
Bitcoin and Ethereum Just Crashed, Taking Coinbase Down with Them - ljf
http://fortune.com/2017/06/15/bitcoin-ethereum-price-coinbase-down/
======
fny
The real news is that Coinbase can't handle traffic spikes induced by micro
panics.

But this was a correction, not a crash. The price of BTC only dropped below
the 10-day moving average and remains well above the 30-day moving average,
which remains well above the 50-day moving average, which remains well above
the...

A chart [http://imgur.com/a/TkilO](http://imgur.com/a/TkilO) built with
Bitstamp's tradeview. [0]

Disclaimer: I don't own any BTC.

[0]:
[https://www.bitstamp.net/market/tradeview/](https://www.bitstamp.net/market/tradeview/)

Added question: In the case of a Coinbase crash, can't Coinbase customers use
their private keys to make transactions on other exchanges or are they somehow
locked into using Coinbase? I always thought you could happily store your
credentials on paper and do business wherever, however.

~~~
jnordwick
It's down 17% from its highs a couple days ago. That's not something to blow
off.

If this was the stack market or the dollar people would be screaming for HFT
heads. Just look back to the flash crash that didn't even last a day.

~~~
fny
Bitcoin isn't a market or national currency. Bitcoin in more like a highly
volatile equity or commodity. If the price of a volatile stock jumped from $21
to $30 in a week, and then cooled off to $24 two weeks later, no one would
call it a crash.

Just add to zeros to all those number, and that's exactly what happened to
Bitcoin.

------
jnordwick
There is a lot of exceptional fintech talent out there, finance probably has
the deepest tech talent level of any industry. But if you look at the tech
stack and skills they are looking for for Sr Software Engineer, it looks like
they are hiring for a web app: "Ruby, Node.js, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis"

Sorry, you can't build a financial exchange on Ruby, Node, and Mongo.

Get some real fintech people in there with a real tech stack - core Java (not
some Swing framework junk) and c++ mostly - and let them do their thing.

These are fairly well understood problems. I don't understand how they can run
on such a terrible infrastructure and still be considered a leader.

~~~
sushid
To me, MongoDB is the most shocking aspect of their stack. What are you doing
with a non-ACID compliant database?

I've personally had a transfer of ETH worth tens of thousands of dollars just
go missing, despite 30+ confirmations on the tx on the blockchain itself,
which took about 48 hours to resolve with their support team. If you can't
credit your clients properly despite the fact that all transactions
send/received are on the goddamn blockchain, you're doing something wrong.

~~~
jnordwick
There is a thing in trading we call a drop copy that is basically a side
channel verification of trades (besides the normal execution messages you get
in the order stream). House trades and street (market) trades are constantly
being verified and double checked against each other.

I'm surprised they don't have something similar to catch these errors.

------
andrethegiant
"Crashed". Ethereum is still up $70 compared to last week. Up $269 compared to
last month. This is not a crash.

------
xutopia
Linkbait. That's not a crash... it can go down a few percentage point in a day
but the long term trends all show increases.

Over the last week it's still better that what index funds have done in the
last compounded 2 years.

~~~
jnordwick
It's a currency. It's not supposed to go up and down like a stock. It is
supposed to remain stable.

~~~
Omnius
It was supposed to be a currency it's a commodity.

~~~
jnordwick
This explanation I can buy. Nobody is treating like a currency. They keep
wanting it to appreciate because they see it a cool tech-related commodity.

~~~
Omnius
Agreed. Seems like its a commodity to be traded, a black market currency for
criminal activity (i am not bothered by this), a currency for countries that
need a way to buy goods outside there normal means. All the currency aspects
are really cool especially as a means of freedom BUT its value is 100% based
on speculation and trading not because of real value.

It is cool and i am not hating on it and people are getting rich from it but
it's value isn't because all of a sudden average people are using it to buy
groceries or pay their bills.

~~~
15155
> isn't because all of a sudden average people are using it to buy groceries
> or pay their bills.

Now that it's in the media: why couldn't this quickly and quietly become
reality?

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ZoneGhost
If you had a stock that was at $750 in January, hit $3000, and adjusted to
$2500 today, you would never use the words "crash". Clickbait much?

~~~
jnordwick
But you would be using words like bubble, manipulation, HFT scam. The meteoric
rise is a little unsettling. What would a proper correction and breathing
point be? 2000?

------
e79
[Removed rant in which I was trying to explain my frustration about investors
having ill effects on the usability of such protocols by driving up associated
fees. Unless you can mine coins, you are stuck dealing with a volatile market
as an entry point, which blows. But nobody cares about that. So never mind]

~~~
jnordwick
Why should he have to know what an adversarial network our the other
technologies are to trade crypto-currencies? That's like me complaining that
people investing in the dollar or stocks don't understand the intricacies of
the Fed machinations or NYSE complex order types.

------
googletazer
Journalists who report on cryptocurrencies will have one of the safest careers
ever.

Every day is either a "crash" or a "bubble", throw in a few comments from
market leaders and thats an article right there.

------
RichardHeart
Yesterday:"The cryptocurrencies’ prices bounced back later in the day. As of 6
p.m. Thursday, Bitcoin was down less than 3% and Ethereum was down just under
8% over a 24-hour period."

BTC is now $2,484

------
jnordwick
People here are misunderstanding what a currency is supposed to do.

It isn't like a stock. Equities going up is good and will have periodic
retreats. It is a company and supposed to gain in value.

A currency is a medium of exchange and unit of account. It is supposed to
remain stable. It shouldn't go up or down like equities. It should be stable.
The unit of account changing would be like a unit of length changing. Try
building a house if your measuring device was constantly changing in you.

~~~
m3talsmith
Currencies always go up or down based on trust in the currency's backer; in
their ability to perform. Thus as the US Dollar (USD) went up against the
British Pound Sterling (BPS) when Brexit was declared the course to go, the
USD has fallen as more business uses for the Blockchain (BTC, ETC, LTC, etc.)
have become viable and implemented: trust decreased in the UK's ability to
govern and produce stable storage of value in the BPS, trust increased the
Blockchain's ability to store value through entrenching itself in everyday
business.

All currencies live and die on market pressures which require societal trust.
An exchange of one currency for another is an exchange in preference of trust.
Stock is the exact same thing, with the value a measure of trust in the given
corporation and the viability of it to survive in a given economic,
industrial, or political environment. To equate that they are different is to
speciate an argument for why one set of matter and social construct is eternal
in nature and the rest are mortal in nature: it is a highly opinionated point
which one must make which in itself proves that the argument is false.

