Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Update on Bitcoin Cash

blog.coinbase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 239 posts

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#221

Post by 97s »

wastedbrains wrote: post #115
blazamos wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VP Ops at Coinbase We are trying to scale our support team as quickly as possible. Wish I had a better answer for you. https://blog.coinbase.com/improving-customer-support-139d99e... If you still need help with your issue, send me an email (in my profile).

biggest thing you need to do to improve support is stop sending mailings from a no-reply email address. Replying should create a support ticket automatically if the email it came from is associated with an account. Further verification could be required depending on the request.

Thank you for saying this. I feel like this is a major problem with a lot of services. If they care that little to send me an email from a no-reply then how do they expect to keep customers who want to reply to the same person. There is absolutely nothing more frustrating then having 5 different people work on a similar ticket and repeat yourself over and over.

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#222

Post by davchana »

bigpeopleareold wrote: post #144
davchana wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you had USD 200 noted in a public ledger (BTC in address you own private keys). Somebody decides to copy that ledger and names it VSD. Its gets public support and so now you have VSD 200 at same address, accessible with same private key, and this point onwards both USD & VSD are going their seperate ways. Whatever you do to one will NOT effect the other because the ledgers are different now. There can be as m…

Even simpler analogy to work from: you have a file which has your list of things you bought and sold. The file is called 'transactions.txt' You make a copy of that file, calling it 'transactions_2.txt' and then start appending what you bought and sold on that. But then, you are also still appending to the old file what you bought and sold. The Bitcoin/BCH thing is like this, but on a greater scale with potential risk…

Yes, and am I correct in assuming that once the transactions.txt is copied to transactions2.txt, they are same only till that point of time (or block), and can have totally independent and different entries from that point onwards?

If copy was made at block 55, 55th block is same in both branches. 56th and such blocks can be totally different. Imagine it like a literal branch of tree. Both branches share the same trunk, but are unique once seperated into unique branches.

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#223

Post by andirk »

luke3butler wrote: post #22

Bitcoin cash is BCH not BCC.

From a Coinbase email:

"This means if there are two separate digital currencies – bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCC) – customers with Bitcoin stored on Coinbase will only have access to the current version of bitcoin we support (BTC). Customers will not have access to, or be able to withdraw, bitcoin cash (BCC).

Customers who wish to access both bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCC) need to withdraw bitcoin stored on Coinbase before 11.59 pm PT July 31, 2017. If you do not wish to access bitcoin cash (BCC) then no action is required."

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#224

Post by quantdev »

hentrep wrote: post #216
quantdev wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, have had terrible past experiences with Coinbase and I no longer use them. I now buy on Gemini for fiat -> BTC and use other exchanges for altcoins. That said, I no longer keep any crypto on any exchange, including Gemini. The whole point of Bitcoin is that you are your own bank via ownership of your private keys. By giving them to Coinbase, you centralize the system, concentrate the risk, and create honeypot…

Given the high profile attacks on crypto exchanges over recent years, how much trust do you place in Gemini securing your SSN, proof of ID, and proof of address?

Not very much, but only because those are byproducts of a cryptocurrency hack. If they didn't control centralized private keys and thus implicitly have one of the biggest bug bounties, I would be less worried about people hacking my SSN, ID, etc. from Gemini.

That said, I also don't care as much if those get hacked as I can recover from stolen identity, while it's impossible to get back stolen bitcoin.

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#225

Post by sowbug »

bayonetz wrote: post #217
sowbug wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving out of Coinbase took you fewer keystrokes than typing that comment.

Right, withdrawal is easy. Figuring out how to actually claim my BCC was a (figurative) eternity. Appreciate your dismissive attitude though! Bottom line, Coinbase could have made this easy. It's not like this was some random fork by some nobody faction. I want crypto coins to succeed and it won't happen as long as we have to manage our own wallets and such.

You make it sound like adding support at the level they have for their other currencies is something they can do on a whim. Unless you've worked in commercial software, that's a forgivable attitude, but it's very far from reality for a company like Coinbase that is establishing a brand of trust and stability, not chasing the latest sparkly fork (of which there are many) and saying oops sorry when they screw up by moving too fast.

"It's not like this was some random fork by some nobody faction." That's Monday-morning quarterbacking, and in fact we have no idea whether we're at halftime or end of game for BCH. Results-oriented thinking like that is one step away from cargo-culting.

