
Update on Bitcoin Cash - ahoang18
https://blog.coinbase.com/update-on-bitcoin-cash-8a67a7e8dbdf
======
phodo
I have been a long time coinbase user. I have been very unhappy with their
support. I have been unable to add additional funds to buy both additional
ethereum and btc from their site, even after contacting them repeatedly about
this ... but never getting a reply. I did multiple identity verifications and
connected bank and credit cards. No luck in being able to transact properly.
Bitcoin Cash was a forcing function and last week I sent my funds to a private
wallet. I am also buying additional crypto on Gemini and other exchanges. To
give an idea of my frustration with them, I first tried to buy ethereum thru
then at $40. I gave them benefit of the doubt in solving my issues ... and
waited and waited. By the time I realized that they were not listening to me,
ether had shot up to more than $200. I ultimately bought on Gemini. This was
their business to lose and they did exactly that.

~~~
quantdev
I, too, have had terrible past experiences with Coinbase and I no longer use
them. I now buy on Gemini for fiat -> BTC and use other exchanges for
altcoins. That said, I no longer keep _any_ crypto on any exchange, including
Gemini. The whole point of Bitcoin is that you are your own bank via ownership
of your private keys. By giving them to Coinbase, you centralize the system,
concentrate the risk, and create honeypots for hackers. Remember, the
government doesn't insure Bitcoin balances like it does with USD in banks and
so much Bitcoin has been lost via exchange hacks in the past few years.

Don't let centralized authorities keep your private keys.

~~~
hentrep
Given the high profile attacks on crypto exchanges over recent years, how much
trust do you place in Gemini securing your SSN, proof of ID, and proof of
address?

~~~
quantdev
Not very much, but only because those are byproducts of a cryptocurrency hack.
If they didn't control centralized private keys and thus implicitly have one
of the biggest bug bounties, I would be less worried about people hacking my
SSN, ID, etc. from Gemini.

That said, I also don't care as much if those get hacked as I can recover from
stolen identity, while it's impossible to get back stolen bitcoin.

------
colept
Is there a viable alternative to Coinbase? Their support is absurdly awful.
Two months and they sent two auto-replies to a simple ticket that couldn't be
answered by the knowledge base. They don't care about your money - so long as
it's already in their vault.

~~~
blazamos
VP Ops at Coinbase

We are trying to scale our support team as quickly as possible. Wish I had a
better answer for you. [https://blog.coinbase.com/improving-customer-
support-139d99e...](https://blog.coinbase.com/improving-customer-
support-139d99e72876)

If you still need help with your issue, send me an email (in my profile).

~~~
wastedbrains
biggest thing you need to do to improve support is stop sending mailings from
a no-reply email address. Replying should create a support ticket
automatically if the email it came from is associated with an account. Further
verification could be required depending on the request.

~~~
tehwebguy
> stop sending mailings from a no-reply email address

This should be a general rule for the whole internet.

~~~
twohlix_
I think sending from a no-reply with a reply-to defined works though.

------
gragas
Honestly, I don't understand why everyone trashes Coinbase.

I work very closely with numerous crypto exchanges for a living (I write code
which interfaces with them). Outside of work, I've personally chosen to open a
Coinbase account and trade on GDAX.

Coinbase is, in my opinion, the most reputable exchange out there by far.

~~~
nipponese
I generally agree here, but 1. their buy/sell ACH fees are insane, 2. They're
always the first to go down in those high panic button situations that have
been happening every other week since may. FWIW, Kraken may require a wire,
but my money always gets in the exchange for $5, and site is more reliable...
the fees are 80% cheaper.

~~~
aianus
> their buy/sell ACH fees are insane

It's a form of price discrimination. Only ignorant end-consumers pay the crazy
broker fees. Anyone slightly sophisticated deposits USD via ACH (nearly free)
and then transfers to GDAX and does their trading there (0-0.25%).

------
qhwudbebd
Coinbase is a horrific company: they give the superficial impression of being
a reputable place to hold money, but one can go months at a time without a
human response to support queries despite holding a substantial balance with
them.

I cannot warn other potential victims of Coinbase strongly enough; hopefully
the chaos and incompetence around BCC will alert people more publicly about
the dangers of getting entangled with them. Hold your cryptocurrency in your
own wallet that you control yourself.

------
duren
Say what you will about Coinbase, but I really appreciate their willingness to
adapt and respond to customer feedback.

I personally didn't want to take on the risk of creating a paper wallet and
having to move my small amount of BTC from my Coinbase vault, so this is great
news for me.

