13 ms·

I'm trying to send $700 in bitcoin to purchase something. It's going to cost me $65 to buy the coins and several hours of time. Of course, I am banned from Co

by varbo 9y ago

I'm trying to send $700 in bitcoin to purchase something. It's going to cost me $65 to buy the coins and several hours of time. Of course, I am banned from Coinbase for an innocous bank mistake. There's literally no other options to buy coins at 1-2% in the US.

cdiddy2 9y ago
gemini?
wmf 9y ago
Isn't Gemini 0.25%?
- jdironman 9y ago
  I just tried registering with them and the reg page is down for maintenance.
- ohhhlol 9y ago
  yes or lower, https://gemini.com/fee-schedule/ https://gemini.com/fee-schedule/
chmpgne 9y ago
Bitcoin itself is being harmed by the core developers who refuse to do anything to address the insane fees: bitcoin needs more bandwidth and throughput in its blocks, classic supply and demand. Bitcoin cash or something like etherium are worth a look at. Bitcoin cash, as the name implies, holds the value that bitcoin should be able to be used as electronic cash.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  No one is interested in the centralized bcash. It is a crypto in name only.
  - qsucvatz 9y ago
    Bitcoin is Bitcoin Cash. We immediately restored the ability for Bitcoin to be adopted with low fees and fast confirmations by using 8 MB blocks. The median income for the world is $6/day. High fees are unaffordable and unadoptable. The Core team has done Bitcoin an enormous disservice; like setting autopilot into the terrain.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      You call your alt whatever you like. I'll call it bcash so that it removes confusion from peoples minds that it isn't bitcoin. The only thing that alt has is a name they've stolen from bitcoin. So bcash it is. No one cares about the fees. If they did, they'd use litecoin. Blocks 4x the speed of bcash and bitcoin, and they have segwit too, so double the capacity of bcash.
    - xur17 9y ago
      8MB blocks don't solve the longterm scalability problem. I agree that high fees are unacceptable, but I'd rather wait for a solution that allows order a transaction increase of several orders of magnitude rather than scaling it linearly (and therefore reducing the number of people that can actually use it).
    - lawlessone 9y ago
      Bcash was just an attempt to prevent Segwit and keep fees high under the guise of doing the opposite.
- antonios 9y ago
  All you bcash advocates should go learn a thing about the infeasibility of solving a (hyper)exponential scaling problem with linear "solutions" (aka block size increase). Alternatively, leave these matters to the engineers.
sushid 9y ago
Gemini and Kraken are just two I can list from the top of my head.
goldenkey 9y ago
Im also banned from coinbase for asking them to hurry my verification because I needed to buy vitamins. They are a pretty miserable company. How can they claim to sell something "useful" then ban you if you mention using it? They basically are admitting to selling a security if that is the case..wondering if we could take all the nonsensically banned users and do a class action lawsuit against them. It would be one thing if I said drugs but I didnt. They banned me for fucking vitamins.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  > Im also banned from coinbase for asking them to hurry my verification because I needed to buy vitamins. You don't see how that might be a red flag? What vitamins could possibly be so important that you couldn't wait a little while, and would be unavailable from another source? Plus, the rudeness of "I'm more important than everyone else in the queue, hurry up" can't have helped.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    He might be rude, but honestly a company should be expected to deal with rude customers. It is their job to do deal with slightly rude customers, and I don't think they should be banning anybody for something so small as "being asked to go faster".
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      The rudeness can't have helped, but I'd imagine the "I desperately need my 'vitamins' that can only be bought with Bitcoin" bit is what got the account flagged.
      - goldenkey 9y ago
        It actually was vitamins from a foreign shop that took international payments thru bitcoin. I could have shown them if they wanted proof. However they never let me have any recourse. Just instaban, goodbye. As hard as it might be to believe its their job to remain professional. And they failed at that. My account didn't get flagged - I got outright banned- lets not mince words. Coinbase is ran by a bunch of assholes.
PhrosTT 9y ago
For the record Coinbase is adding 100k users a day. So people need to dial down the expectations...
- alextheparrot 9y ago
  The number mentioned for the record is wrong: Coinbase has added 100k users in a day, it is not adding 100k users per day [0]. That’s not evening considering the number of users who may be fraudulent, they are hiring [1]. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NgvD2kFT69mSXuJPzPDu-Qv9SS1ck2iPt6Kw9a55z0k/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NgvD2kFT69mSXuJPzPDu... [1] https://www.coinbase.com/careers/923993 https://www.coinbase.com/careers/923993
  - j_s 9y ago
    They are hiring and getting flagged off Who's Hiring (did they do this to themselves? never seen anything else like it) for mentioning MongoDB: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14902743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14902743
    - sah2ed 9y ago
      @jessepollak [0] wrote in the thread you linked to saying: "NOTE: A spammer posted this same post below, not sure why. ". It was a spammer's post that was flagged not Coinbase. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14903400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14903400
- zeep 9y ago
  I would be surprised if Coinbase didn't get sued because of their bad service... locking people's money when the market is going crazy.
  - zipwitch 9y ago
    This is (as someone who hasn't played around with bitcoin much) something I've been curious about. How easy is it to get significant amounts of bitcoin turned into cash? This is particularly applicable at a moment like the present. If I had, say, 25 bitcoins that I wanted to trade into dollars _right now_ what hurdles stand in my way, and how long would it take to clear them?
sidko 9y ago
Here's a list [1] of 400 exchanges you can buy Bitcoin from, 34 of trade BTC/USD. This doesn't include some sites that charge a premium and allow you to buy with debit cards. There are also Bitcoin ATMs, over 1000 of them in the United States [2]. [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets [2] https://coinatmradar.com/ https://coinatmradar.com/
- akvadrako 9y ago
  That's not a useful response. ATM's will likely have over 1-2% in fees, and just trading USD isn't enough - you need a way to get your money in and out.
mirimir 9y ago
Create an Electrum wallet. Find a friend who has Bitcoin. Meet for lunch/dinner. They transfer ~70 mBTC to you, with a 1-2 mBTC fee. After 2-3 confirmations, you give them $710-$720 cash. Done.
- cortesoft 9y ago
  With a process so simple, why would anyone ever use cash?!
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Well, OP could just ask about mailing cash, instead of using Bitcoin ;) And do recall that OP has been banned by Coinbase, and doesn't want to pay over 1-2% fees. So they're a rather special case.
    - arcticbull 9y ago
      The 3% fee here is the same as a credit card but without any of the benefits, since a credit card nets you purchase protections, extends the manufacturers warranty, 2% or more in cash back and you don't have to pay it off immediately, and it also clears in seconds instead of hours. And the merchant pays the fee not you. Am I missing something?
      - mirimir 9y ago
        OP specified Bitcoin, so hey. Maybe there's a reason. OP?

