10 ms·

Update for customers with Bitcoin stored on Coinbase

142 points by jaequery 9y ago

MichaelBurge 9y ago
I'm a little surprised they won't at least let you withdraw the Bitcoin Cash. Otherwise it seems like they're asking for a "run on the bank" with a bunch of people pulling out Bitcoin. If BCC is even 10% as valuable as the main chain(Ethereum Classic is still at ~$15 vs. $200 for Ethereum main, it looks like), then why wouldn't people take the free money? A "run on the bank" would be annoying for them because it would mean they have to pull a bunch of money out of cold storage. But I suppose allowing BCC withdrawals would have the same problem, and might add even more risk since there'd be temporary code involved. I wonder if they plan to sell customers' unclaimed BCC for themselves if it later retains any significant value. They are at least consistent: They did the same thing with Stellar earlier. Which makes sense, since there seem to be a lot of fork-like ways to get alternative cryptocurrencies if you hold Bitcoin, and it's probably less hassle to not deal with each unique situation.
- JCzynski 9y ago
  Agreed, withdraw-only access is the obvious Right Thing. Could be hard to implement, I guess.
  - anonova 9y ago
    They did allow ETC withdrawals after the fact: https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2524725-ethereum-classic-faq https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/252.... I'm not sure this is a matter of difficulty to implement.
    - zapt02 9y ago
      If it was, why don't they just say that BCC withdrawals will be available in the future? - If BCC really goes to zero, nobody will care and it will fizz out. - If BCC has value, users can benefit from that value like the rest of the ecosystem. Frankly, I don't see how what they're proposing is even legal.
      - bpicolo 9y ago
        Play barely-regulated games, win barely-regulated prizes? That said, Coinbase has played the regulation game better than anybody else (they're the only entity allowed to sell cryptocurrency in New York last I checked) so credit where credit is due.
        zapt02 9y ago
        High stakes based on how aggressively current legislation is being drafted. Unless of course Coinbase plans to run away with everyones money long before the class-action suit is filed.
      - zwily 9y ago
        By saying they won't support BCC, they are trying to help make BCC fail. They are very influential. If BCC ends up surviving, I have no doubt they will start withdrawals.
        QML 9y ago
        I don't think the majority of people who own Bitcoin use Coinbase, maybe those who have identification but there's other exchanges like Gemini and Kraken. And this isn't included outside the U.S. or unregulated exchanges either.
      - noio 9y ago
        > why don't they just say... Because they also want to make a statement to influence the viability of the forked coin.
- saurik 9y ago
  What percentage of their customers do you believe will hear about this and go to the trouble of actually doing it in the next five days (two of which being a weekend)? When a fork happens, a lot of people who have BTC stored at Coinbase who don't notice or don't bother are then going to be financially isolated from the fork, which removes a ton of people who might otherwise be financially incentived to participate. This thereby could also be acting as a way to hobble a fork (which maybe they have determined the existence of to be bad for them in some way).
  - gwern 9y ago
    What percentage will hear? ~100%, inasmuch as they emailed out OP to customers and you need a working email account to do things like device confirmations. The real question is how many understand the discussion of "you will not have access to BCC" to imply that the customers might wind up taking a haircut to the extent of however much BCC becomes worth, and that they probably want to withdraw? (I withdrew mine last week.)
  - matt-attack 9y ago
    Anecdotally, I did. I'm a complete bitcoin noob, but owned 5 coins in CB since it was super easy to do. Read the Ask HN from last week when the first email came out from Coinbase. Downloaded Bitcoin-core for OS X, went to Receive and got a QR code, pointed the Coinbase App at my screen and sent the funds (tested it first with a few dollars worth). Then did the big bucks. Note: the most painful part was downloading the entire block chain. Took many many hours. Copied the wallet.dat to a few other hosts and I'm done. Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone else on the fence.
- zapt02 9y ago
  I don't understand how Coinbase can justify this. Of course Bitcoin cash will have value, and of course they are trying to pocket all that value themselves. If I had any money in Coinbase, I would withdraw it immediately, because a company that thinks they could pull something like this off on their customers are seriously deluded.