~~~
Optimizer
Taking 5 months to enable trading doesn't seem like "adoption"

~~~
provost
You should visit the headquarters of some slow-moving enterprises.

~~~
Optimizer
Slow moving enterprises in technology world are an age old phenomena. Even -
long established, waterfall pattern following - enterprises are acknowledging
this and speeding up their cycles. In the current world of fast pace
technology, one cannot justify by giving such examples.

------
aedron
Coinbase could easily avoid, or be unable to, provide BCH balances to their
bitcoin holding customers.

There's no telling how Coinbase operates internally. You can't just assume
that 1 customer == 1 permanent bitcoin address in Coinbase's backend. Perhaps
they shift funds around all the time into new addresses, without keeping
references/keys to the old ones. In that case, BCH balances would be lost,
with no way to restore them to the 'owner' at the time of the fork.

Luckily (for would-be BCH holders) that seems to not be the case, but I think
Coinbase deserves credit for going the extra mile when they could justifiably
say that it is not their problem to deal with.

~~~
elnygren
> without keeping references/keys to the old ones

You are correct, but this would be a new level of stupid for a leading
cyrptocurrency exchange that actually tries to build a reputation and
appearance of quality, safety, compliance and being a "legit" service for
financial institutions etc.

------
Snackchez
Maybe I'm just not getting something in my slow brain, hopefully someone here
can explain. How does taking out my BTC out of CoinBase ensure I will receive
an equivalent amount of BCH?

I bought 200$ worth of BTC in the past from CB, and promptly moved to an
Exchange. Does that mean I will get whatever amount of BTC I purchased back
then in BCH? If so, why? I understand there was a fork, but I don't get why
I'm entitled to the same amount of BCH... what if there are more forks in the
future, I'll just keep getting more of those offshoot coins as well?

~~~
sowbug
You got a lot of replies, but I don't see one critical point addressed. You
said you moved from Coinbase (no internal caps) to an exchange. So we can't
tell whether you'll get any BCH. If you don't know the private keys for your
funds, then you can't spend those funds. You can only ask whoever has your
funds to spend them on your behalf. Coinbase hasn't implemented the
infrastructure to spend from anything but the main chain. We don't know
whether the exchange you're using has, either.

Someone at Coinbase is slapping their forehead right now reading your story
because you pretty much jumped out of the frying pan into the fire when you
transferred from Coinbase to an exchange (rather than a wallet you control).
That's exactly what Coinbase _didn't_ want you to do if you wanted full
control over your funds.

~~~
aianus
> Someone at Coinbase is slapping their forehead right now reading your story
> because you pretty much jumped out of the frying pan into the fire when you
> transferred from Coinbase to an exchange (rather than a wallet you control)

Actually, transferring from Coinbase to an exchange was the correct move. If
you transferred BTC before the fork to an exchange that quickly implemented
BCH trading you would have been credited and been able to trade right away.
People (like me) who did the 'correct thing' and withdrew to their own wallets
now have to wait days to deposit to a BCH exchange and will likely never see
$700 BCH again.

~~~
sowbug
Your statement is completely right, but the way the question was asked, OP
probably didn't know whether it was an exchange "that quickly implemented BCH
trading." So maybe a better analogy is being in the frying pan and pressing
the hyperspace button.

By the way, why would you need to wait to sell a BCH deposit? That confirms
almost immediately, right? I could understand AML/KYC on a cash withdrawal,
but incoming crypto is zero risk to the exchange.

~~~
aianus
Takes 80h to confirm because of the low hash rate on the fork.

~~~
sowbug
Doh. I thought the fork code had a built-in contingency for a quick difficulty
adjustment in case of slow blocks. Maybe I just dreamed that.

