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With the frenzy out there, Coinbase makes crypto currencies trading/investing/purchasing as robust and seemingly as safe as possible. This could be a signal, no

With the frenzy out there, Coinbase makes crypto currencies trading/investing/purchasing as robust and seemingly as safe as possible. This could be a signal, now that we have some reputable market players that crypto currencies are really just starting and there is a very high ceiling. Getting in before coinbase you had to mine your own (that party ended quickly - Butterfly Labs, cex.io for cloud mining etc) or be part of a sketchy exchange (mtgox, btc-e etc where funds were stolen or seized). Some of the rules such as 10k limits on buying/selling/transfers put a natural throttling on bitcoin that other markets don't have, since the buying is immense it should continue to go up for sometime due to this throttling and now reputable sources for buying into the market. Side note: one of the absolute killer features of crypto currency markets is finally we have an always on market. Stock markets and exchanges still operate in the old days of the hours of the day in the country they are based in, crypto currency is an always on market which is nice because it eliminates the after hours/before open games that go on with stocks.

pishpash 9y ago
Pretty sure forex markets are 24/7
- wslh 9y ago
  Not for retail trading and holidays can affect pairs.
  - CamelCaseName 9y ago
    Retail trading in Forex markets is miniscule. <4% in 2013. Source: https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1312z.htm https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1312z.htm
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Yeah I guess currency exchanges / futures have always been 24/7 as there is always an open market somewhere in the world. Crypto currencies are close to that I guess. I wonder if equity markets will one day move to always on, I hope they do. With more investment options such as crypto currencies, I wonder if they will eventually do it to stay competitive to investment cash. Nothing worse than pre-market and after hours shenanigans in equity markets, can't pull that in an always on market.
malloryerik 9y ago
Most foreign exchange and derivatives exchanges are on 23.5 hours a day, except weekends.
- ganeshkrishnan 9y ago
  Only derivatives and forex. Stock is still office hours and out of regular hours (+-1 hour I think) is reserved for the big boys.
  - quickthrower2 9y ago
    Bitcoin is more akin to a Forex or Gold than Stock,
  - aaavl2821 9y ago
    Stock futures are 24 hours. I believe the vast majority of equity volume is in stock futures rather than stocks themselves. Institutional investors drive this volume
    - ucha 9y ago
      Your three statements are false.
      - zeusk 9y ago
        On notional value bases, he is probably right but we all know how the derivative guys like to lever up and hide it all under layers of synthetic securities.
      - aaavl2821 9y ago
        was recalling info for stock indices rather than individual stocks. stock index futures are 23 hours: http://www.cmegroup.com/trading-hours.html#equityIndex http://www.cmegroup.com/trading-hours.html#equityIndex stock volume is larger than futures (347B global avg daily volume vs 280 in jan 2016, not sure about now), but futures larger than ETFs (280 vs 88) youll have to convince me that institutional investors dont drive futures volume, cant find data offhand but wont give you benefit of the doubt on that one :)
nikolay 9y ago
"As as safe as possible" - are you out of your mind?!
- bob_theslob646 9y ago
  Serious, this. There is no recourse for recover in the event of securities fraud.
  - Phlarp 9y ago
    For many crypto enthusiasts this is a feature not a bug.
    - acjohnson55 9y ago
      Yeah -- the fraudsters.
      - Phlarp 9y ago
        And merchants.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    The original quote is about trading/buyin/selling crypto not real securities. Does any service offer fraud protection and/or make it safer than coinbase?
    - bob_theslob646 9y ago
      Yeah, it's called the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Safer than it was but your take also shows that it is just starting, people are still deterred by the risk. As it becomes safer the risk goes down and more enter. It is still the early days of crypto currencies for this reason. The fear you have is real, but it is slowly getting better and with that more will enter. Just like investing in early companies, it is riskier now, but as it becomes safer, those risk takers are rewarded. Funds were lost in mtgox, btc-e, many others and there is fraud abound (pre-SEC times or early), but coinbase and the coins they offer are currently safer than it was. As more players enter it will be safer still.
fpisfun 9y ago
Actually there was circle they were very similar to coinbase, I used them for a while. They decided to get out of Bitcoin for some reason and I have no idea why.
- ethagnawl 9y ago
  Circle still sells BTC, just (generally) not to consumers. It's addressed in _Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots_ #250: http://giantrobots.fm/250 http://giantrobots.fm/250
ehsankia 9y ago
I've run into all sorts of bugs which made the site annoying to use. 1. My bank account has a 5000$ limit and my credit card has a 750$ limit. After spending 1000$ from the bank (which takes a week), I wanted a quick 50$ from my CC, but it said I was already past the 750$ limit. 2. When trying to recover an older account, the recovery keeps asking for my phone number but isn't sending me texts properly. If you say you lost your phone, you can submit id+selfie, but to get to that step, you need your phone?? 3. If you reset Authy, it removes your Coinbase token, and tells you to contact their support. They're very slow as responding, and after a week, I was just told to use my phone number (which again, goes back to #2)...