  - slice_of_life 9y ago
    I agree 100%. It seems absolutely bonkers to me that one would leave their money on coinbase if this is the case. How is this even a debate? They will not hesitate to keep the BCC value themselves and even if they somehow magically find it in their hearts not to assume the value of BCC, why let their customers' assets go to waste? IMO, they're neither good nor credible custodians of their customers' assets.
- evilDagmar 9y ago
  I'm sure a lot of people will take "the free money" but it would also mean Coinbase has to write a lot of code to handle those transactions separately, and do so in a very short span of time, oh and that code would need to be safe to put millions of dollars through. Sounds like time to call the local Nope dealer and tell him he's got some stuff competition.
- petertodd 9y ago
  > Otherwise it seems like they're asking for a "run on the bank" with a bunch of people pulling out Bitcoin. To be clear, Coinbase should have adequate Bitcoins on hand to cover 100% of customer balances. Even if every single customer withdraws every single Bitcoin, the only effect on Coinbase should be a few engineers, accountants, and customer service people getting overtime ensuring the process goes smoothly (e.g. by manually taking coins out of cold storage, answering phones, double-checking balances, etc.). This is a very different thing than the traditional "run on the bank" scenario where the bank potentially ends up bankrupt because they don't actually have the funds to cover every deposit.
ladon86 9y ago
I don't follow cryptocurrency news much, and don't really understand the consequences of this. I do have some BTC in Coinbase, though I don't really spend it. Would you recommend I withdraw it ahead of the fork?
- themodelplumber 9y ago
  Can you afford to see those funds depleted? If so I'd keep it in there, see what happens. Ideally your portfolio is diverse enough that your little BTC corner can handle a rodeo. Risk exposure is important.
- antichaos 9y ago
  Yes, you should withdraw your BTC from Coinbase ASAP. Otherwise, you won't get any BCC in case a blockchain split happens on August 1st.
  - chasote 9y ago
    The "in case" part is what I don't understand. This wording from Coinbase also makes it seem like things are still up in the air. August 1st is in a few days! How can there still be ambiguity with what is going to happen? That seems crazy to me.
    - thinkloop 9y ago
      In the world of blockchain it doesn't happen until it happens, but it looks like it will happen.
    - LeoPanthera 9y ago
      As far as I know there is no ambiguity. BCC will be created via a fork on August 1.
      - sowbug 9y ago
        This is a pedantic point, but Bitcoin forks happen frequently as part of the blockchain design (see https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks for around 20 forks last month). The only differences for the August 1 event are that the fork will be given a name (Bitcoin Cash), and that some people will be running modified code that doesn't care if its fork is shorter than the main chain. Observing that the fork will exist isn't the important thing. It's whether anyone will care after a week or two.
polemic 9y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you hold BTC with Coinbase (or any wallet you don't control) you'd be extremely foolish not to pull it out now. The value of BTC after the fork will presumably be the value of BTC + BCC after the fork. If BCC has any value at over the coming months, then that is effectively yours but inaccessible. And if it retains value, Coinbase is going to be in a very awkward situation where they're sitting on an asset that may or may not be yours any more. -- EDIT: Actually, the savviest move is probably to sell. Coinbase's position mean that it's more than likely that a lot of BCC is inaccessible even if it has value. That means BTC drops with no way to recover the lost value. Either the value of BCC drops to zero (and BTC recovers over time) or Coinbase eventually releases BCC (people who held it get BCC equivalent to the loss in BTC value). Either way if you sell immediately before the fork and purchase when it drops, you should retain the lost BCC value. (This assumes that BTC itself doesn't lose out).
- gibybo 9y ago
  Selling is reasonable, but so is just withdrawing and taking the BCC, especially if you want to defer taxes. Coinbase won't let you sell the BCC directly, but you'll be able to exchange the BCC for BTC on many other exchanges quickly and easily, then you can just sell the additional BTC on coinbase.
  - polemic 9y ago