------
koolba
So does this mean the cost of a lawsuit was deemed greater than the cost of
adding support for BCC?

~~~
sowbug
That's awfully cynical. They took a wait and see approach. Would you run your
engineering team any differently? How do you tell a viable fork from the
(many) others that have failed? If BCH falls to $10 in two weeks, would you
still direct your engineers to support it?

~~~
koolba
> That's awfully cynical.

If you knew me in person you'd know the cynicism was intentional. I've got
quite a bit to start with and double so when it comes to anything involving
digital currencies.

> They took a wait and see approach. Would you run your engineering team any
> differently?

On the contrary, I agreed with it. I said as much the day before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915884)

> How do you tell a viable fork from the (many) others that have failed? If
> BCH falls to $10 in two weeks, would you still direct your engineers to
> support it?

I don't think it's possible to tell after less than a day if it's a viable
fork. It's way too early. That's why I'm thinking this is driven more from the
perceived cost of lawsuits vs. the development cost of supporting the feature.

~~~
sowbug
I see. I made this point somewhere else in this thread, but there's no lawsuit
threat because of the terms of service (just arbitration), and if someone were
a big fish but asleep at the wheel for the last few months, Coinbase could
easily make them whole quickly by just manually sending them the BCH they
wanted. Engineering full support as they're doing almost surely costs more
than any conceivable loss customers could suffer in the interim (assuming
anyone with a nontrivial balance takes responsibility for their actions or
inaction).

------
robinj6
Dumb question:

Supposing BCC eventually becomes of comparable value to BTC, does this mean
everyone's fortune was just doubled?

~~~
differentView
Only if you believe BTC would've been at that same value without the fork.

~~~
paulddraper
Right. It's like a stock split, except the company actually splits into two
essentially identical competitors.

No matter which competitor "wins", your assets should keep the same total
value they had before.

~~~
dragonwriter
Unless the competitors increase the whole market (increasing total value)
or—as is plausible with a cryptocurrency with netomwork effects—the lack of a
single clear choice _reduces_ the overall value of the market compared to a
don't clear choice that everyone uses.

~~~
paulddraper
Yep. It might not be zero-sum.

------
obilgic
so inflation comes in terms of forks in the realm of crypto currencies.

Isn't it how it started with gold-based government currencies as well? every
government created their own currency/fork of gold.

edit: typo, inflation

~~~
vasilipupkin
Do you mean inflation ? Crypto currency space is new still, forks are
innovation and competition. That is good.

~~~
vasilipupkin
Can someone who understands pros and cons of bcc vs btc explain to me ( us )
which one of the two is more likely to scale / win ?

~~~
elmar
they are two diferent ways to solve the same scalability problem, Btc doubles
the current number of transactions by increasing the block from 1mb to 2mb and
adds a new service the segregated witnesses that allows off-the-chain private
transactions, Bcc simply increases the block to 8mb for roughly 8x times more
transactions.

~~~
makomk
It's a quite a bit more complicated than just increasing the block size to
8mb, actually, and in reality Bitcoin Cash ended up using one of SegWit's key
changes in modified form.

The default Bitcoin signature algorithm has quadratic performance due to
repeated hashing and if the block size is increased above 1MB an attacker can
use this in a fairly nasty DoS attack that, worst case, might be able to fork
the blockchain. The BTC/SegWit side fixes this by creating a new transaction
type that moves the signatures outside the main block into a separate
"witness" and uses more efficient signature hashing. The new transactions
appear to older nodes as though they simply didn't require signatures, so
existing software keeps working. This also fixes an annoying issue called
"transaction malleability" which allows attackers to change the transaction
IDs of other people's transactions; all of the data hashed to compute the
transaction ID is now signed. It's apparently this malleability fix that makes
off-chain payments easier.

BCH essentially replaces the original signature hashing algorithm with the
SegWit one but keeps the signatures in the block. Bitcoin also has a hard cap
on the number of expensive CHECKSIG operations that can be carried out to
prevent DoS attacks and both sides take different approaches to raising that,
neither of which is straightforward.

~~~
mikekchar
Just to test my understanding: Segwit essentially moves the signature in a
transaction (and changes what is being signed). This fixes most "transaction
malleability" problems. Transaction malleability means that one of the nodes
in the bitcoin network can change some of the information in the transaction.
It can't change where the money is coming from, where the money is going, or
how much the transaction is for, but it _can_ change some of the other
information in the transaction.

