I have been a long time coinbase user. I have been very unhappy with their support. I have been unable to add additional funds to buy both additional ethereum and btc from their site, even after contacting them repeatedly about this ... but never getting a reply. I did multiple identity verifications and connected bank and credit cards. No luck in being able to transact properly. Bitcoin Cash was a forcing function and last week I sent my funds to a private wallet. I am also buying additional crypto on Gemini and other exchanges. To give an idea of my frustration with them, I first tried to buy ethereum thru then at $40. I gave them benefit of the doubt in solving my issues ... and waited and waited. By the time I realized that they were not listening to me, ether had shot up to more than $200. I ultimately bought on Gemini. This was their business to lose and they did exactly that.
I've had almost exactly the same experience. I recently withdrew all my btc into an offline wallet because I just couldn't trust having to deal with Coinbase support based on prior experience.
One example springs to mind. I bought some ETH once they initially began supporting it, just before it shot up in value. However, the transaction just seemed to disappear and I lost out. I tried contacting support by they just kept closing my tickets without explanation. Very, very frustrating.
The only weapon you have (that they care about) is a chargeback dispute.
I know a story when someone bought some coins with Visa credit card and they had some issues with Conibase service. Same story with tickets - open only to have it closed down next day with suggestion to look into knowledge base.
Then they proceed to the bank and opened a chargeback dispute based on false advertising (legitimate reason) that Coinbase promised to help and are not.
You see - since crypto-currency is not tangible item (you can call it service, if you will), neither Visa, nor Amex or Mastercard will have issues with your dispute, because there is even no tracking to proof you received your "product". Of course once the funds are returned to your credit card and bank notifies Coinbase about the dispute, Coinbase will take your coins away from you, but that's not the point. You see -- it doesnt matter to Visa if you process $1 billion in monthly transactions - if you have too many chargebacks, they will shut you down. End of the story. You open another account - you go on the MATCH list and owner(s) SSN/IDs are on it for 5 years so bye bye processing credit card transactions.
Coinbase might not care about you (I am sure they do per se, they just cheap and won't hire enough eyeballs to answer customer support), but surely they care about their chargebacks dispute level.
I've gotta say I've always been skeptical of posts like this because there is a lot of faux hate spewed on the Internet about Coinbase due to them having spoken the heresy of supporting bigger blocks.
That said I'm currently experiencing a problem where all emails from Coinbase to my email address are being lost and it isn't a spam filter. I emailed them describing the problem and they emailed me back with the boiler plate suggestions about checking your spam folder that can be found on their support website. Which I explicitly said I had already tried in my support request.
If all they are going to do is regurgitate information from there website why do they have support people at all?
If anyone from Coinbase is reading this all email sent from Coinbase to the Purdue Alumni email forwarding service @alumni.purdue.edu is being lost or not sent or something. It may have something to do with the fact that the alumni.purdue.edu server doesn't support TLS. I don't know just a guess but I know something changed in the past couple months and I don't even get marketing emails from Coinbase any more and it is preventing me from logging into my account.
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 honeypots for hackers. Remember, the government doesn't insure Bitcoin balances like it does with USD in banks and so much Bitcoin has been lost via exchange hacks in the past few years.
Don't let centralized authorities keep your private keys.
Terrible support, if you cant even get answers to basic questions then why would you want to potentially invest through their platform? I immediately sacked them off after not even being able to get a satisfactory response to ID checks
Not to mention that their website was pretty much constantly down during the recent period of Ethereum volatility. Whenever Ethereum price started to move (which is exactly the moment when people want to sell/buy) they would go tits up. And not just for a minute or two, but hours.
I've had a problem where 2FA would always default to the authy app I once used, but I just wanted the raw QR code to use a simple OTP app.
One week after contacting their support and not getting any response, I got an automated response asking if I am still interested in a follow up and if so, I should reply to this mail.
This continued for 2 months every week. I then decided to start complaining on their subreddit and twitter and coincidentally immediately got a mail helping me with my original problem and finally fixing it.
Now with the hardfork I withdrew all my funds as well and will never go back.
Interesting. I had mined some coins a few years ago, and finally decided to sell them off. I was able to sell them on coinbase within 5 days and get the USD into my bank account the following day.
