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Update on Bitcoin Cash
- localcdn 9y agoAnd all it took was the threat of a lawsuit.
- ceejayoz 9y agoNow we see how many other forks rise up and demand inclusion.
- ilaksh 9y agoBut 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.
- mmastrac 9y agoDoes this mean that customers in a short position owe Bitcoin Cash?
- obilgic 9y agohow are you short on coinbase?
- ceejayoz 9y agohttps://community.coinbase.com/t/short-position-fees-requirements-etc/14373/4 https://community.coinbase.com/t/short-position-fees-require... seems to indicate it's possible.
- obilgic 9y agothat actually seems to be gdax not coinbase.
- ceejayoz 9y agoThen I'm really confused as to the relationship between the two. Here's Coinbase support posting a "how do I use GADX?" article: https://community.coinbase.com/t/what-is-gdax-how-do-i-use-it/185 https://community.coinbase.com/t/what-is-gdax-how-do-i-use-i...
- jchw 9y agoGADX is their trading platform. They don't plan on supporting trading with BCC. That being said, no, you don't own a short position. I don't see why that would even be related to this.
- StavrosK 9y agoBecause shorting means you're borrowing BTC so you can sell it off. Since you borrowed BTC, you're the one who would have received the BCC for that BTC, so are you on the hook to give that back as well? If I borrow your hen and it lays an egg and that hatches a chick, shouldn't I give you the chick back with the hen?
- obilgic 9y agoso inflation comes in terms of forks in the realm of crypto currencies. 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 9y agoDo you mean inflation ? Crypto currency space is new still, forks are innovation and competition. That is good.
- vasilipupkin 9y agoCan someone who understands pros and cons of bcc vs btc explain to me ( us ) which one of the two is more likely to scale / win ?
- wmf 9y agoI understand this stuff but that's not enough to make confident predictions. I realize this sounds like a copout but I don't think anyone can predict what will happen here.
- elmar 9y agothey are two diferent ways to solve the same scalability problem, Btc doubles the current number of transactions by increasing the block from 1mb to 2mb and adds a new service the segregated witnesses that allows off-the-chain private transactions, Bcc simply increases the block to 8mb for roughly 8x times more transactions.
- elmar 9y agopersonally I think on a technical level Bcc it's a more elegant simple solution, at the moment I am completely against the Segregated Witnesses funcionality my view is that all transactions should be on the blockchain. The good part is that the market as two options and anything could happen.
- 9y ago
- sputknick 9y agoDo you think this mean they will support ethereum classic? I don't see how the two are different.
- colept 9y agoIs 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.
- wmf 9y agoMaybe Gemini; it seems to be the "most legal".
- Taek 9y agoSupport on Gemini is also fantastic
- Pieman103021 9y agoSimilar 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.
- blazamos 9y agoVP Ops at Coinbase 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-139d99e72876 https://blog.coinbase.com/improving-customer-support-139d99e... If you still need help with your issue, send me an email (in my profile).
- will_brown 9y agoI saw your 3 month remote support contract position, I'm a lawyer in Miami working on my own tech projects, and would be interested in this type of temporary remote work with Coinbase while I hopefully get ramen profitable. if appropriate forward my LinkedIn to the right person: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willbrownesq/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/willbrownesq/
- 9y ago
- luke3butler 9y agoBitcoin cash is BCH not BCC.
- Gaelan 9y agoI’ve seen both used about equally.
- gruez 9y agoBcash
- aiyodev 9y agoYou are luke-jr, aren't you?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- andirk 9y agoFrom a Coinbase email: "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."
- luke3butler 9y agoI originally wrote this comment because BCC has been reserved for BitConnect prior to the existence of Bitcoin Cash. Looks like BitConnect might need to come up with a new short-name?
- koolba 9y agoSo does this mean the cost of a lawsuit was deemed greater than the cost of adding support for BCC?
- sowbug 9y agoThat'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?
- koolba 9y ago> That's awfully cynical. If you knew me in person you'd know the cynicism was intentional. I've got quite a bit to start with and double so when it comes to anything involving digital currencies. > They took a wait and see approach. Would you run your engineering team any differently? On the contrary, I agreed with it. I said as much the day before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915884 > 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? I don't think it's possible to tell after less than a day if it's a viable fork. It's way too early. That's why I'm thinking this is driven more from the perceived cost of lawsuits vs. the development cost of supporting the feature.