It also appears that there were some proposals related to SegWit that
advocated putting the signatures in a separate block, but the actual
implemented SegWit does _not_ do this. Instead it simply moves the signature
to the end of the transaction (which allows them to fix most of the
malleability issues).

There are many proposals for scaling bitcoin. One of the proposals is to
increase the size of the blocks. Segwit _also_ does this by changing how much
the signature "counts" as part of the block size. This will allow blocks to be
roughly 2mb in size.

Most other scaling techniques can't currently be implemented because they rely
on the transaction not being malleable. If SegWit is successful, then these
other scaling techniques could be used (but they don't have to be).

It appears that one of the things some people don't like about SegWit is that
it was introduced as a "soft fork". This means that it won't be activated in
the client unless 95% of the clients support it. Some people feel that this
will never happen because some miners are against SegWit. There are also other
proposals for fixing the malleability issues and so there isn't a complete
consensus about how it should be done (some people appear to complain that the
implementation of SegWit is too complicated).

So instead on waiting for other scaling techniques, BCH has advocated a hard
fork which increases the block size, but that does not address the transaction
malleability problem. Some people have suggested that increasing the block
size is the only thing necessary for scaling bitcoin and that other scaling
techniques are unwanted.

My understanding is that SegWit will not, in itself, solve the scaling issue
other than making a small increase in the block size (effectively doubling
it), but that it paves the way for other techniques later (none of which have
been decided on yet, but there are working implementations of several).

Is that accurate?

~~~
makomk
More or less, except that the reason Bitcoin Cash happened is that SegWit
seems almost certain to be activated at this point as a result of interesting
political wranglings. The other subtle detail is that older nodes see a
stripped version of SegWit blocks with the "witness" parts of the transactions
removed, and it's this block that they apply the 1MB limit to. So while the
signatures technically aren't part of a seperate block, they're not part of
the main block either. This is why the non-witness part of transactions has to
count as being more expensive.

~~~
mikekchar
Ah. I see! Thank you for that. It makes complete sense now. I was wondering
why they had such a convoluted method for calculating the block size.

------
user5994461
Summary:

"Over the last several days, we’ve examined all of the relevant issues and
have decided to work on adding support for bitcoin cash for Coinbase
customers. We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1,
2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time."

------
mmastrac
Does this mean that customers in a short position owe Bitcoin Cash?

~~~
bhuga
Matt Levine at Bloomberg wrote a fascinating piece on this yesterday:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/bitcoin-e...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-02/bitcoin-
exchange-had-too-many-bitcoins)

It's an interesting read even if you don't care about shorts or bitcoin at
all.

~~~
Lon7
I wonder if this was a big part of why coinbase decided not to support BCH
initially.

This really is an interesting situation. In the hours approaching the BCH fork
an absolutely massive number of short positions were opened on various bitcoin
exchanges, but the price remained steady. I assumed people were shorting in
expectation of a crash, but the outlined scenario makes much more sense.

Similarly to the trade outlined in the article, if you already held bitcoin,
you could short the equivalent amount and you would still receive bitcoin
cash. This trade also had the nice side effect of your exposure to fiat
currency staying flat through all the potential fluctuation.

~~~
jnordwick
Who was loaning BCH? What exchange could you borrow BCH on?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _What exchange could you borrow BCH on?_

Anyone who borrowed BTC may have implicitly borrowed BCH. Suppose Person A
owns shares in OldCo. Person B borrows those shares and sells them short to
Person C. OldCo spins out NewCo. On Thursday evening, you go to bed with 1
OldCo share in your account; Friday morning, you wake up with 1 OldCo share
and 1 NewCo share.

Bought Person A and Person C own OldCo shares, and so expect to receive one
NewCo share. The company provides one. Who provides the other? The short
seller. Presumably by buying Person A's NewCo shares. Same thing happens with
dividends.

So if you borrowed BTC pre-fork and returned it post-fork, you're may find
yourself owing BCH. Shorting is complicated, which is why I'm bemused by its
proliferation around a blockchain that doesn't even natively support lending
or interest rates.

------
mlindner
So many people in this thread complaining about coinbase when I've had no
issues with them. You people complaining about coinbase must have not been
around when Mt.Gox was the only option. If you want to talk about lack of
support... Now that's lack of support.