I have had overwhelmingly crappy support as well: initially verified, but then revoked and impossible to reinstate. identity verification uploads that are never satisfactory, or are "processing" indefinitely. laggy orders that cause price shifts in counterparties favor. messages to help desk that go unanswered.
Also during this spring when BTC was up and down on a day to day basis, their services/app was down a few times. Just when you need the app the most, it fails you.
So I don't trust them and as soon as a viable alternative comes along I'm off Coinbase.
Is there a viable alternative to Coinbase? Their support is absurdly awful. Two months and they sent two auto-replies to a simple ticket that couldn't be answered by the knowledge base. They don't care about your money - so long as it's already in their vault.
Before you declare an exception to Hanlon's Razor, hear my story.
Long ago, Coinbase filled a buy order I placed. Then they filled it again. They credited the BTC twice but debited the USD only once. Like a good citizen of the Earth I filed a ticket letting them know their error. I got the same treatment you did. I even emailed Brian personally and via a private list I know he's on.
Years later I still have that BTC.
I think your "so long as it's already in their vault" dig is too strong. They haven't scaled as well as they should, that's all.
I’m not sure how Bitstamp works for people in the US, but as a European I’ve had good experience with it in the past. I used both Bitfinex and Bitstamp before Bitfinex got hacked, and have been using Bitstamp exclusively for the last couple of years without any issues. I use SEPA for EUR withdrawals, which arrive in my bank account the same day.
The only technical issue I’ve heard about with Bitstamp is the following, which I hope got fixed, but I never have orders in the book so it’s not relevant to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1r4d6t/bitstamps_s... (synopsis: Bitstamp’s streaming order API revealing information about matched orders before they are matched).
To be fair, though, I’m pretty sure the limit order book was reinvented, from the ground up, for all Bitcoin exchanges established prior to 2012. It takes some time to get this right if you’re starting from scratch (the issue was reported in 2013).
Seconded. I've had money locked up in Coinbase, unable to sell or trade out of their platform, until I complete an identity verification. Problem is, their code seems to be buggy and even after correctly entering information, I'm told that no identity could be found.
No response from support, and from /r/coinbase and their user forums, seems many (many, many!) users have the same issue.
Not much point in using an exchange if you can't use it to...exchange.
Similar experience, locked out of my account and was asked to reply to the ticket I submitted to keep it open before I even got a response. Of course I can't reply because I don't have access to the account associated with the email.
Gemini. I have been a customer of Coinbase for 4 years and Gemini for 6 months. Gemini's withdrawal to bank accounts are faster (same day). Support is more responsive. That said, both companies are licensed, 100% legit/trustworthy, and I like both honestly, but sightly prefer Gemini overall. Each company is a decent alternative to the other IMHO.
Speed of Government << speed of business << speed of BitCoin forks
"viable alternative" seems pretty subjective.
CoinBase is a pretty damn big cryptocurrency exchange and it's based in the US and complies with US law. Mt Gox (an exchange that ceased operating a few years ago) was based in Japan and got pwned, causing the first large Bitcoin bubble burst. BTC-e just went down the same day Greek police arrested the alleged MtGox hacker, who reportedly had ties to BTC-e.
In the process of switching to Gemini. Coinbase limits are too low. I've been waiting for two months for them to raise my limit to half of what Gemini will give me from the start.
Yeah, a while ago I was trying to send some money to them but I wasn't able to validate my address because I had an apartment number but their form didn't include a space for an apartment number so I got a "non-matching address" error. I even contacted their support but they weren't helpful. I'm probably better off.
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.
I generally agree here, but 1. their buy/sell ACH fees are insane, 2. They're always the first to go down in those high panic button situations that have been happening every other week since may. FWIW, Kraken may require a wire, but my money always gets in the exchange for $5, and site is more reliable... the fees are 80% cheaper.
As in, UX, UI, Docs, APIs, service design etc. are all top notch. Which would make it probable (but not certain) that the more technical parts are well engineered too.
Coinbase is doing perhaps something similar to what Stripe did for its field of business.
What about the crashes a little over a month ago? BTC and ETH crashed hard for a few weeks in a row and Coinbase was constantly down, stopping anyone from buying or selling.