- sowbug 9y agoI see. I made this point somewhere else in this thread, but there's no lawsuit threat because of the terms of service (just arbitration), and if someone were a big fish but asleep at the wheel for the last few months, Coinbase could easily make them whole quickly by just manually sending them the BCH they wanted. Engineering full support as they're doing almost surely costs more than any conceivable loss customers could suffer in the interim (assuming anyone with a nontrivial balance takes responsibility for their actions or inaction).
- cesarb 9y ago
- thinkmassive 9y agoThey reversed stance so quickly, it seems plausible this was a calculated move to increase news coverage of Coinbase.
- slg 9y agoIf 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.
- gafferongames 9y agoThis sounds about right.
- sowbug 9y agoThere 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.
- thinkmassive 9y agoI admit that "calculated" might be a stretch, considering how far off their delivery date is. Despite that, the original announcement could have been more realistic ("we might support it soon ") but it wouldn't have made nearly as many headlines. It does seem like they're understaffed. Maybe they were hoping the fork would wither away quickly and they wouldn't need to deal with it. As one of the largest exchanges they should have better contingency planning than that. I hope they continue to succeed because I do like Coinbase.
- Keeeeeeeks 9y agoQuestion: if Coinbase never claimed the Bitcoin Cash, would there be any grounds for a lawsuit?
- polemic 9y agoThey 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Keeeeeeeks 9y agoHow is that not bullshit though? Like, if I were a company that didn't want to take a side, had projects in the pipeline, and didn't want to have to build out infrastructure, extra warnings, and educational content for the speculators that will probably send BCH <-> XBT, I don't see why I can't tell all the BCH enthusiasts that my company won't redeem the BCH, and to send their funds out so that they can redeem the BCH they're entitled to. It costs a lot of man hours to add infrastructure work for that, and they're setting a precedent that they'll support every single fork that people speculate with. I personally think this is lazyman bullshit where people harp about how Coinbase being amicable with the feds are bad until they want to file suit lol. People who were knowledgeable enough about the fork but too lazy to learn how to move their Bitcoin out, not have their private keys stolen/lost, and redeem the coins on two chains without fucking up feel entitled to free money that costs Coinbase man hours and technical debt. Despite all ideals about them technically controlling the BCH, they should be able to draft a legal document placing their licensing at stake that asserts they're not claiming customer BCH and get back to answering my limit increase email. *Disclaimer: I don't work for Coinbase or a Bitcoin company
- robinj6 9y agoDumb question: Supposing BCC eventually becomes of comparable value to BTC, does this mean everyone's fortune was just doubled?
- skyisblue 9y agoThat's correct. If you had one btc before the fork, you now have one btc and one bch. I wonder what implications this has to the global economy. If we continue to fork will there be a global hyperinflation?
- robinj6 9y agoSo people who had 10 million in BTC just made about 2.5 million dollars?
- selectodude 9y agoPaper winnings. It's near impossible to trade BCC right now, so any USD value you see is questionable.
- differentView 9y agoOnly if you believe BTC would've been at that same value without the fork.
- paulddraper 9y agoRight. It's like a stock split, except the company actually splits into two essentially identical competitors. No matter which competitor "wins", your assets should keep the same total value they had before.
- dragonwriter 9y agoUnless the competitors increase the whole market (increasing total value) or—as is plausible with a cryptocurrency with netomwork effects—the lack of a single clear choice reduces the overall value of the market compared to a don't clear choice that everyone uses.
- duren 9y agoSay 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.
- samnwa 9y agoUh 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.'
- polemic 9y agoDO you mean like they said on July 28th? > 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. https://blog.coinbase.com/update-for-customers-with-bitcoin-stored-on-coinbase-99e2d4790a53 https://blog.coinbase.com/update-for-customers-with-bitcoin-...
- sowbug 9y agoThey also emailed it to current customers. samnwa, didn't you receive your copy?
- duren 9y ago> How hard would it have been to say something like I would suggest that neither of us have any idea how hard that would be. (Also, they gave a pretty similar announcement, minus the "we might support BCH in the future" bit.) From my perspective, they are now going to devote a shit ton of engineering effort into supporting BCH withdrawals, which will not provide a source of recurring revenue.
- user5994461 9y agoSummary: "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."
- chmike 9y agoI'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.
- LeoPanthera 9y agoDo you believe that stock splits are also creating money?