- pmorici 9y ago
  The limits are different for everyone and they go up as time goes on and you have successful transactions with them. To avoid waiting you can transfer USD into Coinbase ahead of time and then the buy will confirm instantly when you choose to do the transaction.
- timjver 9y ago
  >2. When trying to recover an older account, the recovery keeps asking for my phone number but isn't sending me texts properly. If you say you lost your phone, you can submit id+selfie, but to get to that step, you need your phone?? I did this a week ago. They ask you for your current (= old) phone number and your new phone number, but you don't actually need access to your old phone number. You just need to enter it.
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  I've run into multiple bugs on their website while using firefox... but it'll work fine in chrome. Two I remember: The id+selfie didn't work in firefox. and they had a page that would calculate the max wrong in firefox. Sent an email about both. I don't think they responded to the first one; and on the second, they redesigned their site a bit to delete the page.. then sent me an email asking if I still had that problem (about 1-2 weeks later). I don't think they test very thoroughly... and they definitely don't use firefox.
- rithvikvibhu 9y ago
canoebuilder 9y ago
that crypto currencies are really just starting and there is a very high ceiling Starting at what? What is the value proposition that is actually in play here, for which there is some hard evidence of it's existence, other than a speculative frenzy? It's a bit galling how many people this go 'round are just outright saying "yeah, it's a ponzi, come on guys hop on! there's a high ceiling! hope you get your chair when the music stops!"
- barrkel 9y ago
  If you think that some future economy will run on cryptocurrency (not totally far fetched IMO) and that currency will have network effects (I don't really see this yet, apart from deflation via speculation, which will stop eventually, it's not stable) then there's a possibility of a winner takes all outcome. But it's very easy to doubt any specific currency will be the final winner.
  - canoebuilder 9y ago
    This is what I've always thought, to find a real footing there has to be some economy to which bitcoin/some cryptocurrency is the lingua franca, the closest we've seen in that regard is silk road, et al. and ransomware, if you want to call those economies. But here's the problem with this idea as being some buoy for bitcoin/cryptocurrencies, once an economy of this sort develops with some semblance of structure, that market is going to seek out inefficiencies. First on the chopping block? A massively inefficient distributed currency system. For this reason I think any sustainable use case of a bitcoin like system is necessarily rather niche, and rather 'seedy' or worse, ransomware, etc. But if all the bitcoin dreamers fade away, it becomes much easier to counteract the use of btc-like systems for ransomware extortions and the like.
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    Even in that case the price/market cap is getting absurd. The nominal market cap of Bitcoin is like 1/10th the US money supply (M1) and 1/20th the total gold supply. And people on these threads are still saying they think it has another 100x or more in it!
- 9y ago
ethagnawl 9y ago
Based on my experience* over the past ~week, "robust" is not a word I'd use in the same sentence as "coinbase". *In addition intermittent outages which prevented me from accessing their site, I sent some Satoshi from my local wallet to coinbase (10 days ago at time of writing) in order to unload some; transaction was marked "pending"; they've since sold the coins; customer support has stopped responding to my emails.
- gt_ 9y ago
  I ran into a problem using them, realized their customer support appears to have given up, and decided it was time to get my money out. That was this morning. As of now, the BTC transaction I initialized is reported as “complete” on my Coinbase account, which now has a balance of 0, and the transaction has not even registered on the blockchain. This is certainly not my definition of “robust.”
  - rexf 9y ago
    While coinbase & BTC seems to be doing well, I've anecdotally seen a bunch of people who can't get a response from coinbase support over long periods of time. Doesn't make relying on coinbase seem like a good idea.
    - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
      Other stories: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933360 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985 4 years ago they had a problem with customer service and the situation does not appear to have improved: > When it takes a public outcry on HN for a company to do their job, I no longer deal with such a company. Simple as that. I don't care if you raised $25 million - if you can't treat your users fairly, you deserve neither.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        >> When it takes a public outcry on HN for a company to do their job, I no longer deal with such a company. Simple as that. I don't care if you raised $25 million - if you can't treat your users fairly, you deserve neither. I wonder if that applies to Google too, the most famous company for which you need to get on the HN frontpage to actually reach someone there.
Redoubts 9y ago
> Coinbase makes crypto currencies trading/investing/purchasing as robust and seemingly as safe as possible. 4 Years Ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  Four years ago a user had an issue that took over three days to rectify. Clearly the company is a scam.
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    Now it takes ten days. A 3x improvement!
    - boomboomsubban 9y ago
      Again, according to one user, who is also claiming to be transferring fractions of a penny.