People trash Coinbase because they deserve it: they are a disgrace. You can wait not for days, but for months without a response to support tickets. No company that is unable to communicate with its customers should be holding money on their behalf.
Coinbase is a horrific company: they give the superficial impression of being a reputable place to hold money, but one can go months at a time without a human response to support queries despite holding a substantial balance with them.
I cannot warn other potential victims of Coinbase strongly enough; hopefully the chaos and incompetence around BCC will alert people more publicly about the dangers of getting entangled with them. Hold your cryptocurrency in your own wallet that you control yourself.
Say what you will about Coinbase, but I really appreciate their willingness to adapt and respond to customer feedback.
I personally didn't want to take on the risk of creating a paper wallet and having to move my small amount of BTC from my Coinbase vault, so this is great news for me.
They should have seen this coming (from the ETC split) and come up with this policy ahead of time, instead of scaring customers into withdrawing or providing any doubt that using Coinbase might mean losing out on significant value.
All they had to say was "BCC support for withdrawals will happen within 30 days if BCC trades above X% of BTC". Or basically anything to the effect of "if BCC is worth anything, we'll give it to you", thus satisfying most people without committing to handling worthless forks.
Uh okay. I will say what I will. They could have held this position from the beginning if they had any foresight at all. How hard would it have been to say something like: 'We do not plan to support Bitcoincash given the impact on operations, security, and value uncertainty. If you want complete freedom with your Bitcoincash, take out your Bitcoin. Otherwise, we may add support in the future, but the timeline will be based on our determination of risk to our systems and effort required.'
Coinbase could easily avoid, or be unable to, provide BCH balances to their bitcoin holding customers.
There's no telling how Coinbase operates internally. You can't just assume that 1 customer == 1 permanent bitcoin address in Coinbase's backend. Perhaps they shift funds around all the time into new addresses, without keeping references/keys to the old ones. In that case, BCH balances would be lost, with no way to restore them to the 'owner' at the time of the fork.
Luckily (for would-be BCH holders) that seems to not be the case, but I think Coinbase deserves credit for going the extra mile when they could justifiably say that it is not their problem to deal with.
Anyone can create a new altcoin which starts with bitcoin balances at certain point of the history. If every bitcoin exchange has to support every new altcoin that does that, it would be lots of hassle. I don't think legally the exchanges would be required to provide features for the new altcoins, but it is nice from them if they do.
You are correct, but this would be a new level of stupid for a leading cyrptocurrency exchange that actually tries to build a reputation and appearance of quality, safety, compliance and being a "legit" service for financial institutions etc.
Maybe I'm just not getting something in my slow brain, hopefully someone here can explain. How does taking out my BTC out of CoinBase ensure I will receive an equivalent amount of BCH?
I bought 200$ worth of BTC in the past from CB, and promptly moved to an Exchange. Does that mean I will get whatever amount of BTC I purchased back then in BCH? If so, why? I understand there was a fork, but I don't get why I'm entitled to the same amount of BCH... what if there are more forks in the future, I'll just keep getting more of those offshoot coins as well?
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 main chain. We don't know whether the exchange you're using has, either.
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). That's exactly what Coinbase _didn't_ want you to do if you wanted full control over your funds.
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 much copies of ledger (offshoot coins, forks) as anybody wishes, important is how it grows from there. Most probably it will just die within few mining blocks and thus will not carry any monetary value. And yes, anytime one forks USD to VSD/WSD/YSD/XSD/ZSD they are essentially copying the ledger from that snapshot, with your address having same balance as its fork-parent.
> How does taking out my BTC out of CoinBase ensure I will receive an equivalent amount of BCH?
By taking your BTC out of Coinbase and into a wallet you control directly (on your computer or phone) before the fork, you have the corresponding private keys during the fork, which after the fork can be used to transact the same value independently on both the BTC and BCH chains.
> I bought 200$ worth of BTC in the past from CB, and promptly moved to an Exchange. Does that mean I will get whatever amount of BTC I purchased back then in BCH?
What matters is what happened at the precise moment of the fork. If at that moment your BTC was on an exchange, the corresponding BCH is at that same exchange. What happens with it depends on the exchange: some might treat it as non-existent, some might credit it to you in full (but it might or might not be possible to trade and/or take it out of the exchange), some might credit it to you partially based on a confusing formula which gets changed after the fact, and some might even take all the BCH for themselves.
