
Please invest responsibly – an important message from the Coinbase team - mgdo
https://blog.coinbase.com/please-invest-responsibly-an-important-message-from-the-coinbase-team-bf7f13a4b0b1
======
sillysaurus3
By the way, you really think Coinbase's BTC is insured even after the massive
gains in BTC's price?

What do you think will happen if Coinbase's cold storage gets emptied?

If you're storing your coins on Coinbase, you're doing it wrong. Get your
coins under your control.

~~~
DoodleBuggy
> If you're storing your coins on Coinbase, you're doing it wrong. Get your
> coins under your control.

And what if you lose the USB key, hard drive, etc or it becomes damaged? Oops.

Secure and reliable storage is a problem that must be solved.

~~~
tudor14
just encrypt your btc keys with another secret key(symmetric key e.g. aes,
blowfish or something else). Store them on different cloud providers,
encrypted btc keys on google drive and the other secret key (password protect
it) then store it on one drive or icloud or private repository on github. The
hacker must hack both sites to take your keys(very unlikely to succeed) and
they are both securely stored online. Also make sure you're not using the same
password for both sites :)

~~~
c22
The attacker only has to hack your email account then reset the password on
the two target sites...

~~~
alexktz
And then all they have is an encrypted file assuming good password hygiene.

~~~
c22
So then why not just email the keys to yourself and leave them in your inbox?

------
FLUX-YOU
"'Please invest responsibly' because we can't guarantee you'll be able to cash
out. We may also say something is fixed when it isn't."

[https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/939202667993272320](https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/939202667993272320)

------
cgb223
_Despite the sizable and ongoing increases in our technical infrastructure and
engineering staff, we wanted to remind customers that access to Coinbase
services may become degraded or unavailable during times of significant
volatility or volume. This could result in the inability to buy or sell for
periods of time. Despite ongoing increases in our support capacity, our
customer support response times may be delayed, especially for requests that
do not involve immediate risks to customer account security. You can read more
in our Coinbase User Agreement._

This is the problem they should be solving, not avoiding with blog posts

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Because we all know that an entire company can, at a given time, either write
blog posts or solve infrastructural issues, never both.

~~~
cgb223
You're completely missing my point

Its not that they can do one or the other (they can), its that they aren't
doing the latter.

This problem with getting frozen up whenever theres major volatility has
existed for years on Coinbase

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Then please say that instead of making unnecessary snarks about blog posts.
Any company with even a small marketing / PR team probably has people whose
job IS writing blog posts, and who can't go around solving infra problems.

~~~
cgb223
Not sure where this hostility is coming from

I'm sorry you're having a bad day, please dont take it out on me

------
skybrian
Seems like the responsible thing to do would be to stop accepting new
customers until the infrastructure catches up?

~~~
abricot
That is kind of what they're doing right now. It's impossible to get verified
for an account.

~~~
Random_Person
I've seen this pop up a few times now... what verification? Coinbase hasn't
asked me for any proof of who I am at all.

~~~
grandmczeb
Have you actually bought bitcoin? When I signed up I needed to upload a
picture of me holding my state ID to buy and sell.

~~~
Random_Person
I bought a few ETH this morning. I linked a bank account, is that the
difference?

~~~
grandmczeb
What state/country are you in?

~~~
Random_Person
West Virginia, US

~~~
grandmczeb
I know very little about banking regulations, but I think the KYC laws change
based on the state. It’s possible Coinbase has a different process in WV
compared to CA.

------
ericb
So what does one do when you tried to verify, but coinbase shows this:

Driver's License + Photo Verification Reason:Unknown response status:

Every time I take a photo, I see "we're verifying your ID." Then nothing
happens...

Edit: Even worse. Their status page implies things are working now, but they
don't. I found that I can retry the upload, but now it says "You have reached
the maximum attempts for identity verification, please try again in 24 hours."
Wow.

~~~
thephyber
Monitor this page:
[https://status.coinbase.com/](https://status.coinbase.com/)

Also, they've had verification problems on and off for months. Back when I did
it, the app didn't work, but the website did.

------
readhn
Correction, should read -"please speculate responsibly".

It's all speculation. Most retail speculators go bust.

~~~
etr-strike
If it’s all speculation, where do you suggest I store my wealth? The
underlying characteristics of bitcoin lead me to believe it’s the safest asset
in existence. It’s volatility is a result of people slowly discovering this.

~~~
readhn
Ummm stocks, bonds, cash, real estate?

Yes Bitcoin just like all other assets before that went parabolic will not end
good.

Storing your life savings in Bitcoin right now is a suicidal idea.

~~~
etr-strike
Cash is guaranteed to depreciate at least 2% per year. Real estate is
incredibly expensive and only supported by the cheap debt that has flooded our
economy. Bonds are just barely above 0%... they have no place to go but down
unless you think negative rates are possible. Stocks are incredibly expensive
using every metric available. The rules of bitcoin are well understood and no
one can manipulate them. I’ll take my chances, thanks.

~~~
readhn
Pull up long term BTC chart. Step aside and ask your self this : is this a
good time to buy this asset or sell it?

I think most people are late to the party and will simply get burnt by the
market like so many times before. It's going to be a good show for sure.

I'm watching this develop with my pop corn ready.