    Even so, there will be a certain amount of BCC that is locked up and unavailable on any market. For a time, there will be simply less BCC than BTC. BTC should remain suppressed while the question of the locked up BCC is resolved (either by tending to $0 or it becoming available to trade). Given those assumptions, you might break even (or gain if you're particularly quick/smart) if you sell the BCC after the fork, but it would seem like you near guarantee a profit if you sell BTC before and buy back after. That profit is off the back off value locked up in BCC by users who didn't pull it out.
- untilHellbanned 9y ago
  Caution: your advice didn't hold for Ethereum. When Ethereum forked, it didn't lose any value and Ethereum Classic value got created out of nothing. Compare around July 20, 2016: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/#charts https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/#charts https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum-classic/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum-classic/
noddy1 9y ago
one of the issues is that having your currency added to coinbase gives it huge legitimacy. every altcoin would love to be on there. The most simple way for coinbase to distribute the coins would be if coinbase "listed" the forked coin. They would also be compelled to do this when other coins airdrop based on holdings of BTC (eg. Stellar and Byteball). This would set a precedent resulting in large numbers of ropey forks and altcoins trying to do drops to push coinbase to list them.
sowbug 9y ago
Most of the comments so far are misunderstanding the cause-effect relationship. Coinbase is signalling that the Bitcoin Cash fork will die and thus isn't worth the engineering effort to support. Because Coinbase is one of the more prominent voices in the industry, this signal diminishes the perceived value of Bitcoin Cash, which increases the chance that the actual value will indeed drop to zero (or never rise above it) if/when it comes into existence. Coinbase's announcement helps ensure the fork will die. Their decision is rational even if you don't view them as an influencer. If the fork dies, they were smart to ignore it. If it thrives, they can add support later and nobody but short-term traders (who wouldn't have kept their funds in Coinbase to begin with) will have missed out on anything.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  I agree with this entirely. Coinbase isn't just "one of the more prominent voices", they're also one of the more respectable voices. They come across as the bridge to more traditional systems (like banks and simplified consumer transactions), filtering out some of the more "radical" elements of the Bitcoin community, and a statement like this from them may well have a material effect on the efficacy of a fork. They might well decide, afterward, to provide a means of cashing out the "alternate" currency after all. But even if they do, and even if they plan to at this point, there's PR value in them not saying that.
  - sowbug 9y ago
    There is also a Machiavellian path where an exchange executes a devastatingly well-timed series of sales of its customers' holdings of the alternate version of the currency, thereby tanking the value and ensuring that its preferred outcome comes to pass. What it does with the minuscule revenue from that is probably irrelevant, but it'd make sense to credit to its customers' accounts as BTC. As you say, Coinbase is a respectable firm, and it seems unlikely it would choose this tactic. But it would be consistent with a strategy to ensure the fork fails to thrive.
    - runeks 9y ago
snissn 9y ago
I've been having no response on support channels to initiate a password reset for the last week, and now this! Class action lawsuit anyone?
- QML 9y ago
  You're going to sue because you forgot your password and as a result can't withdraw in time?
  - dmm 9y ago
    Somebody also forgot to read Coinbase's user agreement. > 7.2. Arbitration; Waiver of Class Action.
    - mtrycz 9y ago
      Isn't there a new law forbidding the waiving of class action no matter what the eula says?
  - snissn 9y ago
    There's a lot of people generally locked out of their accounts, myself having tried to get in for a week. In time for this fork or not I'm getting harmed by not having access to my funds. I'm really pissed off
nullc 9y ago
