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Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#261

Post by ffrryuu »

GarrettBeck wrote: post #222
GarrettBeck wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$35,000 is a huge sum of money. I'm suggesting he sell the 40 or so bitcoin he purchased immediately at market price (~$550), cut his loses and move on. By doing so he would limit the damage and would only lose ~$12,700. Bitcoin will continue to fall and he will continue to lose money. He won't get his money back from CoinBase and he is losing money every second he holds his bitcoin. Losing money sucks. It happens to…

$549...

Bitcoin's been extremely bouncy, there is a chance that it could re-test resistance at around 700-800, or it could retest support at $300 short term.

Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#262

Post by sheetjs »

seldo wrote: post #185
barmstrong wrote: post #53

Brian from Coinbase here. Sorry for the delay on that - definitely not the customer experience we are striving for. We should have things squared away for you by end of day. Edit: your bitcoin credit has now been processed. It looks like as we were performing server upgrades last week a handful of jobs didn't run as normal. We should have certainly caught it and responded sooner so that was our fault. My deepest apol…

Forget the difference in the exchange rates. Are you saying you have no system in place to monitor if transactions execute successfully ? I'm not trying to be hyperbolic but that's really shocking for a company that is trying to play a role as a financial institution.

There was a similar discussion with a very interesting comment regarding their use of mongodb: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428382

PG's reply in the thread is very telling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428372

Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#263

Post by rch »

jeremyrwelch wrote: post #234
zipppy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you work for coinbase? You seem to be defending them pretty hard.

No, I don't work for Coinbase. I'm an avid user and big fan. I've tried a lot of alternative products, and none compares to Coinbase in terms of reliability and overall experience. Sure, they screwed up. Brian owned up to that and fixed the issue quickly. I just think some of the anger at the market swing is being wrongly directed at Coinbase.

They haven't fixed the core issue at all. What they have done is admitted the situation is entirely their fault (and Brian deserves credit for showing up here so quickly). Hopefully an appropriate remedy will be forthcoming.

Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#264

Post by downandout »

barmstrong wrote: post #53

Brian from Coinbase here. Sorry for the delay on that - definitely not the customer experience we are striving for. We should have things squared away for you by end of day. Edit: your bitcoin credit has now been processed. It looks like as we were performing server upgrades last week a handful of jobs didn't run as normal. We should have certainly caught it and responded sooner so that was our fault. My deepest apol…

I do hope that, at the very least, you will not make him pay the "locked in" price for a delay that is your fault. There are many threads on bitcointalk.org suggesting that these delays only happen when the BTC price is very volatile, and that once they are resolved, the actions taken by Coinbase (either cancellation of the order or delivery at a locked in price) always inure to the financial benefit of Coinbase.

I am certain that the Coinbase TOS allow significant discretion as to the timing and cancellation of orders. However, systematically delaying orders and then cancelling or forcing people to buy based upon which will be most profitable for Coinbase, which seems to be occurring, could certainly be construed as fraud.

Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#265

Post by testrun »

jeremyrwelch wrote: post #234
zipppy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you work for coinbase? You seem to be defending them pretty hard.

No, I don't work for Coinbase. I'm an avid user and big fan. I've tried a lot of alternative products, and none compares to Coinbase in terms of reliability and overall experience. Sure, they screwed up. Brian owned up to that and fixed the issue quickly. I just think some of the anger at the market swing is being wrongly directed at Coinbase.

Reliability and overall experience would have been amazing if it was done on the 13 and he did not need to go public to get it fixed.

Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#266

Post by codegeek »

jeremyrwelch wrote: post #234
zipppy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you work for coinbase? You seem to be defending them pretty hard.

No, I don't work for Coinbase. I'm an avid user and big fan. I've tried a lot of alternative products, and none compares to Coinbase in terms of reliability and overall experience. Sure, they screwed up. Brian owned up to that and fixed the issue quickly. I just think some of the anger at the market swing is being wrongly directed at Coinbase.

"I just think some of the anger at the market swing is being wrongly directed at Coinbase."

You keep mentioning market swing. Market swing is relevant if OP had the bitcoins in his control which clearly was not. So while the market swung, he lost money not because he was sitting on his ass but because he could not do anything about it to minimize a loss. See the difference ?

Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#267

Post by huangc10 »

logjam wrote: post #253

So wonderful to watch this little drama (complete with breathless appeals to get the news media involved) play out today on HN, which appears to have become "Bitcoin News". A match made in heaven, between this genius financial entrepreneur and this competent, reliable trading platform, seems to at least sum up Bitcoin nicely, if not the brainless economic philosophies underlying this horseshit.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Plot twist? "There is no such thing as bad publicity"

Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#268

Post by lolbertarian »

ffrryuu wrote: post #203
bonemachine wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lemme get this straight, Brian: Rather than refunding the dollar value ($35,104.11) of the original, clearly botched transaction, you ended up giving him the 40 BTC at their current trading value (about $560), that is, for net a loss of $35,104 - $22,400 = $12,704? And you think $50 plus a thank-you note(!) is enough to make him whole on this loss?

That't why when it comes to money, you should trust Wall Street over Startups...

Unfortunate, but true.

Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#269

Post by thedufer »

oijaf888 wrote: post #146
thedufer wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't directly take bitcoins or gold or copper and purchase anything at my local wal-mart. You can't do that with Euros, either (assuming you're in the US, otherwise s/Euros/USD/). But that's obviously closer to cash than commodity. There are merchants that accept bitcoins in return for goods. You're just purposefully avoiding them in your argument.

There are merchants that accept gold in return for goods too, but we don't consider all gold transactions to be money transfers do we?

My point was not that bitcoin is a currency. I happen to believe that, but I didn't argue that. My argument was that the definition you were using in order to show that bitcoin isn't a currency was flawed.

Re: Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins

#270

Post by ryanhuff »

apalmer wrote: post #194
jeremyrwelch wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be ridiculous. Sure, the order was delayed, but there is no reason why they should have refunded the entire order. Kudos to Brian and team for getting on top of this and solving the problem quickly. They executed the order as originally promised, admitted their mistake, and gave him a credit for the inconvenience. I've executed many transactions with Coinbase and although one of my transactions was delayed brie…

Its not ridiculous at all. With that much spread and at prices as high and fluctuating as much as they currently are you cannot expect to take 10 DAYS for a transaction of this nature. Honestly, looking at this from the outside what is the difference between this an actual larceny? A large purchase comes in while the commodity is priced high, the commodity is not purchased but instead funds are held on to while the p…

I am not invested in bitcoin, so this may be a naive question, but is there any explicit promise that your funds will be available within n-time? There appears to be a gap in expectations. These entities do not seem to be brokerages, although many people expect them to be so.
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