~~~
quantdev
I don't see how this is a valid argument. So what if Mt.Gox was worse? The
point is there are many better exchanges than both Mt.Gox and Coinbase
nowadays from a fees, customer-support, and reliability perspective.

Coinbase has three major advantages: (1) incredible marketing, (2) flashy and
good UX, and (3) (claimed) safety via cold storage.

The first (1) is a counter argument in my book, (2) is irrelevant, and (3)
only matters if you let them control your private keys, which is stupid and
the antithesis to Bitcoin.

------
Animats
_" We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018,
assuming no additional risks emerge during that time. Once supported,
customers will be able to withdraw bitcoin cash."_

They are so going to get sued if the price of Bitcoin Cash crashes by the end
of the year. Where do they get off telling customers they can't withdraw an
asset for five months?

This is what lawyers call "conversion"[1]. _A person who knowingly or
intentionally exerts unauthorized control over property of another person
commits criminal conversion. The element of knowledge is found when the
accused person engages in the conduct and he /she is aware of a high
probability that he/she is doing so. An essential element of criminal
conversion is that “the property must be owned by another and the conversion
thereof must be without the consent and against the will of the party, to whom
the property belongs, coupled with the fraudulent intent to deprive the owner
of the property.”_

It's legally equivalent to theft.[2] The typical example of conversion is
renting something and then refusing to return it.

Coinbase execs, you really need to be talking to good securities lawyers.

[1] [https://conversion.uslegal.com/criminal-
conversion/](https://conversion.uslegal.com/criminal-conversion/) [2]
[https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-
manual-1317-n...](https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-
manual-1317-national-stolen-property-act-stolen-converted-taken-fraud)

~~~
kanzure
> Where do they get off telling customers they can't withdraw an asset for
> five months?

When they say it will take them time to implement, it's an honest statement.
They literally have to implement software, do lots of code review, check their
accounting, pentesting, or at least they should be doing these things, and 5
months is an unusually short timeline. Even if they took 10% as fee to hire
extra developers to work on this project, 5 months is not guaranteeable at
all.

The short timelines proposed for hard-forks is one of the reasons why so many
bitcoin developers have voiced caution about hard-fork proposals:
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support)
(far right columns)

Cryptsy was quickly installing random altcoins on their servers until one of
the 200 coins they installed ended up being malware (a reverse shell or
whatever) and poof goes their exchange, plus or minus some other possible
fraud occurring. There is value to caution and review when upgrading software
systems.... much less financial systems. With backwards-compatible upgrades,
you can be more certain about the net impacts. For example, if the changes
were compatible with the pre-existing bitcoin rules, then none of this new
coin stuff would have happened, and the whole industry could benefit from the
compatible upgrades.

~~~
gdudeman
Not to mention that anyone can create a new bitcoin-fork.

Animats-coin could be created and supported by 2 machines. Is Coinbase
obligated to support it just because you have a couple graphics cards and
forked code?

If so, there are many near-worthless bitcoin variants and forked chains they
aren't supporting.

Whenever someone gets rainbows in their eyes about the magic of the
blockchain, I can't help but think "you can imagine the perfect, utopian
future - the same one we imagined about the internet in 1994 - but none of the
unintended side effects."

------
BusinessInsider
At first I was like, why a whole year?!

Then I realized there is a little less than 5 months left of 2017... Time is
fucking flying!

------
Strategizer
When Ethereum Classic hit the markets Coinbase did the same, ignoring it
first, then giving in, however it turned out because of missing replay
protection (thanks to vitalik) Coinbase had to buy back ETC on other markets
first. Feel free to draw your conclusions based on this information.

------
sputknick
Do you think this mean they will support ethereum classic? I don't see how the
two are different.

~~~
wslh
They added Ethereum after the fork while they had Bitcoin before the Bitcoin
Cash fork: [https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-adds-support-for-
ethereum...](https://blog.coinbase.com/coinbase-adds-support-for-
ethereum-b8046cf486d0)

~~~
sputknick
Ah jeez you're right. Thanks for the reminder.

