161–170 of 736 posts
Created a coinbase account recently and found that there's no way to verify your identity if you have an expired ID. Because of covid, Maryland let expired drivers licenses still be valid for the forseeable future, but Coinbase automatically declines them.
I do ask myself if a 100B valuation on public listing is the start of mainstream crypto. Plus the direct listing is a giant middle finger to traditional banking and overall establishment, right? Like : Here are the new rules this new internet will be playing by. Direct, decentralized. Adapt or die?
They still hired Goldman and Citi to advise on the listing.
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If it is, then that means Coinbase can create new "Bitcoin" on demand; which we both know that it cannot do. In your own source, the banks ability to increase money supply through the multiplier effect is capped by the capital adequacy ratios, which are defined by the Fed. It is also an inevitability of any currency that isn't backed by an asset. To be clear, I don't have problems with the concept of fiat currencies,…
It absolutely can, because all exchange users put their money in a big pot (the exchange's "cold wallet" and "hot wallet") rather than having individual wallets - this allows for instant trading. Exchange accounts aren't quite like banks but they are like brokerage accounts. Numerous exchanges have blown up when the wallet got stolen from underneath them - but in the gap between the theft and the discovery, the users…
Your Bitcoin balance, as it's shown in Coinbase's UI, is very different from your Bitcoin balance as it's understood by everyone else on the public blockchain; and that too only temporarily. There is nothing that Coinbase can do to permanently alter that supply of Bitcoin. That is what we're talking about.
In contrast, the permanent US Dollar supply can and is permanently altered due to the monetary policy which governs it.
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We hate the central banks! We're going to take away the power from them and the government! slight inconveniences, fraud happens We need a place to store our coin and help securely move it! recreates central banks with even less regulation and security Profit!
This conflates "Central Banks" with ordinary "banks" that hold assets in vaults. The two are comparable in the same way that Java is comparable to JavaScript. The steel-man argument is that the monetary policy of central banks can cause hyper-inflation of a fiat currency, and holding onto an asset that is immune to that, and potentially even being able to transact with that asset is a reliable way to break free from…
The whole reason we have a strong central bank is because we tried the alternative before and it worked terribly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking
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It's an exchange, as soon as you're done trading, you can and should withdraw your coins to your personal wallet.
This is such a trope. Do you pull your funds from interactive brokers after you're done trading? What about vanguard? 401k?
I don't trust the exchanges in the cryptocurrency world, coinbase maybe excepted.
Many have forgotten why we used cryptocurrencies in the first place. The original promise of cryptocurrency was to become independent from banks. In the end CoinBase (like every exchange) is a great product, but just a bank. It's centralized, hackable, has economies of scale, etc.
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It absolutely can, because all exchange users put their money in a big pot (the exchange's "cold wallet" and "hot wallet") rather than having individual wallets - this allows for instant trading. Exchange accounts aren't quite like banks but they are like brokerage accounts. Numerous exchanges have blown up when the wallet got stolen from underneath them - but in the gap between the theft and the discovery, the users…
Okay, but you're talking about a completely different thing. Your Bitcoin balance, as it's shown in Coinbase's UI, is very different from your Bitcoin balance as it's understood by everyone else on the public blockchain; and that too only temporarily. There is nothing that Coinbase can do to permanently alter that supply of Bitcoin. That is what we're talking about. In contrast, the permanent US Dollar supply can and…
A government absolutely can declare that the correct blockchain is actually this other blockchain, or the only legal algorithm is now a version of their own invention (like the split between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, but enforced by law). If the gov wants inflation, they can replace the algorithm with one that allows inflation, or achieve a similar effect by publishing an official root block every year with a portion of all holdings transferred to the government.
But they probably wouldn't do that, when it's so much easier to simply seize cryptocurrency ("give us your private keys or spend thirty years in prison") or heavily tax it.
None of this has been done because crypto is still a novelty, but if it ever becomes a serious threat to government policy, governments will find ways to deal with it.
And centralizing Bitcoin in exchanges like Coinbase makes this far easier; the government only needs to enforce its policy on Coinbase, and Coinbase in turn will enforce it on customers.
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Is there a plan to deal with the high gas prices?
Yes, ETH 2.0 is coming in 2022 (unless it gets delayed). There's one proposal for July that might help a little and more transactions are moving to L2 chains (LRC, Matic) where you pay the high fees only on exit/entering the L2 but can do transactions there for cheap. Outside of ETH, BSC (Binance's smart chain, the exchange with 9x Coinbase's volume) already has lower fees but the chain is controlled by binance (its…
Tezos is quite a bit ahead of ADA in that particular respect as they have smart contracts already.
I don't believe ETH2 will ever show up, but who knows.
Full disclosure, I've got holdings in both ADA and XTZ.
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If it is, then that means Coinbase can create new "Bitcoin" on demand; which we both know that it cannot do. In your own source, the banks ability to increase money supply through the multiplier effect is capped by the capital adequacy ratios, which are defined by the Fed. It is also an inevitability of any currency that isn't backed by an asset. To be clear, I don't have problems with the concept of fiat currencies,…
It absolutely can, because all exchange users put their money in a big pot (the exchange's "cold wallet" and "hot wallet") rather than having individual wallets - this allows for instant trading. Exchange accounts aren't quite like banks but they are like brokerage accounts. Numerous exchanges have blown up when the wallet got stolen from underneath them - but in the gap between the theft and the discovery, the users…
That is, can we add up all of the Bitcoin listed in the customer ledgers of all of the exchanges, or is that information (the total, not the individual entries) not available to auditors?