Coinbase's handling of this is completely reasonable. Anyone can create an altcoin fork of Bitcoin at any time, and they can do it as many times as they want. Coinbase may not even know about it. ABC isn't the first fork to award coins to existing Bitcoin users, there have been several others like Clams and bitcore (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1883902.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1883902.0) (how deceptive these jerks are...). In spite of the seriously short notice coinbase had done an admirable job taking a clear and consistent position and communicating it to the public. It's a position that can be applied to any further such events. In ABC's case they took serious bludgeoning just to get the most basic replay protection into place-- and they still have many unnecessary conflicts with Bitcoin: duplicate address types, duplicate p2p port, duplicate p2p magic, duplicate data dir... all making it unnecessarily complicated and risky for people who want to use their altcoin. Consider if they went another way-- what about the next one? and the one after it? People could effectively flood them with them, a fork a week-- forks that contain malware backdoors that steal Bitcoin keys, forks that will never have more than a few dozen users. forks that are only publicly announced months after they split off (but pretend to have been public all along).. etc. No one can reasonably keep up with that. If you want to chase some of these silly things, that is your decision-- one which you have the freedom to make by keeping your Bitcoin's in your custody. Expecting other people to deal with those potentially unbounded costs on your behalf wouldn't be reasonable.
- MichaelBurge 9y ago
  BCC is not actually a fork but is the original chain/software, isn't it? That could be an important distinction compared to these altcoins.
  - gfody 9y ago
    it's a fork, the code is here: https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc the original client is here https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
    - 9y ago
jpatokal 9y ago
If you're planning to withdraw from Coinbase now, you may already be too late: they're implementing 72 hour withdrawal delays for transactions over some undisclosed maximum (4 figures USD?) unless you submit to some fairly intrusive ID checks to speed things up. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6q0hx8/psa_coinbase_large_transfer_72_hour_mandatory/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6q0hx8/psa_coinbas...
- mynewtb 9y ago
  My bank transfers funds faster and with less worry.
asciimo 9y ago
PSA: If you're considering moving your bitcoin from Coinbase to a wallet you control, and if you store any in the Coinbase vault, it will take 48 hours to transfer from the Coinbase vault to a standard Coinbase wallet. Then you can transfer to an external wallet.
Animats 9y ago
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. This applies to all online wallets and exchanges. You should have all Bitcoins in your own off-line wallet before the fork. Then your coins are available on both blockchains. Look what happened when Etherium forked. Etherium Classic is still around and tradable. It dropped, but not to zero. Why give up that value? Bitcoin Cash might get some traction. If not, you haven't lost anything.
- 09094920394314 9y ago
  except around 4 $ in transaction fees
  - apk-d 9y ago
    I've just withdrawn my coins from Coinbase. The fee was 0.00037366 BTC (roughly $1.05 USD).
null0pointer 9y ago
Unjustifiable decision IMO. They are basically stealing money from their customers. Regardless of your thoughts on the matter BCC will have _some_ value (no matter how little). Coinbase has always been very pro-core.
- QML 9y ago
  Nope, nobody's forcing people to use Coinbase. If they want their BCC, they should just withdraw into their own wallets. And why should Coinbase dedicate effort to support a new untested altcoin?
ex3ndr 9y ago
So, they are just stealing money from customers? Does anyone knows how we can take a look at coinbase wallets?
k2xl 9y ago
I wrote a step by step guide on how to move your coins out of Coinbase to a private wallet: https://hackernoon.com/how-to-move-money-from-coinbase-to-your-own-wallet-2507aef1f717 https://hackernoon.com/how-to-move-money-from-coinbase-to-yo...
jnordwick 9y ago
This is almost like a stock having a split, an acquisition, or a spin off and your broker deciding to keep the extra shares you are given.
- Operyl 9y ago
  I guess the problem here is that Coinbase themselves might not have all the liquid BTC that their customers have, meaning they don’t necessarily have all the BCC to just give either?
Hatred007 9y ago
They are not allowing transfers out.. processing 24 hrs now.. Placed a small transfer (10 usd worth) no peoblem. Holding my large transfer... coinbase = garbage
hesam007nikzad 9y ago
Hello dear Getting free bitcoin : http://etoro.tw/2vbd8tz http://etoro.tw/2vbd8tz
consumerad 9y ago
Class action lawyers are at least investigating: https://www.consumeradlaw.com/coinbase https://www.consumeradlaw.com/coinbase

