bitcoin in the first place.

That is correct. I don't want to hold BTC at all. I want to purchase and send. Period. As a business, I just don't want the headache, which my accountant says I will not have if I merely use it as a transfer medium.

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#112

Post by e40 » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

Jnr wrote: post #38

My guess is that it is a challenge to pay them because they live in Crimea or Donbas and carry a Russian passport. There are no issues sending money to Ukraine using conventional methods.

Completely untrue. They all are UKR citizens, mostly in Kyiv.

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#113

Post by e40 » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

Mikeb85 wrote: post #43

Ukrainians aren't under any kind of sanctions so why not just use a service like Wise? As for anything related to crypto, most of it is a scam so it comes as no surprise that the few companies trying to be legit in this field are under so many restrictions it's incredibly inconvenient to use them... Anyhow, everyone I know transfers money to Eastern Europe with Wise.

I did look at Wise today because it was mentioned. It's not cheap, and certainly a lot more expensive than wire transfers or crypto.

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#114

Post by e40 » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 9:12 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #84

There has been a glut of customer-support-as-last-resort posts to HN lately, leading to pushback and complaints from HN users, so I promised to start downweighting these posts more. Although these situations are rightly important to the people experiencing them, such posts are not of general intellectual interest. Mostly they use HN as a sort of desperate trampoline to attract attention from somebody-anybody inside i…

Well, I personal found a lot of value in that "Google 2FA" post. If it had been downweighted and I never saw it, that would, IMO, be a bad thing.

On the issue at hand, I run a software company. A very old one. I'm pretty forgiving about issues with support, etc. What I've been through with Coinbase has really been shocking and I thought the community should know.

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#115

Post by gnicholas » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

RomanPushkin wrote: post #47

Meanwhile, I needed to pay folks who have fled the country, and now are located in Kazakhstan. I used... Western Union. Surprisingly, it was without any fees, I sent the exact amount in dollars from the US and they received exactly the same amount in US dollars in minutes. I don't know why Bitcoin today is something people want to use, since you can send Western Union or use other payment methods (like Wise) to almos…

Did you know in advance that there would be no fees on either end? Was this an exception or is this just their standard offering?

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#116

Post by Jnr » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 10:15 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #112

Jnr wrote: post #38

My guess is that it is a challenge to pay them because they live in Crimea or Donbas and carry a Russian passport. There are no issues sending money to Ukraine using conventional methods.

Completely untrue. They all are UKR citizens, mostly in Kyiv.

What is the issue then? I have colleagues in Ukraine and bank transfers at least from EU work just fine.

Heard about using Bitcoin as their only option from people who moved to EU from Crimea.

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#117

Post by notahacker » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 10:30 PM UTC

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #97

notahacker wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but then the stuff Western Union charges a significant margin for is the stuff which is a very useful service (getting spendable local cash in someone's village). If you can get that at all with crypto, the guy in the village exchanging cryptos for local currency is going to charge even more...

not really, El Salvador switched from wire transfers to BTC exactly because the fees were lower .

No, El Salvador switched from wire transfers to BTC because the president wanted to.

Which doesn't has anything to do with the fact that if you've got Bitcoins in a village in some random developing country, you need to find somebody that's willing to give you local banknotes. That person is usually going to charge more commission than Western Union for the privilege of doing so, because they can.

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#118

Post by e40 » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 11:10 PM UTC

Jnr wrote: post #116

e40 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely untrue. They all are UKR citizens, mostly in Kyiv.

What is the issue then? I have colleagues in Ukraine and bank transfers at least from EU work just fine. Heard about using Bitcoin as their only option from people who moved to EU from Crimea.

The explanation is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34444085

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#119

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 11:15 PM UTC

huijzer wrote: post #99

mathgenius wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fee is the y-intercept, and the exchange rate is the slope. These businesses make money by manipulating either or bother of these numbers.

Agreed. I saw it also happen for "reputable" stock brokers. They claimed no fees but always had a appalling exchange rate.

This applies to all goods and services. If everyone else is charging a fixed fee on top of a proportional one, and then one vendor advertises having no fixed fee, you can be certain that they're recouping it some other way - be it a steeper slope, non-linear pricing, or just a bunch of extra fees that will materialize after they lock you into a contract.

Re: Tell HN: Coinbase is a joke (product and support)

#120

Post by trog » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 11:19 PM UTC

zaguios wrote: post #82

RomanPushkin wrote: post #47

Meanwhile, I needed to pay folks who have fled the country, and now are located in Kazakhstan. I used... Western Union. Surprisingly, it was without any fees, I sent the exact amount in dollars from the US and they received exactly the same amount in US dollars in minutes. I don't know why Bitcoin today is something people want to use, since you can send Western Union or use other payment methods (like Wise) to almos…

I’ve personally had nothing but terrible experiences with Western Union. In contrast, sending money with crypto (not Coinbase which is a nightmare centralized layer which defeats the purpose of crypto) has had 0 issues for me.

Would love to hear your story of your simple easy decentralised cryptoasset money sending as most people I know who do this end up telling me a story that is not exactly a user experience delight but more like a nightmare of key management, shady random exchanges, incomprehensible jargon, bizarre gas fees and so on.