9 ms·

Coinbase Crosses 650,000 Users

121 points by danielpal 13y ago

richardlblair 13y ago
Congrats. Now, deal with the guy who gave you 35k and in return you gave him _nothing_. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705
- blhack 13y ago
  They did. Before you even posted this.
  - cheshire137 13y ago
    Really? Last I saw, they just said they would make it right. We haven't seen confirmation from the original customer saying it was dealt with. Considering all he had gotten from them up to the point of posting on Hacker News was more reassurances that the situation would be fixed, I'm not reassured that it's fixed yet just because there was yet another reassurance given.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    Their "dealing" with it was "oops, we rebooted a server and forgot to make sure transactions were run, here's $50 and enjoy your delayed trade". After screwing up that badly they should have cancelled the order. Instead, they delivered coins paid for at $800+ at today's prices (~$500). I would be surprised, if BTC had jumped to $5000, if they'd have honored the $800 buy price. The $50 credit is just inane, too. It's more of an insult to offer $50 than to offer no $ and a good apology. I'm not sure how they came to that decision. Given their funding, they should have immediately taken full responsibility (let's be clear: a financial company's transactions didn't run cause they rebooted something...) and then offered to complete at the original price, or cancel the transaction - truly make the buyer whole. It'd be totally fine for them to do so, because if they fix their stuff, they won't need to worry about "jobs not running". So in this case, even giving the guy a 10% bonus would engender goodwill, as well as show the world they are serious about handling transactions. I'll resist any snide remarks about Coinbase using MongoDB. Edit: It seems after further consideration, they decided to give him today's price since it was their mistake.
- Ensorceled 13y ago
  Given that other posting, I was thinking of a completely different meaning for "crosses 650,000 users" ...
slg 13y ago
Congrats to them, but could a graph be more disingenuous than the one used there that shows Bitcoin prices?
- samolang 13y ago
  At least it's labeled that the BTC-USD price is the daily average for the month.
  - fuddle 13y ago
    Explains the timing of the blog post, the graph would look very different next month.
TheBiv 13y ago
So the piece about more women was a little bit weird. It appears that as the broader market (made up of ~50% women) begins to use your product, you experience your demographic skew towards the broader markets' average demographic. Breathtaking.
- jeremyrwelch 13y ago
  I think they are trying to illustrate a move towards more mass-market appeal and reach. Depending on which data source you look at, females account for anywhere from 70 to 90+% of consumer purchase decisions in the US. If Coinbase wants to move from being the cryptocurrency enthusiast and tech speculator's toy to actually seeing significant product/service spend in Bitcoins with merchants, increasing their female userbase could definitely help.
chollida1 13y ago
Note the title is a bit misleading. They say 650,000 users but the next sentence they state > "we crossed more than 650,000 consumer Bitcoin wallets" I'm not familiar with their service but I have 20 or so wallets that I've accumulated over the past 20 months, so I'm guessing its entirely possible for a single user to have multiple wallets, infact its so common that I'd label it the norm. I wonder what percentage of their users, and wallets hold any bitcoins?
- modeless 13y ago
  You have 20 Coinbase wallets? Unlike regular bitcoin wallets, there's no reason to have more than one Coinbase wallet. A Coinbase wallet can have an unlimited number of Bitcoin addresses and it is generally tied to a real name with a bank account and/or credit card for purchasing and selling bitcoins.
  - loceng 13y ago
    Probably to avoid people associating ownership to one person as easily?
    - modeless 13y ago
      If you're worried about the association of your wallet with your identity, then almost all of Coinbase's services are off limits to you. There would be little reason to create a Coinbase account.
    - nwh 13y ago
      Coinbase use things like font fingerprinting to identify their users. Having multiple accounts is useless.
  - OafTobark 13y ago
    You don't really have a choice in some cases. Coinbase creates new wallets for referrals and maybe other transactions rather than use the existing wallet
will_brown 13y ago