Because BCH used the current state of BTC as the starting point when they forked. Whatever existed in BTC now exists as BCH. And yes you will keep getting more free coins whenever there is a fork in a currency you control.
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?
My impression from reading their announcements before the fork is that it had always been their intention, if the new coin had any value after the fork, to later allow all users to withdraw their "cloned" balance. The transaction freeze around the fork plays into this: not only it protects them against any instability, but it also is a convenient time to snapshot everyone's balance, and to keep a copy of the private keys for future use. They probably planned the balance and keys snapshot since before the first announcement, but just didn't want to promise anything (remember that for instance the fork originally didn't have strong replay protection, which was added just a few days before the fork).
Since the fork didn't die immediately, they are going ahead with the "allow everyone to transfer their BCH out" plan. Had it died, they probably wouldn't bother.
By that point BTC would most likely go down in value. The more people who use BCC, the more likely it is to overtake BTC. If less people use BTC, there won't be enough demand for it to maintain its current price.
Why would BCC be valued that high? Because of the protocol redesign? Why bother with the fork when you could start a new network and announce the Genesis block start time?
Ah yes, keeping the sha hash vulnerability open for ASIC mining attacks is not a priority? Empty block exploits not a priority? Thousands of coins have been minted to worthless "proof of work" exploits and early adopters.
Nope, that's the good thing about gold: you cannot fork it, it's limited, it has chemical and physical value, it cannot artificially inflate, like paper or digital money.
"Over the last several days, we’ve examined all of the relevant issues and have decided to work on adding support for bitcoin cash for Coinbase customers. We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time."
Interesting, in a short position you already sold the borrowed BTC, you aren't really holding the BTC. So you wont get 1 BCC out of it, only whoever you sold it to.
But whoever lent the BTC would most likely want the BTC + BCC they are entitled to, even though you don't really have one to give.
So many people in this thread complaining about coinbase when I've had no issues with them. You people complaining about coinbase must have not been around when Mt.Gox was the only option. If you want to talk about lack of support... Now that's lack of support.
I don't see how this is a valid argument. So what if Mt.Gox was worse? The point is there are many better exchanges than both Mt.Gox and Coinbase nowadays from a fees, customer-support, and reliability perspective.
Coinbase has three major advantages: (1) incredible marketing, (2) flashy and good UX, and (3) (claimed) safety via cold storage.
The first (1) is a counter argument in my book, (2) is irrelevant, and (3) only matters if you let them control your private keys, which is stupid and the antithesis to Bitcoin.
"We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time. Once supported, customers will be able to withdraw bitcoin cash."
They are so going to get sued if the price of Bitcoin Cash crashes by the end of the year. Where do they get off telling customers they can't withdraw an asset for five months?
This is what lawyers call "conversion"[1]. A person who knowingly or intentionally exerts unauthorized control over property of another person commits criminal conversion. The element of knowledge is found when the accused person engages in the conduct and he/she is aware of a high probability that he/she is doing so. An essential element of criminal conversion is that “the property must be owned by another and the conversion thereof must be without the consent and against the will of the party, to whom the property belongs, coupled with the fraudulent intent to deprive the owner of the property.”
It's legally equivalent to theft.[2] The typical example of conversion is renting something and then refusing to return it.
Coinbase execs, you really need to be talking to good securities lawyers.
> Where do they get off telling customers they can't withdraw an asset for five months?
When they say it will take them time to implement, it's an honest statement. They literally have to implement software, do lots of code review, check their accounting, pentesting, or at least they should be doing these things, and 5 months is an unusually short timeline. Even if they took 10% as fee to hire extra developers to work on this project, 5 months is not guaranteeable at all.
The short timelines proposed for hard-forks is one of the reasons why so many bitcoin developers have voiced caution about hard-fork proposals: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support (far right columns)
Cryptsy was quickly installing random altcoins on their servers until one of the 200 coins they installed ended up being malware (a reverse shell or whatever) and poof goes their exchange, plus or minus some other possible fraud occurring. There is value to caution and review when upgrading software systems.... much less financial systems. With backwards-compatible upgrades, you can be more certain about the net impacts. For example, if the changes were compatible with the pre-existing bitcoin rules, then none of this new coin stuff would have happened, and the whole industry could benefit from the compatible upgrades.
