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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

#391

Post by imrehg »

slg wrote: post #217
seldo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>that's really shocking for a company that is trying to play a role as a financial institution. That is probably the scariest part about the current Bitcoin community. Many of the big names are simply "playing a role". We have no idea of their technical expertise, the viability of their software, their USD/Bitcoin reserves, how they plan to address disputes like this, or even whether they are skimming of the top.

That is the same thing that shocked me when I run into a bunch of different entrepreneurs in the last few weeks, creating local exchanges here, bitcoin ATM, thinking about colored coins and interesting transactions enabled by bitcoin.... and when I talk with them about the technical side, they never even know how a transaction is verified, what are bitcoin scripts, how the network works in general.... I know that I know quite little about bitcoin and it confounds me that people honestly believe they can get away with not knowing how things work. Due diligence, man!

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

#392

Post by mgrunin »

dangero wrote: post #370
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…

Wow now I'm pissed. I had the same issue but didn't make a public stink about it. Just got my coins today with no credit for the mistake and the same issue of my coins being frozen at a higher price. Looks like I should have been more rude about it. Not only that, but I was told that my coins could not be released earlier because "they needed to be removed from cold storage". So now we have 2 different excuses for fa…

Make a public stint about it if the issue isn't resolved accordingly. There is no reason to pay the price for a mistake by their company.

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

#393

Post by ryanhuff »

DrStalker wrote: post #363
ryanhuff wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not a bitcoin question, that's a per-exchange question. If an exchange gives users an SLA stating "orders will be fulfilled within X business hours" then that's a contract between two parties. If the exchange says "yeah, we'll get around to it someday and you agree to deal with that" which is the usual intent language in the small print then you don't have much to go on if there is a delay, other than trying t…

Understood, but my question was specific to the current entities (exchanges/whatever) in the market that let you purchase bitcoin.

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

#394

Post by sheetjs »

cehlen wrote: post #323
seldo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Take it EASY everyone! They made a mistake, took responsibility for the error, resolved the issue, and compensated the user for his inconvenience. Good for them!

For posterity's sake, here are the sequence of events. Coinbase:

1) stopped replying to support emails even though there was a clear issue

2) only addressed the issue when the victim decided to submit his issue to HN (and only after it sat on the front page for nearly an hour

3) blamed a server upgrade and offered $50 of BTC when the actual loss was well north of $12K

4) only made the customer whole after many HN comments pointing out that the offer was paltry compared to the loss (and that they may potentially be pocketing the difference)

I applaud them for resolving the issue in a way that the victim wanted: "deliver the coins at the exact market price that they are at the moment you are crediting the account". However, this and similar issues in the past have raised red flags that haven't be adequately addressed:

A) why did customer support go dark? I suspect the reaction would be different if they were more proactive

B) as mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6930748 , why doesn't Coinbase have the infrastructure to detect these issues? This is really basic accounting, and if they can't get it right on a small scale why would anyone trust them with more money?

C) what steps were taken to prevent this from happening in the future? I imagine that there will be more server upgrades as Coinbase expands.

D) What is their future policy regarding similar issues? Based on their initial reaction, one should not expect much if any compensation.

E) Will it take an HN post in the future to get their attention?

And looking back at some of the comments in a conversation from 270 days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985) it seems that Coinbase hasn't actually learned from the previous issues.

I think joezydeco said it best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985

> You have a company trying to start up in a very tough space where you need to be super-reliable and super-transparent. Coinbase's actions this entire week were neither.

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

#395

Post by locusm »

seldo wrote: post #225
slg wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that's really shocking for a company that is trying to play a role as a financial institution. That is probably the scariest part about the current Bitcoin community. Many of the big names are simply "playing a role". We have no idea of their technical expertise, the viability of their software, their USD/Bitcoin reserves, how they plan to address disputes like this, or even whether they are skimming of the top.

I mean, MtGox stands for "Magic The Gathering Online Exchange". They were literally set up to sell trading cards. The whole "being the biggest bank in a new $6bn+ economy" is a pivot. The whole system is crazy. But even by those standards, taking 35 grand and not noticing you didn't give them what they paid for stands out.

MtGox is something like 5 months behind in withdrawls with no confirmed date of when it will occur. I'm waiting on $600 since beginning of Sept...

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

#396

Post by Zarathust »

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…

So you've screwed him out of 13 000$, but gave him back 50$? That is ADORABLE.

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

#397

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

tedunangst wrote: post #374
jellicle wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's regulation. And HN is against that. Get with the program.

It's not just regulation. It's basic accounting. If you're not doing it, you literally don't know how much money you have. It's always a good idea to know how much money you have, even if the government doesn't require you to know.

You clearly haven't been dealing with businesses. 99% doesn't do daily checks. Many notice thins after a month or so, when closing books for month. And some notice those kind of things aften closing a year. But there still are many businesses which won't ever notice or care missing 100 grand. Been there and done that, and it's much more common than you think. In some of those cases I personally think that the business is partly illegal and bookkeeper is cooking the books. Therefore they don't even notice honest mistakes. I have seen same thing happening over and over again. People don't care about money. And this is business as usual.

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

#398

Post by AnneOminous »

TylerE wrote: post #381
AnneOminous wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote: "...but since mining isn't inherently reversible its not an intrinsic value." It IS "value", because the resources used for mining have measurable value, and can be traded for things other than Bitcoins. It may be an indirect measure of value, but it's still a measure of value.

If it's indirect that's not intrinsic. That's what intrinsic means the opposite of.

No, it isn't. "Intrinsic" means "belonging to a thing by its very nature."

The "value" here isn't "indirect". Only the method of measurement.

This is economics, not quantum physics. The method of measurement (as long as it is rational and consistent) does not change the value being measured.

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

#399

Post by AnneOminous »

21echoes wrote: post #380
AnneOminous wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote: "...but since mining isn't inherently reversible its not an intrinsic value." It IS "value", because the resources used for mining have measurable value, and can be traded for things other than Bitcoins. It may be an indirect measure of value, but it's still a measure of value.

carbon emissions from a coal plant do not have the "intrinsic value" of the coal that produced them. bitcoins from a miner's computer do not have the "intrinsic value" of the electricity and silicon that produced them.

The exhaust from your Chevy also doesn't have the "intrinsic worth" of the oil that it ultimately came from, either. Nor does the electricity from my solar cells have the "intrinsic worth" of the silicon they were made of.

So what? That is about the farthest thing from a valid analogy I've seen in a long time.

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

#400

Post by barrkel »

Sami_Lehtinen wrote: post #397
tedunangst wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just regulation. It's basic accounting. If you're not doing it, you literally don't know how much money you have. It's always a good idea to know how much money you have, even if the government doesn't require you to know.

You clearly haven't been dealing with businesses. 99% doesn't do daily checks. Many notice thins after a month or so, when closing books for month. And some notice those kind of things aften closing a year. But there still are many businesses which won't ever notice or care missing 100 grand. Been there and done that, and it's much more common than you think. In some of those cases I personally think that the busines…

Reconciliation is a fundamental operational procedure of financial entities. It's how they find system failures, process failures, fraud, etc. You take feeds from various systems and correlate them. It's not super complex, but it is fundamental.

I actually work for a startup selling reconciliation software as a service to the financial industry, so it's something I'm learning about myself. Lack of it suggests Coinbase are a little bit clueless.

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