by varbo 9y ago

cdiddy2 9y ago

gemini?

wmf 9y ago

Isn't Gemini 0.25%?

jdironman 9y ago
I just tried registering with them and the reg page is down for maintenance.
ohhhlol 9y ago
yes or lower, https://gemini.com/fee-schedule/ https://gemini.com/fee-schedule/

chmpgne 9y ago

Bitcoin itself is being harmed by the core developers who refuse to do anything to address the insane fees: bitcoin needs more bandwidth and throughput in its blocks, classic supply and demand. Bitcoin cash or something like etherium are worth a look at. Bitcoin cash, as the name implies, holds the value that bitcoin should be able to be used as electronic cash.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
No one is interested in the centralized bcash. It is a crypto in name only.
- qsucvatz 9y ago
  Bitcoin is Bitcoin Cash. We immediately restored the ability for Bitcoin to be adopted with low fees and fast confirmations by using 8 MB blocks. The median income for the world is $6/day. High fees are unaffordable and unadoptable. The Core team has done Bitcoin an enormous disservice; like setting autopilot into the terrain.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    You call your alt whatever you like. I'll call it bcash so that it removes confusion from peoples minds that it isn't bitcoin. The only thing that alt has is a name they've stolen from bitcoin. So bcash it is. No one cares about the fees. If they did, they'd use litecoin. Blocks 4x the speed of bcash and bitcoin, and they have segwit too, so double the capacity of bcash.
  - xur17 9y ago
    8MB blocks don't solve the longterm scalability problem. I agree that high fees are unacceptable, but I'd rather wait for a solution that allows order a transaction increase of several orders of magnitude rather than scaling it linearly (and therefore reducing the number of people that can actually use it).
  - lawlessone 9y ago
    Bcash was just an attempt to prevent Segwit and keep fees high under the guise of doing the opposite.
antonios 9y ago
All you bcash advocates should go learn a thing about the infeasibility of solving a (hyper)exponential scaling problem with linear "solutions" (aka block size increase). Alternatively, leave these matters to the engineers.