Could someone visit coinbase's career page and confirm that the Apply buttons are not working. https://coinbase.com/careers https://coinbase.com/careers Coinbase has one of the more interesting legal positions I have come across in a long time (registration/licensing/compliance work) and I know I will be kicking myself a year from now if I did not make every effort.
- superprime 13y ago
  They work, but they are "mailto:" links.
cjensen 13y ago
Speaking as someone who knows a lot about economics, I think PT Barnum put it best...[1] Economics is very clear in predicting how this will end up. Bitcoins have no intrinsic value and therefore the long-term price will be precisely zero. Each generation has its tulips [2]; each generation claims that the persistence in tulip price means that there is permanent intrinsic value; each generation is disappointed [3]. The only thing interesting about bitcoins is that this provides an opportunity to watch a bubble: observe the justifications people make, observe how nay-sayers appear to be wrong, and watch the progression. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_m... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions...
- d23 13y ago
  > Bitcoins have no intrinsic value Neither does gold, paper money, or diamonds. And yet they've remained valuable for a long time. What gives?
  - cjensen 13y ago
    Gold and Diamonds have obvious intrinsic value. Paper money does too, but it's harder to demonstrate.
    - pdeuchler 13y ago
      In all fairness the intrinsic value of Gold and Diamonds has only come about in the past 200-300 years... just about when, globally, we started seriously moving towards a purely fiat system.
      - yapcguy 13y ago
        Gold has been used as a store of value for thousands of years around the world.
znowi 13y ago
3.2% of seniors over 65 years old. I hope to be as engaged with innovation and have an early adopter spirit when I'm that old :)
konaseer 13y ago
i too signed up in coinbase end of november ,carried away by the hype( before the crash that is)! but thankfully didnt buy any BTC. there may be others like me.
pg 13y ago
Incidentally, Coinbase's graph has an almost misleadingly modest aspect ratio. If you want to compare their growth to other growth graphs you've seen, compress it by at least half horizontally.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- markkat 13y ago
  pg, if a reasonably intelligent person asked you to describe bitcoin, how would you do it? -if you'd humor me I ask, because IMO much of the debate about bitcoin consists of people conflating and abusing definitions and talking past each other. As you are obviously interested in it, I wonder what you see, and perhaps what interests you most about it.
  - pg 13y ago
    I would not be the one to ask. I don't understand the details of the protocol. All I could describe is the general idea of a cryptocurrency.
    - markkat 13y ago
      Ok. Thanks for the response. In some sense I suppose that actually answers my question.
minimax 13y ago
Do you actually have to wire up a bank account in order to create a coinbase account? How many coinbase accounts actually have any money in them?
- smtddr 13y ago
  No money is actually in the coinbase account. It only stores Bitcoin. If you sell bitcoin, the USD balance will immediate be ACH'ed directly to the bank info you have set up.[1] Otherwise, I guess you won't be able to use the sell feature(?). BTC-e.com is different; you can sell all your coins and have a USD balance[2]. You can create a Coinbase account without banking info. But after you've created it, I'm not sure what good it would be to you. I guess you could just use it to manage your bitcoins and have one place to check. But the real service coinbase provides is transforming BTC to USD and vice-versa. If you're not going to enter your banking info to use that feature, you might as well generate a pub/priv key at bitaddress.org and just make sure you don't lose the private key. 1. http://i.imgur.com/LMowl3F.png http://i.imgur.com/LMowl3F.png 2. http://i.imgur.com/3K1JPgR.png http://i.imgur.com/3K1JPgR.png
reillyse 13y ago
Kudos for a stunningly misleading graph. The manipulation of numbers is impressive. Whats wrong with it? Bitcoin to USD has dropped by 50% in the last few days. By taking a "monthly average" and graphing that they've been able to hide this discrepancy. However there is no legitimate reason to graph the "monthly average" instead of just the price. It's a line graph so it can deal with a range of numbers quite well. In fact the graph has a total of 6 data points for the BTC to USD line, the whiff of BS is strong on this one.
ziyan 13y ago
Can you please send a search and rescue for your support team? It has been days and there has been no sign of of them any where.

