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Just my opinion but I think the conspiracy theories are not realistic. Coinbase is essentially a startup that is dealing with monstrous traffic. They are still

Just my opinion but I think the conspiracy theories are not realistic. Coinbase is essentially a startup that is dealing with monstrous traffic. They are still scaling their infrastructure and when the price starts moving quickly everyone logs in to either get in on the action or take a look. This cranks the traffic up and the servers cant handle it. I am not excusing their behavior as they need to be able to handle it, especially when their server status affects the bank accounts of real people. But I feel that it is understandable with out condoning it. The simplest explanation is likely correct in this case. I don't think many of us could have predicted the volume and interest in BTC a year ago and neither did Coinbase's purchasing and infrastructure teams.

DougWebb 9y ago
"We want to run an exchange that the entire world will use for this crypto-currency that's become very popular and has increased in price 1000% since it became widely known." I think I would have predicted that they'd need to run at a very large scale, and be able to handle massive spikes. Whether or not I could have convinced them to make the investment is another story.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  The problem is what happens if that growth stops? What happens if bitcoin tanks right after you hired 300 new customer service reps and tripled your server hardware? It's a gamble no matter what, but moving too quickly or moving too slowly results in the company going under. In that case, I think straddling the line of "overwhelmed when there is a big spike" is a good spot to be in all things consitered.
  - iopq 9y ago
    You have layoffs and turn servers off. This isn't rocket surgery. They're skimming a ton of money off these trades every day, down time is a loss.
    - wonderwonder 9y ago
      The optics on "servers are down due to a massive spike in volume" are much better than "Coinbase had another round of layoffs today..." Currently they are signing people up at a dramatic rate despite their server issues. If they start laying people off because they spun up to fast they could start a panic that would kill them. They have to weigh all of this in when deciding on an infrastructure spend. I would also like to think from a purely personal level that they don't want to hire and fire people like that as these are real people with real families involved.
LMYahooTFY 9y ago
I would guess they're also likely the first stop for new entrants, as they're (or were?) the only US based exchange, easiest to use, and insured by FDIC/Lloyd's. Coinbase has been my recommendation to anyone new to the scene who wants to buy/use bitcoin. And obviously once finished, move all funds to paper wallet.
- flatfilefan 9y ago
  Which paper wallet software do you suggest?
gamblor956 9y ago
Coinbase goes through this charade every time this happens with a major digital currency. It wasn't a legitimate excuse the first time, and it's not an excuse the 7th time. Scaling is a solved problem. You have AWS, Google Cloud, and MS Azure to choose from with financial institution/HIPAA-level offerings.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- haburka 9y ago
  Lol scaling is not a solved problem. Garbage collection is a solved problem. Scaling is always a challenge.
  - appdrag 9y ago
    Scaling is by design, seems it was not designed to scale (serverless architecture and db)
    - nikanj 9y ago
      Alas, those silver bullets don’t work either. Scaling still remains a multi-faceted, complex problem with a lot of variables.
- nimchimpsky 9y ago
  Have you ever worked in any job anywhere? The popularity of their site is I assume proportional to Bitcoin price. The number of users must have exploded, with no warning.
- uncle_bob 9y ago
  Bitcoin doesn't scale with "The Cloud". If anyone can get the private key, they have the money... sending it off to any other provider is going to end badly. Sure any other company doesn't care if "The Cloud" leaks.. it's just the customers problem, cause it's their data... However Bitcoin leaks, it's the companies money, so it's now again their problem.
nawitus 9y ago
> They are still scaling their infrastructure and when the price starts moving quickly everyone logs in to either get in on the action or take a look. Are they not using cloud, which should enable easy scaling? Or is their architecture not designed for good scaling?
- igorgue 9y ago
  You're not a programmer, right? Cloud solves everything guys!!! Yes buy more Cloud now that's 10% down in the exchanges lol...
- EnFinlay 9y ago
  The cloud enables easier scaling, it's not a silver bullet. No matter what, scaling plans have a region where they break down, so it doesn't imply they aren't designed for good scaling.
- ewjordan 9y ago
  No architecture scales infinitely, you merely shift at each step what the next bottleneck will be. Even with small scale sites you'll see this: first, you need to move from everything on one server to a load balancer plus app servers talking to a single database. Then you need to share your database. Then you need to move to multiple load balancers. Then so on and so forth, depending on the specifics of your service, mixed in with various rounds of local optimization at the application level that buy you just a little more time before having to ship another architectural change. Most distributed systems don't really scale ass you add nodes beyond a factor of 10 to 100. If they did, you wouldn't need to hire super expensive people to handle those systems.
chickenfries 9y ago
Is it really that much traffic compared to your typical consumer-facing start up? There can't be that many people buying BTC compared to the number of people that say, Stripe or Whatsapp handled in their early days...
- pishpash 9y ago
  Coinbase probably deals with lots of bot trading. Most consumer-facing startups deal with human-scale behavior, not bot-scale.
  - chickenfries 9y ago
    Ah that's good point, they probably generate a lot of traffic and could increase rapidly while the number of users remains somewhat small.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  I don't know about Stripe or Whatsapp, but I know coinbase has had an average of 30,000 new users a day for a while, with spikes of over 100,000 new signups in a single day around thanksgiving. It's absolutely bonkers amounts of growth! Edit: more concrete numbers: In January of 2016 they had around 2.6 million users. On November 29th they announced they had over 13 million users.
  - njarboe 9y ago
    Jan 2016 to now is 23 months. Still big but half as much.
  - chickenfries 9y ago
    Whatsapp famously had ~450 million users when they were acquired by Facebook. I assume that the average user sent quite a few texts, some pictures, occasional video... they also supported voice calls... I don't know how much computing power is actually needed when you're just buying BTC. When I used Coinbase recently to take a small BTC position, I only made maybe 4 transactions in total. Is this really a lot to handle?
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
I've used Coinbase on and off for a while. The service always felt exactly as you describe it: startup busting their collective ass to keep up with demand. Given the recent increase in news about cryptocurrency I've expected "technical difficulties" with Coinbase. Heck, most mining pools are sweating bullets right now. Hypergrowth = hyperpains.
- pertsix 9y ago
  missed opportunity to say: hypergains = hyperpains
  - j4ship 9y ago
    no hyperpains no hypergains
    - karljtaylor 9y ago
      hyperpains are just hyperweaknesses leaving your body.
      - arkona2 9y ago
        Hi reddit!
simonsarris 9y ago
Slapdash startup-ism in an exchange for a Brave New Currency is just as scary as a conspiracy. It may be more scary. At least with the Cabal theories you know someone knows what's going on. You might even have someone to blame/jail at the end of the tunnel!
- woah 9y ago
  You really seem to be wringing your hands pretty hard about an overloaded NGINX instance. Wouldn't a conspiracy that was stealing everyone's money be a lot worse?
  - simonsarris 9y ago
    No I'm saying that any reply approximating "its fine guys, they're new to this and won't anticipate everything" is disquieting when lots of coin is on the line.