"Figuring out how to actually claim my BCC was a (figurative) eternity." Right, so imagine having to solve that same problem for a million or so users in less time than it took you for yourself.

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#226

Post by sowbug »

aianus wrote: post #215
sowbug wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got a lot of replies, but I don't see one critical point addressed. You said you moved from Coinbase (no internal caps) to an exchange. So we can't tell whether you'll get any BCH. If you don't know the private keys for your funds, then you can't spend those funds. You can only ask whoever has your funds to spend them on your behalf. Coinbase hasn't implemented the infrastructure to spend from anything but the ma…

> Someone at Coinbase is slapping their forehead right now reading your story because you pretty much jumped out of the frying pan into the fire when you transferred from Coinbase to an exchange (rather than a wallet you control) Actually, transferring from Coinbase to an exchange was the correct move. If you transferred BTC before the fork to an exchange that quickly implemented BCH trading you would have been credi…

Your statement is completely right, but the way the question was asked, OP probably didn't know whether it was an exchange "that quickly implemented BCH trading." So maybe a better analogy is being in the frying pan and pressing the hyperspace button.

By the way, why would you need to wait to sell a BCH deposit? That confirms almost immediately, right? I could understand AML/KYC on a cash withdrawal, but incoming crypto is zero risk to the exchange.

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#227

Post by sowbug »

koolba wrote: post #162
sowbug wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awfully cynical. They took a wait and see approach. Would you run your engineering team any differently? How do you tell a viable fork from the (many) others that have failed? If BCH falls to $10 in two weeks, would you still direct your engineers to support it?

> That's awfully cynical. If you knew me in person you'd know the cynicism was intentional. I've got quite a bit to start with and double so when it comes to anything involving digital currencies. > They took a wait and see approach. Would you run your engineering team any differently? On the contrary, I agreed with it. I said as much the day before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915884 > How do you tell a v…

I see. I made this point somewhere else in this thread, but there's no lawsuit threat because of the terms of service (just arbitration), and if someone were a big fish but asleep at the wheel for the last few months, Coinbase could easily make them whole quickly by just manually sending them the BCH they wanted. Engineering full support as they're doing almost surely costs more than any conceivable loss customers could suffer in the interim (assuming anyone with a nontrivial balance takes responsibility for their actions or inaction).

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#228

Post by aianus »

sowbug wrote: post #226
aianus wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone at Coinbase is slapping their forehead right now reading your story because you pretty much jumped out of the frying pan into the fire when you transferred from Coinbase to an exchange (rather than a wallet you control) Actually, transferring from Coinbase to an exchange was the correct move. If you transferred BTC before the fork to an exchange that quickly implemented BCH trading you would have been credi…

Your statement is completely right, but the way the question was asked, OP probably didn't know whether it was an exchange "that quickly implemented BCH trading." So maybe a better analogy is being in the frying pan and pressing the hyperspace button. By the way, why would you need to wait to sell a BCH deposit? That confirms almost immediately, right? I could understand AML/KYC on a cash withdrawal, but incoming cry…

Takes 80h to confirm because of the low hash rate on the fork.

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#229

Post by [deleted] »

zallarak wrote: post #128
gragas wrote: post #84

Honestly, I don't understand why everyone trashes Coinbase. I work very closely with numerous crypto exchanges for a living (I write code which interfaces with them). Outside of work, I've personally chosen to open a Coinbase account and trade on GDAX. Coinbase is, in my opinion, the most reputable exchange out there by far.

What do you work on that does that? I'd love to learn more. zain at za1 dot co

[deleted]

Re: Update on Bitcoin Cash

#230

Post by sowbug »

aianus wrote: post #228
sowbug wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement is completely right, but the way the question was asked, OP probably didn't know whether it was an exchange "that quickly implemented BCH trading." So maybe a better analogy is being in the frying pan and pressing the hyperspace button. By the way, why would you need to wait to sell a BCH deposit? That confirms almost immediately, right? I could understand AML/KYC on a cash withdrawal, but incoming cry…

Takes 80h to confirm because of the low hash rate on the fork.

Doh. I thought the fork code had a built-in contingency for a quick difficulty adjustment in case of slow blocks. Maybe I just dreamed that.
Post reply on HN