njarboe 9y ago
Coinbase does give one the sense of security and ease of use. It does not seem sketchy, is American based, has KYC procedures, etc. If they lose coins or go under, a lot of "normal" people will lose money. Not sure what regulations might be passed in Congress if that happens, but the cryptocurrency Wild West would likely be over in America at that point.
- drawkbox 9y ago
  Agreed. Maybe one day they will be so big that they are deemed "too big to fail" like the over-extended failed big banks and the bailouts/TARP of the Great Recession.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    Sounds like a justification for seizing it. For safety and security. But the government wouldn't do that, would they?
    - drawkbox 9y ago
      If the government seized funds of Coinbase with how entrenched it is even now, there would be massive legal challenges. Ultimately that might be a good thing in terms of forfeiture reform. Coinbase (US company) is orders of magnitude different than btc-e or mtgox etc.
      - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
        drawkbox 9y ago
        Nothing like that would happen today though as that was more a reaction to the Great Depression and the wealthy hoarding during times where cash was constrained. Also, that was gold so who is to say that couldn't happen to gold today if it can happen to cryptocurrencies, any hoarding would be a target in another depression that bad much like things like offshoring might be or are in some case. Why it won't happen today you can base off the reaction during the Great Recession, we bailed out failing banks with TARP that got us into this mess by over-extending leverage instead of consumers. The FDR order helped the economy and all people at the time over the wealthy. FDR, if he was in charge during the Great Recession, probably would have made new banks and let them fail if that happened under him, a people's president. The SEC was also created during his admin which is arguably the best thing to ever happen to investing in the US, solid markets since Securities Act of 1933 and SEC inception, cryptocurrency will eventually be more closely regulated as it grows.
_wmd 9y ago
Forex trading happens 24/7 the world over
csomar 9y ago
As a heavy bitcoin/crypto trader, Coinbase and Gdax are one of the worst exchanges out there. Speaking strictly from a technical point of view. Not only their Front-End interface (Gdax) suffers from lag probably due to poor engineering but they also made terrible mistakes at the beginning. One of them being a lost deposit. The address generated by the site was wrong and thus the deposit never credited. It took a couple months for support to get on this and refund the lost amount. This happened a couple years ago. So had it happened now I'm not sure if technical support will ever get back. I also failed to contact their technical support about other issues (can't really remember) but there was no way to reach them. They don't have proper support, they just have monkeys that tries to save face on social media. Only. The best exchange so far from a technical perspective is Bitfinex. It is surprising because it is quite shady. But it is a rock solid exchange; and it is magnificently engineered. No wonder it is the top exchange out there. And Finex has handled the recent surge much better than Gdax or any other exchange out there.
- Jommi 9y ago
  Wait you're suggesting one of the legally most robust changes out there (the one doing the most compliance) is actually slower than the shady, non-transparent exchange..?? Wow. Wonder why that might be
  - csomar 9y ago
    This has nothing to do with compliance/legality. It has to do with engineering.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    Because of bitcoin's origins in a largely an-cap community - and the continual anti-Government, pro-capitalist mindset in a significant part of the community as it stands now - there's not actually as much demand as there should be for "legal" exchanges etc. As a result, there's much more competition in the "shady" exchange space, less competition in the "legal" exchange space, and two things result: people occasionally lose a significant chunk of their life savings to shady exchanges, and legal exchanges don't have as much of a drive to be technically brilliant.
zeep 9y ago
In my experience, Coinbase/GDAX becomes unavailable every time the cost of Bitcoin drops significantly in a really short period of time... it happened again this morning a little before 7am... Not sure if they are trying to control the drops or if their servers can't handle the load.
- mv4 9y ago
  I was wondering the same thing about GDAX/Coinbase. I've been seeing "partial" outages both on their portal and their API side. Partial outages are the worst, as they only leave 'some' of the participants unable to act.
- zeep 9y ago
  and here is another big drop now... and GDAX is down again...
module0000 9y ago
For what it's worth, you can expose yourself to BTC in the futures market later this month. That's regulated to the same degree all commodity futures are regulated(which is "a lot"). Your profits(and losses) are guaranteed by the clearinghouse(not the exchange), which mitigates your exposure to another mtgox-ish/btc-e/yadoxi event. In terms of "always on", the futures market is always on. You can trade softs, metals, currencies, bonds - you name it. The leverage available is 200:1, 50 times greater than the SEC's limit on security margins(eg the stock market). This means you can make(and lose) catastrophically larger amounts than you began with. Controlling your risk is no longer done by a broker limiting your leverage, it's done by you and involves methodical discipline. The downside: you are trading against pros with deeper pockets and more experience than you could possibly imagine. You won't be out smarting, out trading, or getting "an edge" on anyone except the other retail players.