142 points by jaequery 9y ago

I'm a little surprised they won't at least let you withdraw the Bitcoin Cash. Otherwise it seems like they're asking for a "run on the bank" with a bunch of people pulling out Bitcoin. If BCC is even 10% as valuable as the main chain(Ethereum Classic is still at ~$15 vs. $200 for Ethereum main, it looks like), then why wouldn't people take the free money? A "run on the bank" would be annoying for them because it would mean they have to pull a bunch of money out of cold storage. But I suppose allowing BCC withdrawals would have the same problem, and might add even more risk since there'd be temporary code involved. I wonder if they plan to sell customers' unclaimed BCC for themselves if it later retains any significant value. They are at least consistent: They did the same thing with Stellar earlier. Which makes sense, since there seem to be a lot of fork-like ways to get alternative cryptocurrencies if you hold Bitcoin, and it's probably less hassle to not deal with each unique situation.

JCzynski 9y ago
Agreed, withdraw-only access is the obvious Right Thing. Could be hard to implement, I guess.
- anonova 9y ago
  They did allow ETC withdrawals after the fact: https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2524725-ethereum-classic-faq https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/252.... I'm not sure this is a matter of difficulty to implement.
  - zapt02 9y ago
    If it was, why don't they just say that BCC withdrawals will be available in the future? - If BCC really goes to zero, nobody will care and it will fizz out. - If BCC has value, users can benefit from that value like the rest of the ecosystem. Frankly, I don't see how what they're proposing is even legal.
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      Play barely-regulated games, win barely-regulated prizes? That said, Coinbase has played the regulation game better than anybody else (they're the only entity allowed to sell cryptocurrency in New York last I checked) so credit where credit is due.
      - zapt02 9y ago
        High stakes based on how aggressively current legislation is being drafted. Unless of course Coinbase plans to run away with everyones money long before the class-action suit is filed.
    - zwily 9y ago
      By saying they won't support BCC, they are trying to help make BCC fail. They are very influential. If BCC ends up surviving, I have no doubt they will start withdrawals.
      - QML 9y ago
        I don't think the majority of people who own Bitcoin use Coinbase, maybe those who have identification but there's other exchanges like Gemini and Kraken. And this isn't included outside the U.S. or unregulated exchanges either.
    - noio 9y ago
      > why don't they just say... Because they also want to make a statement to influence the viability of the forked coin.
saurik 9y ago
What percentage of their customers do you believe will hear about this and go to the trouble of actually doing it in the next five days (two of which being a weekend)? When a fork happens, a lot of people who have BTC stored at Coinbase who don't notice or don't bother are then going to be financially isolated from the fork, which removes a ton of people who might otherwise be financially incentived to participate. This thereby could also be acting as a way to hobble a fork (which maybe they have determined the existence of to be bad for them in some way).
- gwern 9y ago
  What percentage will hear? ~100%, inasmuch as they emailed out OP to customers and you need a working email account to do things like device confirmations. The real question is how many understand the discussion of "you will not have access to BCC" to imply that the customers might wind up taking a haircut to the extent of however much BCC becomes worth, and that they probably want to withdraw? (I withdrew mine last week.)
- matt-attack 9y ago
  Anecdotally, I did. I'm a complete bitcoin noob, but owned 5 coins in CB since it was super easy to do. Read the Ask HN from last week when the first email came out from Coinbase. Downloaded Bitcoin-core for OS X, went to Receive and got a QR code, pointed the Coinbase App at my screen and sent the funds (tested it first with a few dollars worth). Then did the big bucks. Note: the most painful part was downloading the entire block chain. Took many many hours. Copied the wallet.dat to a few other hosts and I'm done. Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone else on the fence.
zapt02 9y ago
I don't understand how Coinbase can justify this. Of course Bitcoin cash will have value, and of course they are trying to pocket all that value themselves. If I had any money in Coinbase, I would withdraw it immediately, because a company that thinks they could pull something like this off on their customers are seriously deluded.
- slice_of_life 9y ago
  I agree 100%. It seems absolutely bonkers to me that one would leave their money on coinbase if this is the case. How is this even a debate? They will not hesitate to keep the BCC value themselves and even if they somehow magically find it in their hearts not to assume the value of BCC, why let their customers' assets go to waste? IMO, they're neither good nor credible custodians of their customers' assets.
evilDagmar 9y ago
I'm sure a lot of people will take "the free money" but it would also mean Coinbase has to write a lot of code to handle those transactions separately, and do so in a very short span of time, oh and that code would need to be safe to put millions of dollars through. Sounds like time to call the local Nope dealer and tell him he's got some stuff competition.
petertodd 9y ago
> Otherwise it seems like they're asking for a "run on the bank" with a bunch of people pulling out Bitcoin. To be clear, Coinbase should have adequate Bitcoins on hand to cover 100% of customer balances. Even if every single customer withdraws every single Bitcoin, the only effect on Coinbase should be a few engineers, accountants, and customer service people getting overtime ensuring the process goes smoothly (e.g. by manually taking coins out of cold storage, answering phones, double-checking balances, etc.). This is a very different thing than the traditional "run on the bank" scenario where the bank potentially ends up bankrupt because they don't actually have the funds to cover every deposit.