- Animats 9y ago"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. [1] https://conversion.uslegal.com/criminal-conversion/ https://conversion.uslegal.com/criminal-conversion/ [2] https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1317-national-stolen-property-act-stolen-converted-taken-fraud https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1317-n...
- cbr 9y agoBefore the fork they wrote: 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. https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/2844217-uahf-uasf-faq https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/284421...
- gafferongames 9y agoUnacceptable behavior. They should immediately offer a way for people to access bitcoin cash or they deserve to be sued into oblivion.
- jbverschoor 9y ago3 days notice. Opening an account somewhere can take weeks
- Snackchez 9y agoMaybe 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?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- fatal510 9y agoBecause 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.
- davchana 9y agoImagine 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.
- bigpeopleareold 9y agoEven simpler analogy to work from: you have a file which has your list of things you bought and sold. The file is called 'transactions.txt' You make a copy of that file, calling it 'transactions_2.txt' and then start appending what you bought and sold on that. But then, you are also still appending to the old file what you bought and sold. The Bitcoin/BCH thing is like this, but on a greater scale with potential risks around it (BCH had to ensure there were no replay attacks on the Bitcoin blockchain for example.) For example, Trezor recommends (and has to deliver your Bitcoin to a Bcash-specific address: https://trezor.io/claim-bch/ https://trezor.io/claim-bch/.
- gragas 9y agoHonestly, 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.
- nipponese 9y agoI 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.
- aianus 9y ago> their buy/sell ACH fees are insane It's a form of price discrimination. Only ignorant end-consumers pay the crazy broker fees. Anyone slightly sophisticated deposits USD via ACH (nearly free) and then transfers to GDAX and does their trading there (0-0.25%).
- zallarak 9y agoWhat do you work on that does that? I'd love to learn more. zain at za1 dot co
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- elnygren 9y agoWell, at least they have the best appearance. 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.
- qhwudbebd 9y ago
- bayonetz 9y agoWhat 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...
- driverdan 9y agoWhy would you keep it there in the first place? History has shown us how unsafe it is to let someone else control your BTC.
- sowbug 9y agoMoving out of Coinbase took you fewer keystrokes than typing that comment.
- bayonetz 9y agoRight, withdrawal is easy. Figuring out how to actually claim my BCC was a (figurative) eternity. Appreciate your dismissive attitude though! Bottom line, Coinbase could have made this easy. It's not like this was some random fork by some nobody faction. I want crypto coins to succeed and it won't happen as long as we have to manage our own wallets and such.
- sowbug 9y agoYou make it sound like adding support at the level they have for their other currencies is something they can do on a whim. Unless you've worked in commercial software, that's a forgivable attitude, but it's very far from reality for a company like Coinbase that is establishing a brand of trust and stability, not chasing the latest sparkly fork (of which there are many) and saying oops sorry when they screw up by moving too fast. "It's not like this was some random fork by some nobody faction." That's Monday-morning quarterbacking, and in fact we have no idea whether we're at halftime or end of game for BCH. Results-oriented thinking like that is one step away from cargo-culting. "Figuring out how to actually claim my BCC was a (figurative) eternity." Right, so imagine having to solve that same problem for a million or so users in less time than it took you for yourself.
- kristopolous 9y agoGood on them. Finally some integrity in the cryptocoin exchange market.
- phodo 9y agoI 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.
- nr152522 9y agoI'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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- voycey 9y agoTerrible 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
- quantdev 9y agoI, 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.
- la_oveja 9y agocoinbase's android app is utter shit. sorry but had to say it
- sschueller 9y agoWhat other trading platform has a good android app?
- la_oveja 9y agobitstamp worked pretty fine, if I don't remember wrong
- aedron 9y agoCoinbase 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.
- elnygren 9y ago> without keeping references/keys to the old ones 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- repomies691 9y agoAnyone 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.
- qhwudbebd 9y agoCoinbase 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.
- mlindner 9y agoSo 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.
- quantdev 9y agoI 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.
- boynamedsue 9y agoWhere do I buy Bitcoin Cash today from a reputable exchange?
- where_do_i_live 9y agoI'd say Bittrex is the most reputable out there.
- Temasik 9y agolost my faith with bitcoin and ethereum due to chain split Ripple's XRP will win
- discombobulate 9y agoCan we stop with this Coinbase spam?
- BusinessInsider 9y agoAt first I was like, why a whole year?! Then I realized there is a little less than 5 months left of 2017... Time is fucking flying!
- Strategizer 9y agoWhen 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.