pishpash 9y ago

Pretty sure forex markets are 24/7

wslh 9y ago
Not for retail trading and holidays can affect pairs.
- CamelCaseName 9y ago
  Retail trading in Forex markets is miniscule. <4% in 2013. Source: https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1312z.htm https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1312z.htm
drawkbox 9y ago
Yeah I guess currency exchanges / futures have always been 24/7 as there is always an open market somewhere in the world. Crypto currencies are close to that I guess. I wonder if equity markets will one day move to always on, I hope they do. With more investment options such as crypto currencies, I wonder if they will eventually do it to stay competitive to investment cash. Nothing worse than pre-market and after hours shenanigans in equity markets, can't pull that in an always on market.

malloryerik 9y ago

Most foreign exchange and derivatives exchanges are on 23.5 hours a day, except weekends.

ganeshkrishnan 9y ago
Only derivatives and forex. Stock is still office hours and out of regular hours (+-1 hour I think) is reserved for the big boys.
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  Bitcoin is more akin to a Forex or Gold than Stock,
- aaavl2821 9y ago
  Stock futures are 24 hours. I believe the vast majority of equity volume is in stock futures rather than stocks themselves. Institutional investors drive this volume
  - ucha 9y ago
    Your three statements are false.
    - zeusk 9y ago
      On notional value bases, he is probably right but we all know how the derivative guys like to lever up and hide it all under layers of synthetic securities.
    - aaavl2821 9y ago
      was recalling info for stock indices rather than individual stocks. stock index futures are 23 hours: http://www.cmegroup.com/trading-hours.html#equityIndex http://www.cmegroup.com/trading-hours.html#equityIndex stock volume is larger than futures (347B global avg daily volume vs 280 in jan 2016, not sure about now), but futures larger than ETFs (280 vs 88) youll have to convince me that institutional investors dont drive futures volume, cant find data offhand but wont give you benefit of the doubt on that one :)

nikolay 9y ago

"As as safe as possible" - are you out of your mind?!

