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

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

#51

Post by jncraton » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:29 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #8

> Coinbase has clearly stated the company is not taking customers' Bitcoin Cash for themselves So effectively, it's as if they just burned all of the Bitcoin Cash they were holding?

They are most certainly still holding them. They would actually have to take intentional steps to burn them, and that would be silly to do as they'd literally be throwing away money.

It seems that there is an assumption from Coinbase that BCC will be nearly worthless, so it isn't worth building the infra to handle both currencies. They can choose to make users BCC available if there is enough demand for it.

Here's what Coinbase themselves say about this:

> Coinbase does not intend to interact with the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, or to access bitcoin cash (BCC). In order to safely and securely access bitcoin cash, Coinbase would need to undertake a process of designing and testing significant changes to our systems — including hot and cold storage. This is one of the core reasons customers will not be able to withdraw bitcoin cash after the fork on August 1st, 2017.

> If this decision were to change in the future and we were to access bitcoin cash, we would distribute to customers bitcoin cash (BCC) associated with bitcoin (BTC) balances at the time of the fork on August 1st, 2017. Coinbase would not keep the bitcoin cash associated with customer bitcoin (BTC) balances for ourselves.

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

#52

Post by legohead » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:30 PM UTC

JohnTHaller wrote: post #9

They had the opportunity to move their funds and plenty of notice.

4 days on Coinbase is not enough time. The transactions there are unbelievably slow. It took me 2 days to transfer my bitcoin away, and this was a month ago. I can only imagine how slow it was during this fork process.

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

#53

Post by galfarragem » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:30 PM UTC

npongratz wrote: post #45

galfarragem wrote: post #36

People who bought BTC on Coinbase/Gdax after the fork own the correspondent BCC also?

After the fork, BTC and BCH are distinct and independent. So buying BTC after the fork would gives the buyer zero BCH.

So who owns the correspondent BCH (assuming that the seller was a coinbase user before the fork)? Coinbase? The previous owner?

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

#54

Post by alekratz » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:30 PM UTC

bdonlan wrote: post #42

It's an interesting situation, but assigning liability to coinbase for this seems like it'd be a problem long term. Unlike traditional securities, there's nothing stopping me from going out and making my own fork tomorrow - and then would all exchanges be required to add support for that fork, too? Where do you draw the line?

Yeah, that's how I feel about this. It's not coinbase's responsibility to act as a host to all cryptocurrencies.

The article states,

> An activist group, which claims Coinbase's decision is akin to a brokerage withholding new shares from its investors, ...

which is not at all what it's like. Coinbase isn't the only source to buy/sell BCC. I think it's ridiculous that a company could be sued because they don't offer a new service.

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

#55

Post by smlsugarlumps » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:30 PM UTC

bitJericho wrote: post #38

conanbatt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, 4 days before the fork and also locking up withdrawals and setting time limits. I could accept Coinbase saying they dont plan on supporting it in the long term, but its kind of ridiculous to think that Coinbase can make a blogpost, and potentially appropiate millions of dollars of the coinbase users and thats fine because it was said before. Not to mention that I've been particularly locked out of the platform…

Perhaps you would like to switch to my exchange? http://bitcoinsexchange.itmustbetrue.com

I don't trust a site named bitcoin sex change

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

#56

Post by abhi3 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:31 PM UTC

btzll wrote: post #50

bdonlan wrote: post #42

It's an interesting situation, but assigning liability to coinbase for this seems like it'd be a problem long term. Unlike traditional securities, there's nothing stopping me from going out and making my own fork tomorrow - and then would all exchanges be required to add support for that fork, too? Where do you draw the line?

This is not a random fork. This is a fork with almost $400 million 24 hour volume. Coinbase should allow users to withdraw their BCC, since they are sitting on a huge pile of BCC units, which belong to customers.

And if the price of BCC were to crash to single digit USD in a week it takes for Coinbase to come to a decision then the customers would have lost a fortune.

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

#57

Post by ajmurmann » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:33 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #29

yebyen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nobody grabbing anything, if you find evidence that Coinbase is transacting BCC with customers' funds when they said they simply were not supporting the fork, please share with the group!

There's no difference between trading the BCC or just throwing them into the trash.

You might get them at a later date. Happened with Ethereum classic.

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

#58

Post by jncraton » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:33 PM UTC

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #34

What I think all the press isn't making very clear is that to the best of my understanding for every Bitcoin you own, you get a Bitcoin Cash coin. There is no "conversion", it is free money for all BTC holders. Everyone who owned BTC, now owns BTC+BCC. Of course if your BTC is not real, but is held by an exchange such as Coinbase, how you get your BCC isn't at all clear.

> Of course if your BTC is not real, but is held by an exchange such as Coinbase, how you get your BCC isn't at all clear.

Your BTC should still be "real", but the exchange holds the keys instead of you. Your point stands about it being unclear how you would access your BCC. If you aren't allowed access to your BCC, there's nothing preventing exchanges from dumping the BCC for cash as far as I can tell from a purely technical standpoint (IANAL).

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

#59

Post by downandout » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:33 PM UTC

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #34

What I think all the press isn't making very clear is that to the best of my understanding for every Bitcoin you own, you get a Bitcoin Cash coin. There is no "conversion", it is free money for all BTC holders. Everyone who owned BTC, now owns BTC+BCC. Of course if your BTC is not real, but is held by an exchange such as Coinbase, how you get your BCC isn't at all clear.

This, I believe, is the basis of the unjust enrichment claim. Coinbase technically owns the BTC in its wallets, and you can bet even though they aren't supporting it, they are receiving the associated BCC. They just aren't passing it on to the beneficial owners (their clients).

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

#60

Post by chrisabrams » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:33 PM UTC

bdonlan wrote: post #42

It's an interesting situation, but assigning liability to coinbase for this seems like it'd be a problem long term. Unlike traditional securities, there's nothing stopping me from going out and making my own fork tomorrow - and then would all exchanges be required to add support for that fork, too? Where do you draw the line?

It's a good way of looking at it. Another perspective, which makes this issue so complicated, is that we could compare this to: a company on the stock exchange splitting into two companies, investors should be getting shares in both companies, but the brokerage decides they are not going to recognize the second company and thus the investors don't get their shares in the second company.