Q: Do I need to withdraw my BTC from Coinbase?
... If you wish to access your coins on the UAHF
chain ... you should withdraw your BTC from Coinbase
to an external wallet address under your control by
July 31.
Bitcoin Cash is a new coin. To the extent that it's not trying to be bitcoin proper, I'm not entirely convinced they even have to allow withdrawals at all. If I went and gave out a new coin 1:1 to everyone that possesses US dollars, they would not be obligated to pass it on to the owners of those dollars.
For multiple non-legal reasons they should, unless writing the code is too much of a burden, but there's not much justification for being picky that it takes actual dev time.
When Ethereum Classic hit the markets Coinbase did the same, ignoring it first, then giving in, however it turned out because of missing replay protection (thanks to vitalik) Coinbase had to buy back ETC on other markets first. Feel free to draw your conclusions based on this information.
What an inconvenient waste of time trying to be proactive and moving my BTC out of Coinbase ahead of the fork -- just like Coinbase said to. Would have been nice if they could have decided this before hand...
They don't have to claim it. Purely by controlling the addresses that held BTC at the time of the fork, Coinbase controls the BCH that magicked into existence.
The issue is that BCH belongs to the original owner of the BTC it was forked from. Despite Coinbase telling people to withdraw their BTC if they wanted the BCH a lot of people no-doubt now feel aggrieved that they're unable to access the new theoretical windfall.
But four months is obviously a stall tactic when all of those other places made it available immediately.
Maybe a month for rush (but tested) development. Four months means they have other plans for the money and therefore I believe either they will revise that number or there will be a very large lawsuit. Something like criminal conversion or something.
They have around 7 million customers. If the average amount of bitcoin comes out to 0.5 bitcoin (could be more, could be less, who knows?) then that is 0.5 * 375 (current BCH price) * 7 million = around 1.3 billion USD. Maybe it averages out to quite a bit more. But they are saying they need to hold on to a billion dollars worth of assets until next year for 'safe keeping' or because its technically too hard? LOL.
"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."
I'm a blockchain money noob. From my stand point this virtual money looks like pure speculation. Nice to see that ressource limitation can be bypassed by forking. So this speculation seams doomed to me.
There was a slightly different amount of information available in the time you call "so quickly."
Any "calculated move" that involves repeated pleas to one's own customers to withdraw all their assets from one's platform to protect themselves from that move... well, you can characterize that as well as I can.
If you are going to be cynical, why not go full cynic and say they were waiting to see whether the public outrage would be higher than the value of Bitcoin Cash they pilfered of their customer base.
phodo|8 years ago
nr152522|8 years ago
One example springs to mind. I bought some ETH once they initially began supporting it, just before it shot up in value. However, the transaction just seemed to disappear and I lost out. I tried contacting support by they just kept closing my tickets without explanation. Very, very frustrating.
joering2|8 years ago
I know a story when someone bought some coins with Visa credit card and they had some issues with Conibase service. Same story with tickets - open only to have it closed down next day with suggestion to look into knowledge base.
Then they proceed to the bank and opened a chargeback dispute based on false advertising (legitimate reason) that Coinbase promised to help and are not.
You see - since crypto-currency is not tangible item (you can call it service, if you will), neither Visa, nor Amex or Mastercard will have issues with your dispute, because there is even no tracking to proof you received your "product". Of course once the funds are returned to your credit card and bank notifies Coinbase about the dispute, Coinbase will take your coins away from you, but that's not the point. You see -- it doesnt matter to Visa if you process $1 billion in monthly transactions - if you have too many chargebacks, they will shut you down. End of the story. You open another account - you go on the MATCH list and owner(s) SSN/IDs are on it for 5 years so bye bye processing credit card transactions.
Coinbase might not care about you (I am sure they do per se, they just cheap and won't hire enough eyeballs to answer customer support), but surely they care about their chargebacks dispute level.
pmorici|8 years ago
That said I'm currently experiencing a problem where all emails from Coinbase to my email address are being lost and it isn't a spam filter. I emailed them describing the problem and they emailed me back with the boiler plate suggestions about checking your spam folder that can be found on their support website. Which I explicitly said I had already tried in my support request.