bob_theslob646 9y ago
Serious, this. There is no recourse for recover in the event of securities fraud.
- Phlarp 9y ago
  For many crypto enthusiasts this is a feature not a bug.
  - acjohnson55 9y ago
    Yeah -- the fraudsters.
    - Phlarp 9y ago
      And merchants.
- paulcole 9y ago
  The original quote is about trading/buyin/selling crypto not real securities. Does any service offer fraud protection and/or make it safer than coinbase?
  - bob_theslob646 9y ago
    Yeah, it's called the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
drawkbox 9y ago
Safer than it was but your take also shows that it is just starting, people are still deterred by the risk. As it becomes safer the risk goes down and more enter. It is still the early days of crypto currencies for this reason. The fear you have is real, but it is slowly getting better and with that more will enter. Just like investing in early companies, it is riskier now, but as it becomes safer, those risk takers are rewarded. Funds were lost in mtgox, btc-e, many others and there is fraud abound (pre-SEC times or early), but coinbase and the coins they offer are currently safer than it was. As more players enter it will be safer still.

fpisfun 9y ago

Actually there was circle they were very similar to coinbase, I used them for a while. They decided to get out of Bitcoin for some reason and I have no idea why.

ethagnawl 9y ago
Circle still sells BTC, just (generally) not to consumers. It's addressed in _Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots_ #250: http://giantrobots.fm/250 http://giantrobots.fm/250

ehsankia 9y ago

I've run into all sorts of bugs which made the site annoying to use. 1. My bank account has a 5000$ limit and my credit card has a 750$ limit. After spending 1000$ from the bank (which takes a week), I wanted a quick 50$ from my CC, but it said I was already past the 750$ limit. 2. When trying to recover an older account, the recovery keeps asking for my phone number but isn't sending me texts properly. If you say you lost your phone, you can submit id+selfie, but to get to that step, you need your phone?? 3. If you reset Authy, it removes your Coinbase token, and tells you to contact their support. They're very slow as responding, and after a week, I was just told to use my phone number (which again, goes back to #2)...

pmorici 9y ago
The limits are different for everyone and they go up as time goes on and you have successful transactions with them. To avoid waiting you can transfer USD into Coinbase ahead of time and then the buy will confirm instantly when you choose to do the transaction.
timjver 9y ago
>2. When trying to recover an older account, the recovery keeps asking for my phone number but isn't sending me texts properly. If you say you lost your phone, you can submit id+selfie, but to get to that step, you need your phone?? I did this a week ago. They ask you for your current (= old) phone number and your new phone number, but you don't actually need access to your old phone number. You just need to enter it.
rgbrenner 9y ago
I've run into multiple bugs on their website while using firefox... but it'll work fine in chrome. Two I remember: The id+selfie didn't work in firefox. and they had a page that would calculate the max wrong in firefox. Sent an email about both. I don't think they responded to the first one; and on the second, they redesigned their site a bit to delete the page.. then sent me an email asking if I still had that problem (about 1-2 weeks later). I don't think they test very thoroughly... and they definitely don't use firefox.
rithvikvibhu 9y ago

canoebuilder 9y ago

that crypto currencies are really just starting and there is a very high ceiling Starting at what? What is the value proposition that is actually in play here, for which there is some hard evidence of it's existence, other than a speculative frenzy? It's a bit galling how many people this go 'round are just outright saying "yeah, it's a ponzi, come on guys hop on! there's a high ceiling! hope you get your chair when the music stops!"