ladon86 9y ago

I don't follow cryptocurrency news much, and don't really understand the consequences of this. I do have some BTC in Coinbase, though I don't really spend it. Would you recommend I withdraw it ahead of the fork?

themodelplumber 9y ago
Can you afford to see those funds depleted? If so I'd keep it in there, see what happens. Ideally your portfolio is diverse enough that your little BTC corner can handle a rodeo. Risk exposure is important.
antichaos 9y ago
Yes, you should withdraw your BTC from Coinbase ASAP. Otherwise, you won't get any BCC in case a blockchain split happens on August 1st.
- chasote 9y ago
  The "in case" part is what I don't understand. This wording from Coinbase also makes it seem like things are still up in the air. August 1st is in a few days! How can there still be ambiguity with what is going to happen? That seems crazy to me.
  - thinkloop 9y ago
    In the world of blockchain it doesn't happen until it happens, but it looks like it will happen.
  - LeoPanthera 9y ago
    As far as I know there is no ambiguity. BCC will be created via a fork on August 1.
    - sowbug 9y ago
      This is a pedantic point, but Bitcoin forks happen frequently as part of the blockchain design (see https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks for around 20 forks last month). The only differences for the August 1 event are that the fork will be given a name (Bitcoin Cash), and that some people will be running modified code that doesn't care if its fork is shorter than the main chain. Observing that the fork will exist isn't the important thing. It's whether anyone will care after a week or two.

polemic 9y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you hold BTC with Coinbase (or any wallet you don't control) you'd be extremely foolish not to pull it out now. The value of BTC after the fork will presumably be the value of BTC + BCC after the fork. If BCC has any value at over the coming months, then that is effectively yours but inaccessible. And if it retains value, Coinbase is going to be in a very awkward situation where they're sitting on an asset that may or may not be yours any more. -- EDIT: Actually, the savviest move is probably to sell. Coinbase's position mean that it's more than likely that a lot of BCC is inaccessible even if it has value. That means BTC drops with no way to recover the lost value. Either the value of BCC drops to zero (and BTC recovers over time) or Coinbase eventually releases BCC (people who held it get BCC equivalent to the loss in BTC value). Either way if you sell immediately before the fork and purchase when it drops, you should retain the lost BCC value. (This assumes that BTC itself doesn't lose out).