If all they are going to do is regurgitate information from there website why do they have support people at all?
If anyone from Coinbase is reading this all email sent from Coinbase to the Purdue Alumni email forwarding service @alumni.purdue.edu is being lost or not sent or something. It may have something to do with the fact that the alumni.purdue.edu server doesn't support TLS. I don't know just a guess but I know something changed in the past couple months and I don't even get marketing emails from Coinbase any more and it is preventing me from logging into my account.
quantdev|8 years ago
Don't let centralized authorities keep your private keys.
voycey|8 years ago
pgaddict|8 years ago
zeratax|8 years ago
One week after contacting their support and not getting any response, I got an automated response asking if I am still interested in a follow up and if so, I should reply to this mail.
This continued for 2 months every week. I then decided to start complaining on their subreddit and twitter and coincidentally immediately got a mail helping me with my original problem and finally fixing it.
Now with the hardfork I withdrew all my funds as well and will never go back.
rjbwork|8 years ago
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
appleflaxen|8 years ago
finnjohnsen2|8 years ago
So I don't trust them and as soon as a viable alternative comes along I'm off Coinbase.
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
flippyhead|8 years ago
revmoo|8 years ago
[deleted]
colept|8 years ago
sowbug|8 years ago
Long ago, Coinbase filled a buy order I placed. Then they filled it again. They credited the BTC twice but debited the USD only once. Like a good citizen of the Earth I filed a ticket letting them know their error. I got the same treatment you did. I even emailed Brian personally and via a private list I know he's on.
Years later I still have that BTC.
I think your "so long as it's already in their vault" dig is too strong. They haven't scaled as well as they should, that's all.
blazamos|8 years ago
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).
runeks|8 years ago
The only technical issue I’ve heard about with Bitstamp is the following, which I hope got fixed, but I never have orders in the book so it’s not relevant to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1r4d6t/bitstamps_s... (synopsis: Bitstamp’s streaming order API revealing information about matched orders before they are matched).
To be fair, though, I’m pretty sure the limit order book was reinvented, from the ground up, for all Bitcoin exchanges established prior to 2012. It takes some time to get this right if you’re starting from scratch (the issue was reported in 2013).
kornish|8 years ago
No response from support, and from /r/coinbase and their user forums, seems many (many, many!) users have the same issue.
Not much point in using an exchange if you can't use it to...exchange.
Pieman103021|8 years ago
mrb|8 years ago
thephyber|8 years ago
"viable alternative" seems pretty subjective.
CoinBase is a pretty damn big cryptocurrency exchange and it's based in the US and complies with US law. Mt Gox (an exchange that ceased operating a few years ago) was based in Japan and got pwned, causing the first large Bitcoin bubble burst. BTC-e just went down the same day Greek police arrested the alleged MtGox hacker, who reportedly had ties to BTC-e.
Choose your exchange carefully.
barefoot|8 years ago
sputknick|8 years ago
evbots|8 years ago
bostonvaulter2|8 years ago
wmf|8 years ago
blubb-fish|8 years ago
Yhippa|8 years ago
gragas|8 years ago
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.
nipponese|8 years ago
discombobulate|8 years ago
So you don't trade on Coinbase yourself?
Edit: It's almost they have one exchange for ppl who know what they're doing, & one to fleece noobs (3.9% on BTC/USD. I think).
elnygren|8 years ago
As in, UX, UI, Docs, APIs, service design etc. are all top notch. Which would make it probable (but not certain) that the more technical parts are well engineered too.
Coinbase is doing perhaps something similar to what Stripe did for its field of business.
devotedtoneu|8 years ago
It was a real problem.
qhwudbebd|8 years ago
zallarak|8 years ago
qhwudbebd|8 years ago
I cannot warn other potential victims of Coinbase strongly enough; hopefully the chaos and incompetence around BCC will alert people more publicly about the dangers of getting entangled with them. Hold your cryptocurrency in your own wallet that you control yourself.
duren|8 years ago
I personally didn't want to take on the risk of creating a paper wallet and having to move my small amount of BTC from my Coinbase vault, so this is great news for me.