barrkel 9y ago
If you think that some future economy will run on cryptocurrency (not totally far fetched IMO) and that currency will have network effects (I don't really see this yet, apart from deflation via speculation, which will stop eventually, it's not stable) then there's a possibility of a winner takes all outcome. But it's very easy to doubt any specific currency will be the final winner.
- canoebuilder 9y ago
  This is what I've always thought, to find a real footing there has to be some economy to which bitcoin/some cryptocurrency is the lingua franca, the closest we've seen in that regard is silk road, et al. and ransomware, if you want to call those economies. But here's the problem with this idea as being some buoy for bitcoin/cryptocurrencies, once an economy of this sort develops with some semblance of structure, that market is going to seek out inefficiencies. First on the chopping block? A massively inefficient distributed currency system. For this reason I think any sustainable use case of a bitcoin like system is necessarily rather niche, and rather 'seedy' or worse, ransomware, etc. But if all the bitcoin dreamers fade away, it becomes much easier to counteract the use of btc-like systems for ransomware extortions and the like.
- saalweachter 9y ago
  Even in that case the price/market cap is getting absurd. The nominal market cap of Bitcoin is like 1/10th the US money supply (M1) and 1/20th the total gold supply. And people on these threads are still saying they think it has another 100x or more in it!
9y ago

ethagnawl 9y ago

Based on my experience* over the past ~week, "robust" is not a word I'd use in the same sentence as "coinbase". *In addition intermittent outages which prevented me from accessing their site, I sent some Satoshi from my local wallet to coinbase (10 days ago at time of writing) in order to unload some; transaction was marked "pending"; they've since sold the coins; customer support has stopped responding to my emails.

gt_ 9y ago
I ran into a problem using them, realized their customer support appears to have given up, and decided it was time to get my money out. That was this morning. As of now, the BTC transaction I initialized is reported as “complete” on my Coinbase account, which now has a balance of 0, and the transaction has not even registered on the blockchain. This is certainly not my definition of “robust.”
- rexf 9y ago
  While coinbase & BTC seems to be doing well, I've anecdotally seen a bunch of people who can't get a response from coinbase support over long periods of time. Doesn't make relying on coinbase seem like a good idea.
  - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
    Other stories: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6933360 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985 4 years ago they had a problem with customer service and the situation does not appear to have improved: > When it takes a public outcry on HN for a company to do their job, I no longer deal with such a company. Simple as that. I don't care if you raised $25 million - if you can't treat your users fairly, you deserve neither.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      >> When it takes a public outcry on HN for a company to do their job, I no longer deal with such a company. Simple as that. I don't care if you raised $25 million - if you can't treat your users fairly, you deserve neither. I wonder if that applies to Google too, the most famous company for which you need to get on the HN frontpage to actually reach someone there.

Redoubts 9y ago

> Coinbase makes crypto currencies trading/investing/purchasing as robust and seemingly as safe as possible. 4 Years Ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705

boomboomsubban 9y ago
Four years ago a user had an issue that took over three days to rectify. Clearly the company is a scam.
- tedunangst 9y ago
  Now it takes ten days. A 3x improvement!
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    Again, according to one user, who is also claiming to be transferring fractions of a penny.

njarboe 9y ago

Coinbase does give one the sense of security and ease of use. It does not seem sketchy, is American based, has KYC procedures, etc. If they lose coins or go under, a lot of "normal" people will lose money. Not sure what regulations might be passed in Congress if that happens, but the cryptocurrency Wild West would likely be over in America at that point.