121 points by danielpal 13y ago

Congrats. Now, deal with the guy who gave you 35k and in return you gave him _nothing_. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929705

blhack 13y ago
They did. Before you even posted this.
- cheshire137 13y ago
  Really? Last I saw, they just said they would make it right. We haven't seen confirmation from the original customer saying it was dealt with. Considering all he had gotten from them up to the point of posting on Hacker News was more reassurances that the situation would be fixed, I'm not reassured that it's fixed yet just because there was yet another reassurance given.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Their "dealing" with it was "oops, we rebooted a server and forgot to make sure transactions were run, here's $50 and enjoy your delayed trade". After screwing up that badly they should have cancelled the order. Instead, they delivered coins paid for at $800+ at today's prices (~$500). I would be surprised, if BTC had jumped to $5000, if they'd have honored the $800 buy price. The $50 credit is just inane, too. It's more of an insult to offer $50 than to offer no $ and a good apology. I'm not sure how they came to that decision. Given their funding, they should have immediately taken full responsibility (let's be clear: a financial company's transactions didn't run cause they rebooted something...) and then offered to complete at the original price, or cancel the transaction - truly make the buyer whole. It'd be totally fine for them to do so, because if they fix their stuff, they won't need to worry about "jobs not running". So in this case, even giving the guy a 10% bonus would engender goodwill, as well as show the world they are serious about handling transactions. I'll resist any snide remarks about Coinbase using MongoDB. Edit: It seems after further consideration, they decided to give him today's price since it was their mistake.
Ensorceled 13y ago
Given that other posting, I was thinking of a completely different meaning for "crosses 650,000 users" ...

slg 13y ago

Congrats to them, but could a graph be more disingenuous than the one used there that shows Bitcoin prices?

samolang 13y ago
At least it's labeled that the BTC-USD price is the daily average for the month.
- fuddle 13y ago
  Explains the timing of the blog post, the graph would look very different next month.

TheBiv 13y ago

So the piece about more women was a little bit weird. It appears that as the broader market (made up of ~50% women) begins to use your product, you experience your demographic skew towards the broader markets' average demographic. Breathtaking.

jeremyrwelch 13y ago
I think they are trying to illustrate a move towards more mass-market appeal and reach. Depending on which data source you look at, females account for anywhere from 70 to 90+% of consumer purchase decisions in the US. If Coinbase wants to move from being the cryptocurrency enthusiast and tech speculator's toy to actually seeing significant product/service spend in Bitcoins with merchants, increasing their female userbase could definitely help.

chollida1 13y ago

Note the title is a bit misleading. They say 650,000 users but the next sentence they state > "we crossed more than 650,000 consumer Bitcoin wallets" I'm not familiar with their service but I have 20 or so wallets that I've accumulated over the past 20 months, so I'm guessing its entirely possible for a single user to have multiple wallets, infact its so common that I'd label it the norm. I wonder what percentage of their users, and wallets hold any bitcoins?

modeless 13y ago
You have 20 Coinbase wallets? Unlike regular bitcoin wallets, there's no reason to have more than one Coinbase wallet. A Coinbase wallet can have an unlimited number of Bitcoin addresses and it is generally tied to a real name with a bank account and/or credit card for purchasing and selling bitcoins.
- loceng 13y ago
  Probably to avoid people associating ownership to one person as easily?
  - modeless 13y ago
    If you're worried about the association of your wallet with your identity, then almost all of Coinbase's services are off limits to you. There would be little reason to create a Coinbase account.
  - nwh 13y ago
    Coinbase use things like font fingerprinting to identify their users. Having multiple accounts is useless.
- OafTobark 13y ago
  You don't really have a choice in some cases. Coinbase creates new wallets for referrals and maybe other transactions rather than use the existing wallet

will_brown 13y ago

Could someone visit coinbase's career page and confirm that the Apply buttons are not working. https://coinbase.com/careers https://coinbase.com/careers Coinbase has one of the more interesting legal positions I have come across in a long time (registration/licensing/compliance work) and I know I will be kicking myself a year from now if I did not make every effort.