MichaelGG|8 years ago
All they had to say was "BCC support for withdrawals will happen within 30 days if BCC trades above X% of BTC". Or basically anything to the effect of "if BCC is worth anything, we'll give it to you", thus satisfying most people without committing to handling worthless forks.
Optimizer|8 years ago
driverdan|8 years ago
samnwa|8 years ago
aedron|8 years ago
There's no telling how Coinbase operates internally. You can't just assume that 1 customer == 1 permanent bitcoin address in Coinbase's backend. Perhaps they shift funds around all the time into new addresses, without keeping references/keys to the old ones. In that case, BCH balances would be lost, with no way to restore them to the 'owner' at the time of the fork.
Luckily (for would-be BCH holders) that seems to not be the case, but I think Coinbase deserves credit for going the extra mile when they could justifiably say that it is not their problem to deal with.
repomies691|8 years ago
elnygren|8 years ago
You are correct, but this would be a new level of stupid for a leading cyrptocurrency exchange that actually tries to build a reputation and appearance of quality, safety, compliance and being a "legit" service for financial institutions etc.
Snackchez|8 years ago
I bought 200$ worth of BTC in the past from CB, and promptly moved to an Exchange. Does that mean I will get whatever amount of BTC I purchased back then in BCH? If so, why? I understand there was a fork, but I don't get why I'm entitled to the same amount of BCH... what if there are more forks in the future, I'll just keep getting more of those offshoot coins as well?
sowbug|8 years ago
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). That's exactly what Coinbase _didn't_ want you to do if you wanted full control over your funds.
davchana|8 years ago
There can be as much copies of ledger (offshoot coins, forks) as anybody wishes, important is how it grows from there. Most probably it will just die within few mining blocks and thus will not carry any monetary value. And yes, anytime one forks USD to VSD/WSD/YSD/XSD/ZSD they are essentially copying the ledger from that snapshot, with your address having same balance as its fork-parent.
cesarb|8 years ago
By taking your BTC out of Coinbase and into a wallet you control directly (on your computer or phone) before the fork, you have the corresponding private keys during the fork, which after the fork can be used to transact the same value independently on both the BTC and BCH chains.
> I bought 200$ worth of BTC in the past from CB, and promptly moved to an Exchange. Does that mean I will get whatever amount of BTC I purchased back then in BCH?
What matters is what happened at the precise moment of the fork. If at that moment your BTC was on an exchange, the corresponding BCH is at that same exchange. What happens with it depends on the exchange: some might treat it as non-existent, some might credit it to you in full (but it might or might not be possible to trade and/or take it out of the exchange), some might credit it to you partially based on a confusing formula which gets changed after the fact, and some might even take all the BCH for themselves.
fatal510|8 years ago
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
koolba|8 years ago
sowbug|8 years ago
cesarb|8 years ago
Since the fork didn't die immediately, they are going ahead with the "allow everyone to transfer their BCH out" plan. Had it died, they probably wouldn't bother.
robinj6|8 years ago
Supposing BCC eventually becomes of comparable value to BTC, does this mean everyone's fortune was just doubled?
differentView|8 years ago
skyisblue|8 years ago
I wonder what implications this has to the global economy. If we continue to fork will there be a global hyperinflation?
supermdguy|8 years ago
nosuchthing|8 years ago
Ah yes, keeping the sha hash vulnerability open for ASIC mining attacks is not a priority? Empty block exploits not a priority? Thousands of coins have been minted to worthless "proof of work" exploits and early adopters.
Surprised it's lasted this long.
obilgic|8 years ago
Isn't it how it started with gold-based government currencies as well? every government created their own currency/fork of gold.
edit: typo, inflation
vasilipupkin|8 years ago
rurban|8 years ago
That's why wall street got off gold .
user5994461|8 years ago
"Over the last several days, we’ve examined all of the relevant issues and have decided to work on adding support for bitcoin cash for Coinbase customers. We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time."
mmastrac|8 years ago
bhuga|8 years ago
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/bitcoin-e...
It's an interesting read even if you don't care about shorts or bitcoin at all.
fgonzag|8 years ago
But whoever lent the BTC would most likely want the BTC + BCC they are entitled to, even though you don't really have one to give.
obilgic|8 years ago
mlindner|8 years ago
quantdev|8 years ago
Coinbase has three major advantages: (1) incredible marketing, (2) flashy and good UX, and (3) (claimed) safety via cold storage.
