Bitcoin Cash Soars to $700, Coinbase Customers Threaten to Sue • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by meric » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:34 PM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #418

meric wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say there is a court case where the judge awards all shareholders of AAPL $100 of compensation for every share held (It's to the shareholders, but not the company, because the court case involved shareholders vs management). The government sends $100 per share to each registered holder. Your investment fund is the registered holder of AAPL securities instead of you. Do you get $100 per share that was held on yo…

Isn't that just a dividend at that point? In the real world investment funds have fairly complex dividend rules (how much is reinvested in the fund, how much is skimmed for fund manager fees, etc), and regulations have managed to force such funds to disclose all of those policies up front (prospectus) and keep them up-to-date. In the other fork in this discussion thread, the banking analogy: we're talking about an ex…

Both this and dividends are payments to shareholders but this is different because it's not funded by the company itself. It's a third party electing to pay every shareholder. Also, dividends are regular events, but getting a new asset that can be traded is not.

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

#422

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 9:48 PM UTC

meric wrote: post #421

WorldMaker wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just a dividend at that point? In the real world investment funds have fairly complex dividend rules (how much is reinvested in the fund, how much is skimmed for fund manager fees, etc), and regulations have managed to force such funds to disclose all of those policies up front (prospectus) and keep them up-to-date. In the other fork in this discussion thread, the banking analogy: we're talking about an ex…

Both this and dividends are payments to shareholders but this is different because it's not funded by the company itself. It's a third party electing to pay every shareholder. Also, dividends are regular events, but getting a new asset that can be traded is not.

I guess that depends too on what you think "the company" is in this case, going back to struggling with whether or not this analogizes to a stock split or not.

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

#423

Post by meric » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #422

meric wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both this and dividends are payments to shareholders but this is different because it's not funded by the company itself. It's a third party electing to pay every shareholder. Also, dividends are regular events, but getting a new asset that can be traded is not.

I guess that depends too on what you think "the company" is in this case, going back to struggling with whether or not this analogizes to a stock split or not.

In the AAPL example, it's not a stock split.

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

#424

Post by PrimHelios » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 10:46 PM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #251

PrimHelios wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's immaterial, because a company cannot force customers to forfeit assets by giving them a 10 day ultimatum.

Oh yeah, that's absolute shit and there's been a precedent set that'll end with Coinbase owing a lot of money.

I'm just pointing out that they shouldn't have to support anything (so long as a proper warning is given if possible).

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

#425

Post by PrimHelios » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 10:48 PM UTC

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?

Because forking isn't the hard part. Actually maintaining and creating a better block chain is.

Either way, that's anecdotal.

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

#426

Post by rphlx » Thu, Aug 03, 2017, 11:43 PM UTC

vocatus_gate wrote: post #188

gruez wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 MB blocks = 1.15GB per day, or 420GB per year. Sure it might be feasible to run a node if you're in a first world country with fast internet and cheap storage (cost of living wise), but even in rural america, 34.5GB is a significant chunk of bandwidth. Not to mention they eventually plan to raise it to 32MB, which works out to 4.6GB a day or 1.63TB/year.

This whole pipe dream of little Jimmy running his full Bitcoin node on a raspberry pi in order to protect against the big bad bankers/government/whatever was never based in reality. Bitcoin was always destined to end up centralized. Either in the form of powerful companies controlling it (development, Lightning Network, etc) or large concentrated groups of miners. Whichever path it ends up going down, centralization…

Well, there's a large middle ground between "little Jimmy's raspi's 4GB sdcard' and 'VISA's multi-PB datacenter'.

While there is certainly centralization pressure on mining, I do not agree that 8MB blocks make it impossible for everyone except for 'powerful companies' to run a full node, especially a pruned one. An enthusiastic early adoptor or investor holding, say, $100k of the token is more than capable of spending $500/yr to run a colo'd node. Would they prefer to spend $0 and host it at home? Probably. But the expense of a high-end VPS or low-end colo box is not totally prohibitive. We're not talking about more than a few rack units worth of HW.

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

#427

Post by chii » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 5:24 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #413

chii wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users of coinbase have no real right to complain because they have given up their control of their bit coin when they sign up for coin base. Unless this wasn't made clear by coin base at the beginning, i don't see how the law suit has any legs.

They're giving up control of their bitcoin for specific purposes. Coinbase can't just do whatever they feel like with it, any more than your bank can one day just declare "Hey, we decided to keep all of your deposits, FOAD, thanks."

may be i'm misunderstanding the nature of the bitcoin fork, but i see it the same as owning foreign currency. IF you banked some US dollars, you can't turn around and say you'd like to get it back out as Euros without paying some kind of exchange rate.

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

#428

Post by panda88888 » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 7:47 AM UTC

Akarnani wrote: post #384

blhack wrote: post #229

Coinbase is in a bad situation here. If they set a precedent that all BTC forks will be available to their users, then they open themselves to some pretty obvious DOS attacks. 10 new "bitcoins" could fork every day. Are we really going to expect coinbase to support them all? That's absurd. I think it's pretty obvious that they're going to just issue the BCH to people eventually. Here's another thought experiment: I a…

There's logic in these arguments; however, they ignore securities laws. If BTC is a security, which the regulators probably think it is, then yes—you have to have a mechanism to bring concepts like splits, tenders, dividends to holders of the security if you are going to hold them for their benefit. Developers considering forks will likely be required to follow yet unclarified rules around how much, how often, waitin…

The funny thing is that Bitcoin, because of its decentralized nature, doesn't have an entity tied to it (like Apple and AAPL). So who has the authority to "split" bitcoin? To "spin off" bitcoin? And under what obligation are the exchanges required to accept those modifications/additions to bitcoin?

It's more like I announce tomorrow that I am going to issue a Pear stock at 1:1 for each existing AAPL stocker holder. Would Stock Brokers like Scottrade need to accept Pear stock on behalf of their customers that owns AAPL stock? Under what authority can I "spin off" an AAPL stock?

I don't think Coinbase is under any obligation to honor any Bitcoin spin-off/fork/split, unless it is done by an authority of bitcoin (like Apple and AAPL), which for decentralized crypto currency like bitcoin means no one.

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

#429

Post by panda88888 » Fri, Aug 04, 2017, 7:51 AM UTC

thedufer wrote: post #365

ccghhjb wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those actions are contractually specified. If Coca-Cola decided to go off-script and send a rubber ducky to each shareholder, ETrade would not be responsible for receiving 3 million rubber duckies and sending one to each shareholder that they hold stock for.

Property dividends are a thing. I would be quite surprised if ETrade got away with swiping property dividends from its clients.

Except bitcoin don't have a "company" that pays dividend per say. Owning bitcoin doesn't give ownership to anything beyond bitcoin itself. I cannot pay a random dividend to APPL stock holders because I am not AAPL. Why would Coinbase has to accept this random "dividend" from another random entity?