------
kristopolous
Good on them. Finally some integrity in the cryptocoin exchange market.

------
boynamedsue
Where do I buy Bitcoin Cash today from a reputable exchange?

~~~
where_do_i_live
I'd say Bittrex is the most reputable out there.

------
bayonetz
What an inconvenient waste of time trying to be proactive and moving my BTC
out of Coinbase ahead of the fork -- just like Coinbase said to. Would have
been nice if they could have decided this before hand...

~~~
sowbug
Moving out of Coinbase took you fewer keystrokes than typing that comment.

~~~
bayonetz
Right, withdrawal is easy. Figuring out how to actually claim my BCC was a
(figurative) eternity. Appreciate your dismissive attitude though! Bottom
line, Coinbase could have made this easy. It's not like this was some random
fork by some nobody faction. I want crypto coins to succeed and it won't
happen as long as we have to manage our own wallets and such.

~~~
sowbug
You make it sound like adding support at the level they have for their other
currencies is something they can do on a whim. Unless you've worked in
commercial software, that's a forgivable attitude, but it's very far from
reality for a company like Coinbase that is establishing a brand of trust and
stability, not chasing the latest sparkly fork (of which there are many) and
saying oops sorry when they screw up by moving too fast.

"It's not like this was some random fork by some nobody faction." That's
Monday-morning quarterbacking, and in fact we have no idea whether we're at
halftime or end of game for BCH. Results-oriented thinking like that is one
step away from cargo-culting.

"Figuring out how to actually claim my BCC was a (figurative) eternity."
Right, so imagine having to solve that same problem for a million or so users
in less time than it took you for yourself.

~~~
bayonetz
Nope, not even asking for the level of support they have for BTC/ETH/LTC. I
was talking a simple ability to access/withdraw out the BCC post-fork.

I do work in consumer software and I stand by my recommendation. I'm pretty
sure they wish they would have just done it to start with PR-wise. No doubt it
will be a hassle for them but being willing to take on the right hassles is
what inspires loyalty from consumers like me.

I don't understand how it's "Monday-morning quarterbacking". I mean it's not
controversial to say this fork was a long time coming and had a solid bloc of
support. Coinbase is basically implicitly agreeing here that they should have
done this to start or at least publicly left it open to support BCC should it
prove legitimate. It's almost like they came out against to try to make it go
away "these aren't the droids you are looking for"-style.

Just for the record, I've enjoyed using GDAX/Coinbase thus far to trade the
coins they do support.

~~~
sowbug
We're not going to agree on this because we interpret the facts differently.
We agree companies should take on only "the right hassles," but I remain far
from convinced, even today, that this is one of the right ones for Coinbase.

You think "a simple ability" takes less time. I think making it simple
actually takes even more time, especially when Coinbase has a history of
indemnifying its customers even when it wasn't responsible for the loss
(GDAX/ETH flash crash), which means that a bare-bones tool with a ton of CYA
documentation isn't going to cut it for them.

You saw a "solid bloc of support." I saw a fracas of tweets, bitcoin.org
posts, and /r/b* proselytizing on many sides (not just for/against BCH but
also for/against the other BIPs, as well as other things unilaterally calling
themselves "consensus" or "agreement"). I'm still not convinced anyone but
ViaBTC is in it for real ([https://www.coindesk.com/even-miners-hate-bitcoin-
cash-might...](https://www.coindesk.com/even-miners-hate-bitcoin-cash-might-
want-mine/)).

You probably believe BCH is currently valued in the mid-$200s. I see a thin
market controlled primarily by exchanges imposing extremely conservative
deposit requirements (up to 20 confirmations) that happen to function nicely
as supply controls as well, and while I can't predict the future, I doubt an
unconstrained market would send the price upward at this point.

Remember, the point of BCH was to make day-to-day on-chain transactions a
realistic, scalable proposition. We're not even close to that being a reality,
even in contrived pizza-buying scenarios. I'm still concerned that this fork
will make exasperated merchants nope their way out of cryptocurrencies
entirely, especially when intermediaries like BitPay face the practical
usability nightmare of BCH and BTC addresses being visually identical.