The first (1) is a counter argument in my book, (2) is irrelevant, and (3) only matters if you let them control your private keys, which is stupid and the antithesis to Bitcoin.
Animats|8 years ago
They are so going to get sued if the price of Bitcoin Cash crashes by the end of the year. Where do they get off telling customers they can't withdraw an asset for five months?
This is what lawyers call "conversion"[1]. A person who knowingly or intentionally exerts unauthorized control over property of another person commits criminal conversion. The element of knowledge is found when the accused person engages in the conduct and he/she is aware of a high probability that he/she is doing so. An essential element of criminal conversion is that “the property must be owned by another and the conversion thereof must be without the consent and against the will of the party, to whom the property belongs, coupled with the fraudulent intent to deprive the owner of the property.”
It's legally equivalent to theft.[2] The typical example of conversion is renting something and then refusing to return it.
Coinbase execs, you really need to be talking to good securities lawyers.
[1] https://conversion.uslegal.com/criminal-conversion/ [2] https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1317-n...
kanzure|8 years ago
When they say it will take them time to implement, it's an honest statement. They literally have to implement software, do lots of code review, check their accounting, pentesting, or at least they should be doing these things, and 5 months is an unusually short timeline. Even if they took 10% as fee to hire extra developers to work on this project, 5 months is not guaranteeable at all.
The short timelines proposed for hard-forks is one of the reasons why so many bitcoin developers have voiced caution about hard-fork proposals: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support (far right columns)
Cryptsy was quickly installing random altcoins on their servers until one of the 200 coins they installed ended up being malware (a reverse shell or whatever) and poof goes their exchange, plus or minus some other possible fraud occurring. There is value to caution and review when upgrading software systems.... much less financial systems. With backwards-compatible upgrades, you can be more certain about the net impacts. For example, if the changes were compatible with the pre-existing bitcoin rules, then none of this new coin stuff would have happened, and the whole industry could benefit from the compatible upgrades.
cbr|8 years ago
Dylan16807|8 years ago
For multiple non-legal reasons they should, unless writing the code is too much of a burden, but there's not much justification for being picky that it takes actual dev time.
BusinessInsider|8 years ago
Then I realized there is a little less than 5 months left of 2017... Time is fucking flying!
Strategizer|8 years ago
sputknick|8 years ago
wslh|8 years ago
kristopolous|8 years ago
boynamedsue|8 years ago
where_do_i_live|8 years ago
bayonetz|8 years ago
driverdan|8 years ago
bayonetz|8 years ago
sowbug|8 years ago
discombobulate|8 years ago
Keeeeeeeks|8 years ago
polemic|8 years ago
The issue is that BCH belongs to the original owner of the BTC it was forked from. Despite Coinbase telling people to withdraw their BTC if they wanted the BCH a lot of people no-doubt now feel aggrieved that they're unable to access the new theoretical windfall.
localcdn|8 years ago
ilaksh|8 years ago
Maybe a month for rush (but tested) development. Four months means they have other plans for the money and therefore I believe either they will revise that number or there will be a very large lawsuit. Something like criminal conversion or something.
They have around 7 million customers. If the average amount of bitcoin comes out to 0.5 bitcoin (could be more, could be less, who knows?) then that is 0.5 * 375 (current BCH price) * 7 million = around 1.3 billion USD. Maybe it averages out to quite a bit more. But they are saying they need to hold on to a billion dollars worth of assets until next year for 'safe keeping' or because its technically too hard? LOL.
ceejayoz|8 years ago
la_oveja|8 years ago
sschueller|8 years ago
Temasik|8 years ago
Ripple's XRP will win
luke3butler|8 years ago
luke3butler|8 years ago
Looks like BitConnect might need to come up with a new short-name?
Gaelan|8 years ago
aiyodev|8 years ago
andirk|8 years ago
"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."
unknown|8 years ago
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gruez|8 years ago
chmike|8 years ago
LeoPanthera|8 years ago
thinkmassive|8 years ago
sowbug|8 years ago
Any "calculated move" that involves repeated pleas to one's own customers to withdraw all their assets from one's platform to protect themselves from that move... well, you can characterize that as well as I can.
slg|8 years ago