drawkbox 9y ago
Agreed. Maybe one day they will be so big that they are deemed "too big to fail" like the over-extended failed big banks and the bailouts/TARP of the Great Recession.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  Sounds like a justification for seizing it. For safety and security. But the government wouldn't do that, would they?
  - drawkbox 9y ago
    If the government seized funds of Coinbase with how entrenched it is even now, there would be massive legal challenges. Ultimately that might be a good thing in terms of forfeiture reform. Coinbase (US company) is orders of magnitude different than btc-e or mtgox etc.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
      - drawkbox 9y ago
        Nothing like that would happen today though as that was more a reaction to the Great Depression and the wealthy hoarding during times where cash was constrained. Also, that was gold so who is to say that couldn't happen to gold today if it can happen to cryptocurrencies, any hoarding would be a target in another depression that bad much like things like offshoring might be or are in some case. Why it won't happen today you can base off the reaction during the Great Recession, we bailed out failing banks with TARP that got us into this mess by over-extending leverage instead of consumers. The FDR order helped the economy and all people at the time over the wealthy. FDR, if he was in charge during the Great Recession, probably would have made new banks and let them fail if that happened under him, a people's president. The SEC was also created during his admin which is arguably the best thing to ever happen to investing in the US, solid markets since Securities Act of 1933 and SEC inception, cryptocurrency will eventually be more closely regulated as it grows.

_wmd 9y ago

Forex trading happens 24/7 the world over

csomar 9y ago

As a heavy bitcoin/crypto trader, Coinbase and Gdax are one of the worst exchanges out there. Speaking strictly from a technical point of view. Not only their Front-End interface (Gdax) suffers from lag probably due to poor engineering but they also made terrible mistakes at the beginning. One of them being a lost deposit. The address generated by the site was wrong and thus the deposit never credited. It took a couple months for support to get on this and refund the lost amount. This happened a couple years ago. So had it happened now I'm not sure if technical support will ever get back. I also failed to contact their technical support about other issues (can't really remember) but there was no way to reach them. They don't have proper support, they just have monkeys that tries to save face on social media. Only. The best exchange so far from a technical perspective is Bitfinex. It is surprising because it is quite shady. But it is a rock solid exchange; and it is magnificently engineered. No wonder it is the top exchange out there. And Finex has handled the recent surge much better than Gdax or any other exchange out there.

Jommi 9y ago
Wait you're suggesting one of the legally most robust changes out there (the one doing the most compliance) is actually slower than the shady, non-transparent exchange..?? Wow. Wonder why that might be
- csomar 9y ago
  This has nothing to do with compliance/legality. It has to do with engineering.
- vertex-four 9y ago
  Because of bitcoin's origins in a largely an-cap community - and the continual anti-Government, pro-capitalist mindset in a significant part of the community as it stands now - there's not actually as much demand as there should be for "legal" exchanges etc. As a result, there's much more competition in the "shady" exchange space, less competition in the "legal" exchange space, and two things result: people occasionally lose a significant chunk of their life savings to shady exchanges, and legal exchanges don't have as much of a drive to be technically brilliant.

zeep 9y ago

In my experience, Coinbase/GDAX becomes unavailable every time the cost of Bitcoin drops significantly in a really short period of time... it happened again this morning a little before 7am... Not sure if they are trying to control the drops or if their servers can't handle the load.

mv4 9y ago
I was wondering the same thing about GDAX/Coinbase. I've been seeing "partial" outages both on their portal and their API side. Partial outages are the worst, as they only leave 'some' of the participants unable to act.
zeep 9y ago
and here is another big drop now... and GDAX is down again...

module0000 9y ago

For what it's worth, you can expose yourself to BTC in the futures market later this month. That's regulated to the same degree all commodity futures are regulated(which is "a lot"). Your profits(and losses) are guaranteed by the clearinghouse(not the exchange), which mitigates your exposure to another mtgox-ish/btc-e/yadoxi event. In terms of "always on", the futures market is always on. You can trade softs, metals, currencies, bonds - you name it. The leverage available is 200:1, 50 times greater than the SEC's limit on security margins(eg the stock market). This means you can make(and lose) catastrophically larger amounts than you began with. Controlling your risk is no longer done by a broker limiting your leverage, it's done by you and involves methodical discipline. The downside: you are trading against pros with deeper pockets and more experience than you could possibly imagine. You won't be out smarting, out trading, or getting "an edge" on anyone except the other retail players.