DougWebb 9y ago

"We want to run an exchange that the entire world will use for this crypto-currency that's become very popular and has increased in price 1000% since it became widely known." I think I would have predicted that they'd need to run at a very large scale, and be able to handle massive spikes. Whether or not I could have convinced them to make the investment is another story.

Klathmon 9y ago
The problem is what happens if that growth stops? What happens if bitcoin tanks right after you hired 300 new customer service reps and tripled your server hardware? It's a gamble no matter what, but moving too quickly or moving too slowly results in the company going under. In that case, I think straddling the line of "overwhelmed when there is a big spike" is a good spot to be in all things consitered.
- iopq 9y ago
  You have layoffs and turn servers off. This isn't rocket surgery. They're skimming a ton of money off these trades every day, down time is a loss.
  - wonderwonder 9y ago
    The optics on "servers are down due to a massive spike in volume" are much better than "Coinbase had another round of layoffs today..." Currently they are signing people up at a dramatic rate despite their server issues. If they start laying people off because they spun up to fast they could start a panic that would kill them. They have to weigh all of this in when deciding on an infrastructure spend. I would also like to think from a purely personal level that they don't want to hire and fire people like that as these are real people with real families involved.

LMYahooTFY 9y ago

I would guess they're also likely the first stop for new entrants, as they're (or were?) the only US based exchange, easiest to use, and insured by FDIC/Lloyd's. Coinbase has been my recommendation to anyone new to the scene who wants to buy/use bitcoin. And obviously once finished, move all funds to paper wallet.

flatfilefan 9y ago
Which paper wallet software do you suggest?

