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Sent $10,701.03 to Coinbase. Still missing bitcoins.

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Sent $10,701.03 to Coinbase. Still missing bitcoins.

#31

Post by officialjunk »

samastur wrote: post #26
PeterisP wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tiny amount of money for a financial services company - because they need money not for expenses & salaries (as a software company), but as a pure instrument in their everyday transactions. I can easily imagine Coinbase needing ten times more working capital than that simply to function properly (i.e., not as they seem to function now).

I would love it if you could elaborate on this. Since most exchanges don't do anything before they received money from buyer, what would they need the money for?

Liquidity

Re: Sent $10,701.03 to Coinbase. Still missing bitcoins.

#32

Post by aidanlister »

Does anyone else get the creepy feeling that this is mgrunin posting to stroke his own ego?

"That guy must have been one of our extremely high volume VIP users or something in order for something like that to have happened."

That just does not sound right. And it's not the first time he's tried a sockpuppet account [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6930297

Re: Sent $10,701.03 to Coinbase. Still missing bitcoins.

#36

Post by DanielRibeiro »

seferphier wrote: post #24
znowi wrote: post #18

When it takes a public outcry on HN for a company to do their job, I no longer deal with such a company. Simple as that. I don't care if you raised $25 million - if you can't treat your users fairly, you deserve neither.

Agreed. When there is a public outcry, it means that there is inadequate processes are put into place for protect their customers. This happened twice today. This means something is fundamentally broken in Coinbase's customer service. Many famous VCs and founders browse HN. This will hurt their reputation.

Yes, Coinbase is a YC company[1], yes YC hosts this site (Hacker News is, after all, https://news.ycombinator.com), yes their investors do comment on Hacker News threads[2].

Also, the CEO of Coinbase is on HN[4]. He is the top response to the other indignant thread[5], where he seems to be trying to fix this issue. Also note that you can easily find the CEO's email from his GitHub account[6]

I understand there are many people who are very angry at the whole situation (just look at the conversation on Reddit[7]). I can only imagine how many other cases he is facing. The timing on this whole thing is just awful (1 week after funding announced, BitCoin crashes), which makes the whole situation very very awful. And giving support on public forums with angry customers is super hard, particularly because you start encouraging more people to do it, which escalates the situation to impossible terms, which sucks your time, which could be used to helping all the customers, including all the ones who are not being loud on Hacker News / Twitter / Reddit (also note that it is almost 4 AM where these people live, and they are probably sleeping).

I honestly expect Coinbase to do the right thing[8], and that you'll get your money back (or your money's worth of BTC).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4177605

[2] Marc Andressen is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon , Chris Dixon is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdixon and they both commentd on their investment announcement thread[3]. Ben Horowitz is https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bhorowitz, but he has not ben very active here.

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6893658

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=barmstrong

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705

[6] First response on Google for me: https://github.com/barmstrong, also the same username on HN: barmstrong@gmail.com

[7] http://www.reddit.com/r/Coinbase

[8] Brian Chesky told the story how Marc helped AirBnb during one of their worst crisis, on this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6yP...

Re: Sent $10,701.03 to Coinbase. Still missing bitcoins.

#37

Post by rdxm »

Ever wonder why there are not 100 different exchanges out there providing services to the equities/options/bond markets??? Simple, it's fairly costly and complicated to 1) meet regulatory requirements, 2) achieve a level of liquidity/transaction volume to make the exchange viable, and 3) take business away from the incumbents...

moreover, as soon as you attach the word 'exchange' to your service you immediately set an expectation in the consumers mind that you will provide a similar level of service/liquidity as that which they would receive if they were working with a real exchange operator.

coinbase currently lists a team which has zero experience in the exchange operations world. the closest they come is a guy who did some foreign exchange trading at GS.

net-net they have a looooooong way to go to get to being a viable exchange in the traditional sense of the word. and that's before you get to the whole topic of whether or not bitcoin is really something that will be a viable exchange model asset. that has yet to be tested outside of a very, very small base (relatively) of ecosystem participants..

Re: Sent $10,701.03 to Coinbase. Still missing bitcoins.

#39

Post by Tehnix »

DanielRibeiro wrote: post #36
seferphier wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. When there is a public outcry, it means that there is inadequate processes are put into place for protect their customers. This happened twice today. This means something is fundamentally broken in Coinbase's customer service. Many famous VCs and founders browse HN. This will hurt their reputation.

Yes, Coinbase is a YC company[1], yes YC hosts this site (Hacker News is, after all, https://news.ycombinator.com ), yes their investors do comment on Hacker News threads[2]. Also, the CEO of Coinbase is on HN[4]. He is the top response to the other indignant thread[5], where he seems to be trying to fix this issue. Also note that you can easily find the CEO's email from his GitHub account[6] I understand there are m…

Actually, Bitcoin crashing can only be an advantage to them since they lock the prices when the customer buys from them. As in, they just got an order for 20 btc at $1000 pr. btc, but, since it's crashed, they only have to pay $500 pr. btc and the customer still only gets them as if they still cost $1000. Effectively leaving them with a $500 profit pr. btc.
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