gibybo 9y ago
Selling is reasonable, but so is just withdrawing and taking the BCC, especially if you want to defer taxes. Coinbase won't let you sell the BCC directly, but you'll be able to exchange the BCC for BTC on many other exchanges quickly and easily, then you can just sell the additional BTC on coinbase.
- polemic 9y ago
  Even so, there will be a certain amount of BCC that is locked up and unavailable on any market. For a time, there will be simply less BCC than BTC. BTC should remain suppressed while the question of the locked up BCC is resolved (either by tending to $0 or it becoming available to trade). Given those assumptions, you might break even (or gain if you're particularly quick/smart) if you sell the BCC after the fork, but it would seem like you near guarantee a profit if you sell BTC before and buy back after. That profit is off the back off value locked up in BCC by users who didn't pull it out.
untilHellbanned 9y ago
Caution: your advice didn't hold for Ethereum. When Ethereum forked, it didn't lose any value and Ethereum Classic value got created out of nothing. Compare around July 20, 2016: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/#charts https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/#charts https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum-classic/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum-classic/

noddy1 9y ago

one of the issues is that having your currency added to coinbase gives it huge legitimacy. every altcoin would love to be on there. The most simple way for coinbase to distribute the coins would be if coinbase "listed" the forked coin. They would also be compelled to do this when other coins airdrop based on holdings of BTC (eg. Stellar and Byteball). This would set a precedent resulting in large numbers of ropey forks and altcoins trying to do drops to push coinbase to list them.

sowbug 9y ago

Most of the comments so far are misunderstanding the cause-effect relationship. Coinbase is signalling that the Bitcoin Cash fork will die and thus isn't worth the engineering effort to support. Because Coinbase is one of the more prominent voices in the industry, this signal diminishes the perceived value of Bitcoin Cash, which increases the chance that the actual value will indeed drop to zero (or never rise above it) if/when it comes into existence. Coinbase's announcement helps ensure the fork will die. Their decision is rational even if you don't view them as an influencer. If the fork dies, they were smart to ignore it. If it thrives, they can add support later and nobody but short-term traders (who wouldn't have kept their funds in Coinbase to begin with) will have missed out on anything.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
I agree with this entirely. Coinbase isn't just "one of the more prominent voices", they're also one of the more respectable voices. They come across as the bridge to more traditional systems (like banks and simplified consumer transactions), filtering out some of the more "radical" elements of the Bitcoin community, and a statement like this from them may well have a material effect on the efficacy of a fork. They might well decide, afterward, to provide a means of cashing out the "alternate" currency after all. But even if they do, and even if they plan to at this point, there's PR value in them not saying that.
- sowbug 9y ago
  There is also a Machiavellian path where an exchange executes a devastatingly well-timed series of sales of its customers' holdings of the alternate version of the currency, thereby tanking the value and ensuring that its preferred outcome comes to pass. What it does with the minuscule revenue from that is probably irrelevant, but it'd make sense to credit to its customers' accounts as BTC. As you say, Coinbase is a respectable firm, and it seems unlikely it would choose this tactic. But it would be consistent with a strategy to ensure the fork fails to thrive.
  - runeks 9y ago

snissn 9y ago

I've been having no response on support channels to initiate a password reset for the last week, and now this! Class action lawsuit anyone?

QML 9y ago
You're going to sue because you forgot your password and as a result can't withdraw in time?
- dmm 9y ago
  Somebody also forgot to read Coinbase's user agreement. > 7.2. Arbitration; Waiver of Class Action.
  - mtrycz 9y ago
    Isn't there a new law forbidding the waiving of class action no matter what the eula says?
- snissn 9y ago
  There's a lot of people generally locked out of their accounts, myself having tried to get in for a week. In time for this fork or not I'm getting harmed by not having access to my funds. I'm really pissed off