superprime 13y ago
They work, but they are "mailto:" links.

cjensen 13y ago

Speaking as someone who knows a lot about economics, I think PT Barnum put it best...[1] Economics is very clear in predicting how this will end up. Bitcoins have no intrinsic value and therefore the long-term price will be precisely zero. Each generation has its tulips [2]; each generation claims that the persistence in tulip price means that there is permanent intrinsic value; each generation is disappointed [3]. The only thing interesting about bitcoins is that this provides an opportunity to watch a bubble: observe the justifications people make, observe how nay-sayers appear to be wrong, and watch the progression. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_m... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions...

d23 13y ago
> Bitcoins have no intrinsic value Neither does gold, paper money, or diamonds. And yet they've remained valuable for a long time. What gives?
- cjensen 13y ago
  Gold and Diamonds have obvious intrinsic value. Paper money does too, but it's harder to demonstrate.
  - pdeuchler 13y ago
    In all fairness the intrinsic value of Gold and Diamonds has only come about in the past 200-300 years... just about when, globally, we started seriously moving towards a purely fiat system.
    - yapcguy 13y ago
      Gold has been used as a store of value for thousands of years around the world.

znowi 13y ago

3.2% of seniors over 65 years old. I hope to be as engaged with innovation and have an early adopter spirit when I'm that old :)

konaseer 13y ago

i too signed up in coinbase end of november ,carried away by the hype( before the crash that is)! but thankfully didnt buy any BTC. there may be others like me.

pg 13y ago

Incidentally, Coinbase's graph has an almost misleadingly modest aspect ratio. If you want to compare their growth to other growth graphs you've seen, compress it by at least half horizontally.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
markkat 13y ago
pg, if a reasonably intelligent person asked you to describe bitcoin, how would you do it? -if you'd humor me I ask, because IMO much of the debate about bitcoin consists of people conflating and abusing definitions and talking past each other. As you are obviously interested in it, I wonder what you see, and perhaps what interests you most about it.
- pg 13y ago
  I would not be the one to ask. I don't understand the details of the protocol. All I could describe is the general idea of a cryptocurrency.
  - markkat 13y ago
    Ok. Thanks for the response. In some sense I suppose that actually answers my question.

minimax 13y ago

Do you actually have to wire up a bank account in order to create a coinbase account? How many coinbase accounts actually have any money in them?

smtddr 13y ago
No money is actually in the coinbase account. It only stores Bitcoin. If you sell bitcoin, the USD balance will immediate be ACH'ed directly to the bank info you have set up.[1] Otherwise, I guess you won't be able to use the sell feature(?). BTC-e.com is different; you can sell all your coins and have a USD balance[2]. You can create a Coinbase account without banking info. But after you've created it, I'm not sure what good it would be to you. I guess you could just use it to manage your bitcoins and have one place to check. But the real service coinbase provides is transforming BTC to USD and vice-versa. If you're not going to enter your banking info to use that feature, you might as well generate a pub/priv key at bitaddress.org and just make sure you don't lose the private key. 1. http://i.imgur.com/LMowl3F.png http://i.imgur.com/LMowl3F.png 2. http://i.imgur.com/3K1JPgR.png http://i.imgur.com/3K1JPgR.png

reillyse 13y ago

Kudos for a stunningly misleading graph. The manipulation of numbers is impressive. Whats wrong with it? Bitcoin to USD has dropped by 50% in the last few days. By taking a "monthly average" and graphing that they've been able to hide this discrepancy. However there is no legitimate reason to graph the "monthly average" instead of just the price. It's a line graph so it can deal with a range of numbers quite well. In fact the graph has a total of 6 data points for the BTC to USD line, the whiff of BS is strong on this one.

ziyan 13y ago

Can you please send a search and rescue for your support team? It has been days and there has been no sign of of them any where.