gamblor956 9y ago

Coinbase goes through this charade every time this happens with a major digital currency. It wasn't a legitimate excuse the first time, and it's not an excuse the 7th time. Scaling is a solved problem. You have AWS, Google Cloud, and MS Azure to choose from with financial institution/HIPAA-level offerings.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
haburka 9y ago
Lol scaling is not a solved problem. Garbage collection is a solved problem. Scaling is always a challenge.
- appdrag 9y ago
  Scaling is by design, seems it was not designed to scale (serverless architecture and db)
  - nikanj 9y ago
    Alas, those silver bullets don’t work either. Scaling still remains a multi-faceted, complex problem with a lot of variables.
nimchimpsky 9y ago
Have you ever worked in any job anywhere? The popularity of their site is I assume proportional to Bitcoin price. The number of users must have exploded, with no warning.
uncle_bob 9y ago
Bitcoin doesn't scale with "The Cloud". If anyone can get the private key, they have the money... sending it off to any other provider is going to end badly. Sure any other company doesn't care if "The Cloud" leaks.. it's just the customers problem, cause it's their data... However Bitcoin leaks, it's the companies money, so it's now again their problem.

nawitus 9y ago

> They are still scaling their infrastructure and when the price starts moving quickly everyone logs in to either get in on the action or take a look. Are they not using cloud, which should enable easy scaling? Or is their architecture not designed for good scaling?

igorgue 9y ago
You're not a programmer, right? Cloud solves everything guys!!! Yes buy more Cloud now that's 10% down in the exchanges lol...
EnFinlay 9y ago
The cloud enables easier scaling, it's not a silver bullet. No matter what, scaling plans have a region where they break down, so it doesn't imply they aren't designed for good scaling.
ewjordan 9y ago
No architecture scales infinitely, you merely shift at each step what the next bottleneck will be. Even with small scale sites you'll see this: first, you need to move from everything on one server to a load balancer plus app servers talking to a single database. Then you need to share your database. Then you need to move to multiple load balancers. Then so on and so forth, depending on the specifics of your service, mixed in with various rounds of local optimization at the application level that buy you just a little more time before having to ship another architectural change. Most distributed systems don't really scale ass you add nodes beyond a factor of 10 to 100. If they did, you wouldn't need to hire super expensive people to handle those systems.

chickenfries 9y ago

Is it really that much traffic compared to your typical consumer-facing start up? There can't be that many people buying BTC compared to the number of people that say, Stripe or Whatsapp handled in their early days...

pishpash 9y ago
Coinbase probably deals with lots of bot trading. Most consumer-facing startups deal with human-scale behavior, not bot-scale.
- chickenfries 9y ago
  Ah that's good point, they probably generate a lot of traffic and could increase rapidly while the number of users remains somewhat small.
Klathmon 9y ago
I don't know about Stripe or Whatsapp, but I know coinbase has had an average of 30,000 new users a day for a while, with spikes of over 100,000 new signups in a single day around thanksgiving. It's absolutely bonkers amounts of growth! Edit: more concrete numbers: In January of 2016 they had around 2.6 million users. On November 29th they announced they had over 13 million users.
- njarboe 9y ago
  Jan 2016 to now is 23 months. Still big but half as much.
- chickenfries 9y ago
  Whatsapp famously had ~450 million users when they were acquired by Facebook. I assume that the average user sent quite a few texts, some pictures, occasional video... they also supported voice calls... I don't know how much computing power is actually needed when you're just buying BTC. When I used Coinbase recently to take a small BTC position, I only made maybe 4 transactions in total. Is this really a lot to handle?

Florin_Andrei 9y ago

I've used Coinbase on and off for a while. The service always felt exactly as you describe it: startup busting their collective ass to keep up with demand. Given the recent increase in news about cryptocurrency I've expected "technical difficulties" with Coinbase. Heck, most mining pools are sweating bullets right now. Hypergrowth = hyperpains.

pertsix 9y ago
missed opportunity to say: hypergains = hyperpains
- j4ship 9y ago
  no hyperpains no hypergains
  - karljtaylor 9y ago
    hyperpains are just hyperweaknesses leaving your body.
    - arkona2 9y ago
      Hi reddit!

simonsarris 9y ago

Slapdash startup-ism in an exchange for a Brave New Currency is just as scary as a conspiracy. It may be more scary. At least with the Cabal theories you know someone knows what's going on. You might even have someone to blame/jail at the end of the tunnel!

woah 9y ago
You really seem to be wringing your hands pretty hard about an overloaded NGINX instance. Wouldn't a conspiracy that was stealing everyone's money be a lot worse?
- simonsarris 9y ago
  No I'm saying that any reply approximating "its fine guys, they're new to this and won't anticipate everything" is disquieting when lots of coin is on the line.