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Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

fortune.com

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Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#301

Post by jaycroft »

blhack wrote: post #224

Just to clarify: bitcoin cash (BCH) is only sortof worth $700. There aren't any mainstream exchanges accepting BCH deposits right now, so the market for BCH is limited mostly to people on kraken trading BCH with one another there only. The exchanges that are accepting BCH require 20 confirmations on your BCH deposit before they let you withdraw the BTC/XBT you traded them for. 20 confirmations right now would take mu…

Further, as of this writing, more than 24 hours after the first forked block was mined, we still don't even have those 20 confirmations!

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#302

Post by TD-Linux »

matthewbauer wrote: post #227
Jenya_ wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delay in mining was required to trigger drastic difficulty reduction (20%). More details at https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6r33fz/difficulty_adju...

I'm confused. You're saying that the delay was intentional?

It's super unprofitable to mine BCH right now, at current exchange rates (assuming you could even sell BCH, which you can't). Miners stopped to wait for it to become profitable again, due to BCH's special difficulty adjustment. Details: https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty-adjust...

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#303

Post by TD-Linux »

runeks wrote: post #130
makomk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they could make transactions, the exchanges aren't accepting deposits of BCH. The only exception I'm aware of is ViaBTC and apparently they want 20 confirmations (about a week at current hashrate, I think). The BCH market cap that's quoted in this article is rather misleading because nearly all of those coins simply cannot be sold on exchanges currently. Regarding the question in the replies: when the fork ha…

Wait a minute, what? How can Kraken claim to have a BCH/BTC market if you can’t deposit BCH and sell them?

They are just trading their internal accounting of BCH, by crediting BTC holders with BCH. Nothing is hitting the blockchain.

Bitfinex did this too, but royally screwed up: http://hackingdistributed.com/2017/07/29/bitcoin-impending-a...

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#304

Post by djKianoosh »

jmilloy wrote: post #116
fosap wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Coinbase can do anything they want! That's no how laws work. Not even remotely. Thankfully. Consider you order somebody (X) to transport your pregnant cow. At the destination the cow arrives. It's not pregnant anymore and X refuses to give you the calf because... well, because he can do anything he wants. That's theft.

It's more like, while transporting the pregnant cows, one bird jumped on each cow in the trailer along the way, and now you're demanding X gives you not just the cows, but the birds, too, even though they're hard to catch.

Are these African or European swallows?

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#305

Post by jo909 »

dsacco wrote: post #260
bdcravens wrote: post #228

Big point to remember: the current high price is artificial. There are only a few exchanges selling BCH, and they aren't accepting deposits. The only sellers are those who had BTC there prior to August 1. So it's a sellers market. There's a ton of demand to sell. Once those deposits are enabled, you'll see a flood of dumping, and the price will crash. So let's say Coinbase allows BCH withdrawals. Unless they enabled…

Regardless of the price, an exchange cannot seize customer assets by giving them 10 days notice for withdrawal. It doesn't matter if it's a separate currency - we have things resembling this in public markets, like stock splits. It doesn't matter if everyone can fork the cryptocurrency, that doesn't change the principle of a customer's asset. What Coinbase should have done is this: 1. Stood their ground on not suppor…

I don't get the "10 days notice" argument. Shouldn't it be the default assumption that they won't support any fork at any point UNLESS they announced support? It's not like they tricked anybody into it, or made it unusually difficult to withdraw BTC.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#306

Post by lawn »

yebyen wrote: post #245
lawn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is easily too soon to say whether it will survive. I agree. That's why Coinbase should have said that they will wait and see if the fork will survive or not. If Bitcoin Cash continues to have a non trivial value and the fork survives Coinbase will either have to give in and give the customers their Bitcoin Cash or they will get sued and loose. > Ethereum Classic was the original chain. Ethereum(') is what the de…

Well, BCC has about 13 blocks on their chain in 24 hours. I understand there's a technical reason for the delays, but if you thought Bitcoin Classic had a problem with transaction delays, BCC absolutely still has yet to prove it can even remotely help with that. I welcome the diversity, and a chain that has lower difficulty will be most welcome for miners as well. Hearing about some of the issues with withdrawal limi…

That's a good balanced view.

Note that the difficulty will be reduced, to about 20%, after the next 6 blocks. So the transaction delays should resolve themselves during the next 12-24 hours or so.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#307

Post by bdamm »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #174
bdamm wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems clear that Coinbase must have a major fundamental financial problem.

How does that follow?

If Coinbase is actually holding BTC for every claimed BTC of their customers, then it's trivial to calculate how many BCH the customer held at the time of the fork and create a way to claim them or transfer them. It could be a one-time option, if Coinbase doesn't want to deal with BCH.

Unless they aren't holding as much BTC as their customers think they are. In which case, it gets complicated.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#308

Post by duderific »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #269

I wonder sometimes if the origin of coinage was similarly fraught with these sorts of challenges. The history of money exhibit at the British Museum is pretty awesome and they go over some of the 'coin scams' of the day like nicking bits off the coins and remelting them into new coins, melting coins and alloying them with other metals so that they 'felt right' but were diluted. People who no longer had to be 'landed'…

Heck, you can see this in US coinage today. A quarter feels like about half the weight it was when I was a kid. The cost of the metal gets to a point where it doesn't make sense to use it in the currency anymore. For example, if the metal in a quarter was worth more than $.25, you could simply melt it down and sell it for more than the face value (assuming the cost of melting etc. could be brought down at volume).

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#309

Post by dave7 »

kristopolous wrote: post #268
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a hint that customers should withdraw their BTC from Coinbase before the split and (if they want to) move it back afterwards; the people that are suing knew this, and knew that Coinbase wasn't going to support it (at first), and yet kept their BTC hosted in Coinbase's wallets.

I had no idea that things worked this way until I read this thread. It was not clear in the slightest from what the exchanges were saying that the fork would entitle me to another currency. I transferred things from a private wallet INTO coinbase quite literally on 21:00 on 7/31 because there was absolutely zero indication from them that this was a bad idea - just that they didn't support some new alt coin. You know…

That's exactly what they did say.

> If you wish to have access to UAHF coins or you wish to have immediate access to your bitcoin, you should send your bitcoin from Coinbase to your external address by July 31.

I received this from then on the 19th, and again twice more before the fork.

Re: Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue

#310

Post by AgentME »

product50 wrote: post #296
PrimHelios wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just anybody can "fork" a company. Anyone and everyone can fork a blockchain multiple times.

If it is so simple, why is this the only fork which has happened to BTC in the past 9 years?

It's not.
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