~~~
etr-strike
If I sold my bitcoin, I wouldn’t feel any better storing it in any of the
asset classes you mentioned. Everytime I honestly evaluate what central banks
have done around the world, I always arrive back at bitcoin. It’s my safehaven
asset.

I wish you well with wherever you’ve chosen to store your wealth.

------
peterbraden
They take credit card for bitcoin purchases.

Hard to believe that they are sincere in their desire for responsibility, like
a booze company telling you to drink responsibly.

~~~
willstrafach
It would be insane to take credit cards, as people could just file a
chargeback if things do not go their way. Are you sure about that?

~~~
moonka
They do. I signed up a couple days ago and moved a few bucks worth of bitcoin
into a wallet, and it was showing a weekly limit of $400 to buy via credit
card. Now I'm up to $750.

------
darepublic
Kinda clever to reply to the downtime this way - shifting the focus for
accountability from the Coinbase team to their userbase.

~~~
vinchuco
Would it be better not to say it, rather than acknowledge the likeness to
gambling of the btc speculation train?

------
overcast
That guy that bought in at $19340 last night, is only down $4000 twelve hours
later.

~~~
jameskegel
And he'll by fine again next week. There are a lot of people who bought at
$5000 a few weeks ago only to panic sell at 2900, and here we are less than a
month later quibbling over the difference between 19k and 15k. Either switch
your charts to LOG or zoom out until you feel better.

~~~
overcast
That's what people said when it went from $1100 to $200 for the next three
years. No one has any idea where bitcoin is going to go, saying otherwise is
nonsense. Only people with a glimpse, are the manipulators holding onto the
majority of it.

~~~
jameskegel
BTC may dip temporarily, but with the entry of institutional money, we won't
be seeing near the dips you're expecting. I have been watching and
participating in this ecosystem from the beginning, take it from me, it's not
going anywhere. The only way to lose money operating in this market is to be
reckless with leverage, or knowingly sell while you're under, and the same
could happen for any asset.

~~~
mancerayder
Your hypothesis: "it's not going anywhere."

Do you have some argument points to back that up with?

I keep hearing simple assertions about what will happen, confidently
proclaimed by two sides of a table.

~~~
ryanmerket
Do you have any hypothetical scenarios that could wipe BTC off the planet or
at least make it impossible to cash back it to fiat?

~~~
mancerayder
It's not up to me to prove a negative. Also, my brain is too small to make
sweeping confident predictions about a new phenomenon the likes of which defy
existing models. Moreover you'd probably poke hypothetical holes in my
hypothetical scenarios. It's a flip of the coin, as far as I'm concerned.

Certainly some BTC were almost literally wiped off the planet, aka Mt Gox.

------
paulcole
"Please invest responsibly"

Pretty similar to the warnings lottery agencies and alcohol makers put on
their products.

I wonder if it's intentional? Kind of a wink-wink thing where just like
lotteries and alcohol the unsaid next line is, "but it'll be more fun if you
don't..."

------
kristofferR
Slight sidenote, but this recent interview of Brian Armstrong (Coinbase CEO)
on Bloomberg TV left a really good impression. He managed to appear both
humble, smart and confident at the same time. Things a lot of people could
learn from.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqF43uD3kKQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqF43uD3kKQ)

------
snake_plissken
Tangential: on the way to work today I was pondering the economy after hearing
about the recent unemployment numbers on NPR. These days I tend to think about
what's going to be the downturn catalyst. Which got me thinking about the
recent surge in crypto prices, and how much of it has been fueled by purchases
using credit cards, home equity loans, etc. I hope it's not too disastrous in
the end but I have my doubts.

------
659087
Meanwhile, reddit is full of people talking about the loans they're taking out
to buy Bitcoin because it's a "sure thing" that it's going to $100k.

------
659087
"You may not be able to trade while we're down, but we certainly can"

------
patsmith
Take your best guess when Bitcoin will fall of the cliff:
[https://twitter.com/BitcoinPlunge](https://twitter.com/BitcoinPlunge)

------
exabrial
It would be nice if they supported u2f token

------
dpiers
"Please invest responsibly" \- coming from the company that lets people buy
cryptocurrency with credit cards.

This blog post reads like an attempt to preempt a lawsuit after the price of
BTC crashes and people are stuck with rapidly depreciating coins because
Coinbase's servers were too overloaded to process a sell order.

~~~
ISL
That is exactly what it is. It is informing Coinbase's customers that their
resources are finite and that they cannot be relied upon to execute trades nor
provide support in a heartbeat.

It is important that they say this, as it appears to be true.

PSA: If you're a Coinbase customer, and you have never made a withdrawal, are
you aware that there are weekly _sell_ limits, priced in USD, not BTC? It was
a surprise to me.

If you're sitting on a little BTC kitty at Coinbase that has grown large, do
know that you may not be able to convert it all to USD on a single trade even
if Coinbase _has_ liquidity and buyers.

~~~
maxerickson
Do they not lay out those limits in a clear way somewhere or had you not
looked for the info?

~~~
hobofan
I transferred my BTC to Coinbase a few years ago (because I didn't trust
myself to keep my wallet safe), and this is the first time I have heard of
this. To be fair my account isn't set up for withdrawal (no bank account
connected), so you might be notified about this there.

~~~
maxerickson
I meant something like
[https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/210...](https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2108820-coinbase-
account-limits)

Which is a top result searching Google for "coinbase transaction limits".