sushid 9y ago

Gemini and Kraken are just two I can list from the top of my head.

goldenkey 9y ago

Im also banned from coinbase for asking them to hurry my verification because I needed to buy vitamins. They are a pretty miserable company. How can they claim to sell something "useful" then ban you if you mention using it? They basically are admitting to selling a security if that is the case..wondering if we could take all the nonsensically banned users and do a class action lawsuit against them. It would be one thing if I said drugs but I didnt. They banned me for fucking vitamins.

ceejayoz 9y ago
> Im also banned from coinbase for asking them to hurry my verification because I needed to buy vitamins. You don't see how that might be a red flag? What vitamins could possibly be so important that you couldn't wait a little while, and would be unavailable from another source? Plus, the rudeness of "I'm more important than everyone else in the queue, hurry up" can't have helped.
- stale2002 9y ago
  He might be rude, but honestly a company should be expected to deal with rude customers. It is their job to do deal with slightly rude customers, and I don't think they should be banning anybody for something so small as "being asked to go faster".
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    The rudeness can't have helped, but I'd imagine the "I desperately need my 'vitamins' that can only be bought with Bitcoin" bit is what got the account flagged.
    - goldenkey 9y ago
      It actually was vitamins from a foreign shop that took international payments thru bitcoin. I could have shown them if they wanted proof. However they never let me have any recourse. Just instaban, goodbye. As hard as it might be to believe its their job to remain professional. And they failed at that. My account didn't get flagged - I got outright banned- lets not mince words. Coinbase is ran by a bunch of assholes.

PhrosTT 9y ago

For the record Coinbase is adding 100k users a day. So people need to dial down the expectations...

alextheparrot 9y ago
The number mentioned for the record is wrong: Coinbase has added 100k users in a day, it is not adding 100k users per day [0]. That’s not evening considering the number of users who may be fraudulent, they are hiring [1]. [0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NgvD2kFT69mSXuJPzPDu-Qv9SS1ck2iPt6Kw9a55z0k/htmlview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NgvD2kFT69mSXuJPzPDu... [1] https://www.coinbase.com/careers/923993 https://www.coinbase.com/careers/923993
- j_s 9y ago
  They are hiring and getting flagged off Who's Hiring (did they do this to themselves? never seen anything else like it) for mentioning MongoDB: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14902743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14902743
  - sah2ed 9y ago
    @jessepollak [0] wrote in the thread you linked to saying: "NOTE: A spammer posted this same post below, not sure why. ". It was a spammer's post that was flagged not Coinbase. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14903400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14903400
zeep 9y ago
I would be surprised if Coinbase didn't get sued because of their bad service... locking people's money when the market is going crazy.
- zipwitch 9y ago
  This is (as someone who hasn't played around with bitcoin much) something I've been curious about. How easy is it to get significant amounts of bitcoin turned into cash? This is particularly applicable at a moment like the present. If I had, say, 25 bitcoins that I wanted to trade into dollars _right now_ what hurdles stand in my way, and how long would it take to clear them?

sidko 9y ago

Here's a list [1] of 400 exchanges you can buy Bitcoin from, 34 of trade BTC/USD. This doesn't include some sites that charge a premium and allow you to buy with debit cards. There are also Bitcoin ATMs, over 1000 of them in the United States [2]. [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets [2] https://coinatmradar.com/ https://coinatmradar.com/

akvadrako 9y ago
That's not a useful response. ATM's will likely have over 1-2% in fees, and just trading USD isn't enough - you need a way to get your money in and out.

mirimir 9y ago

Create an Electrum wallet. Find a friend who has Bitcoin. Meet for lunch/dinner. They transfer ~70 mBTC to you, with a 1-2 mBTC fee. After 2-3 confirmations, you give them $710-$720 cash. Done.

cortesoft 9y ago
With a process so simple, why would anyone ever use cash?!
- mirimir 9y ago
  Well, OP could just ask about mailing cash, instead of using Bitcoin ;) And do recall that OP has been banned by Coinbase, and doesn't want to pay over 1-2% fees. So they're a rather special case.
  - arcticbull 9y ago
    The 3% fee here is the same as a credit card but without any of the benefits, since a credit card nets you purchase protections, extends the manufacturers warranty, 2% or more in cash back and you don't have to pay it off immediately, and it also clears in seconds instead of hours. And the merchant pays the fee not you. Am I missing something?
    - mirimir 9y ago
      OP specified Bitcoin, so hey. Maybe there's a reason. OP?