nullc 9y ago

Coinbase's handling of this is completely reasonable. Anyone can create an altcoin fork of Bitcoin at any time, and they can do it as many times as they want. Coinbase may not even know about it. ABC isn't the first fork to award coins to existing Bitcoin users, there have been several others like Clams and bitcore (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1883902.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1883902.0) (how deceptive these jerks are...). In spite of the seriously short notice coinbase had done an admirable job taking a clear and consistent position and communicating it to the public. It's a position that can be applied to any further such events. In ABC's case they took serious bludgeoning just to get the most basic replay protection into place-- and they still have many unnecessary conflicts with Bitcoin: duplicate address types, duplicate p2p port, duplicate p2p magic, duplicate data dir... all making it unnecessarily complicated and risky for people who want to use their altcoin. Consider if they went another way-- what about the next one? and the one after it? People could effectively flood them with them, a fork a week-- forks that contain malware backdoors that steal Bitcoin keys, forks that will never have more than a few dozen users. forks that are only publicly announced months after they split off (but pretend to have been public all along).. etc. No one can reasonably keep up with that. If you want to chase some of these silly things, that is your decision-- one which you have the freedom to make by keeping your Bitcoin's in your custody. Expecting other people to deal with those potentially unbounded costs on your behalf wouldn't be reasonable.

MichaelBurge 9y ago
BCC is not actually a fork but is the original chain/software, isn't it? That could be an important distinction compared to these altcoins.
- gfody 9y ago
  it's a fork, the code is here: https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc https://github.com/Bitcoin-ABC/bitcoin-abc the original client is here https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
  - 9y ago

jpatokal 9y ago

If you're planning to withdraw from Coinbase now, you may already be too late: they're implementing 72 hour withdrawal delays for transactions over some undisclosed maximum (4 figures USD?) unless you submit to some fairly intrusive ID checks to speed things up. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6q0hx8/psa_coinbase_large_transfer_72_hour_mandatory/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6q0hx8/psa_coinbas...

mynewtb 9y ago
My bank transfers funds faster and with less worry.

asciimo 9y ago

PSA: If you're considering moving your bitcoin from Coinbase to a wallet you control, and if you store any in the Coinbase vault, it will take 48 hours to transfer from the Coinbase vault to a standard Coinbase wallet. Then you can transfer to an external wallet.

Animats 9y ago

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. This applies to all online wallets and exchanges. You should have all Bitcoins in your own off-line wallet before the fork. Then your coins are available on both blockchains. Look what happened when Etherium forked. Etherium Classic is still around and tradable. It dropped, but not to zero. Why give up that value? Bitcoin Cash might get some traction. If not, you haven't lost anything.

09094920394314 9y ago
except around 4 $ in transaction fees
- apk-d 9y ago
  I've just withdrawn my coins from Coinbase. The fee was 0.00037366 BTC (roughly $1.05 USD).

null0pointer 9y ago

Unjustifiable decision IMO. They are basically stealing money from their customers. Regardless of your thoughts on the matter BCC will have _some_ value (no matter how little). Coinbase has always been very pro-core.

QML 9y ago
Nope, nobody's forcing people to use Coinbase. If they want their BCC, they should just withdraw into their own wallets. And why should Coinbase dedicate effort to support a new untested altcoin?

ex3ndr 9y ago

So, they are just stealing money from customers? Does anyone knows how we can take a look at coinbase wallets?

k2xl 9y ago

I wrote a step by step guide on how to move your coins out of Coinbase to a private wallet: https://hackernoon.com/how-to-move-money-from-coinbase-to-your-own-wallet-2507aef1f717 https://hackernoon.com/how-to-move-money-from-coinbase-to-yo...

jnordwick 9y ago

This is almost like a stock having a split, an acquisition, or a spin off and your broker deciding to keep the extra shares you are given.

Operyl 9y ago
I guess the problem here is that Coinbase themselves might not have all the liquid BTC that their customers have, meaning they don’t necessarily have all the BCC to just give either?

Hatred007 9y ago

They are not allowing transfers out.. processing 24 hrs now.. Placed a small transfer (10 usd worth) no peoblem. Holding my large transfer... coinbase = garbage

hesam007nikzad 9y ago

Hello dear Getting free bitcoin : http://etoro.tw/2vbd8tz http://etoro.tw/2vbd8tz

consumerad 9y ago

Class action lawyers are at least investigating: https://www.consumeradlaw.com/coinbase https://www.consumeradlaw.com/coinbase