Bitcoin has its practical use cases that have been hard-won over nearly a
decade. Ethereum's elevator pitch is ICOs. Both of them have clear reasons to
exist. But Bitcoin Cash's pitch at this point is "like Bitcoin but without the
network effects." I understand where it wants to go, but for now it's just a
speculative vehicle, and I understand why Coinbase doesn't want to help enable
that usage.

~~~
bayonetz
Oh but we are going to agree on this because...I'm opening my mind to what you
are saying. Way too much energy behind this for you to just be some guy trying
to win an argument on the Internet. Thanks for the perspectives.

~~~
sowbug
:) Be well.

------
discombobulate
Can we stop with this Coinbase spam?

------
Keeeeeeeks
Question: if Coinbase never claimed the Bitcoin Cash, would there be any
grounds for a lawsuit?

~~~
polemic
They don't have to claim it. Purely by controlling the addresses that held BTC
at the time of the fork, Coinbase controls the BCH that magicked into
existence.

The issue is that BCH belongs to the original owner of the BTC it was forked
from. Despite Coinbase _telling people to withdraw their BTC if they wanted
the BCH_ a lot of people no-doubt now feel aggrieved that they're unable to
access the new theoretical windfall.

~~~
Keeeeeeeks
How is that not bullshit though? Like, if I were a company that didn't want to
take a side, had projects in the pipeline, and didn't want to have to build
out infrastructure, extra warnings, and educational content for the
speculators that will probably send BCH <-> XBT, I don't see why I can't tell
all the BCH enthusiasts that my company won't redeem the BCH, and to send
their funds out so that they can redeem the BCH they're entitled to.

It costs a lot of man hours to add infrastructure work for that, and they're
setting a precedent that they'll support every single fork that people
speculate with.

I personally think this is lazyman bullshit where people harp about how
Coinbase being amicable with the feds are bad until they want to file suit
lol. People who were knowledgeable enough about the fork but too lazy to learn
how to move their Bitcoin out, not have their private keys stolen/lost, and
redeem the coins on two chains without fucking up feel entitled to free money
that costs Coinbase man hours and technical debt. Despite all ideals about
them technically controlling the BCH, they should be able to draft a legal
document placing their licensing at stake that asserts they're not claiming
customer BCH and get back to answering my limit increase email.

*Disclaimer: I don't work for Coinbase or a Bitcoin company

------
localcdn
And all it took was the threat of a lawsuit.

~~~
ceejayoz
Now we see how many other forks rise up and demand inclusion.

~~~
MrBlue
It doesn't work that way. BCC isn't just any fork. It has large miner and
industry support.

~~~
ceejayoz
... and you don't think this'll set a precedent with those miners and industry
folks to support other forks?

------
la_oveja
coinbase's android app is utter shit. sorry but had to say it

~~~
sschueller
What other trading platform has a good android app?

~~~
la_oveja
bitstamp worked pretty fine, if I don't remember wrong

------
Temasik
lost my faith with bitcoin and ethereum due to chain split

Ripple's XRP will win

------
luke3butler
Bitcoin cash is BCH not BCC.

~~~
luke3butler
I originally wrote this comment because BCC has been reserved for BitConnect
prior to the existence of Bitcoin Cash.

Looks like BitConnect might need to come up with a new short-name?

------
chmike
I'm a blockchain money noob. From my stand point this virtual money looks like
pure speculation. Nice to see that ressource limitation can be bypassed by
forking. So this speculation seams doomed to me.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Do you believe that stock splits are also creating money?

------
thinkmassive
They reversed stance so quickly, it seems plausible this was a calculated move
to increase news coverage of Coinbase.

~~~
sowbug
There was a slightly different amount of information available in the time you
call "so quickly."

Any "calculated move" that involves repeated pleas to one's own customers to
withdraw all their assets from one's platform to protect themselves from that
move... well, you can characterize that as well as I can.

~~~
thinkmassive
I admit that "calculated" might be a stretch, considering how far off their
delivery date is. Despite that, the original announcement could have been more
realistic ("we might support it soon ") but it wouldn't have made nearly as
many headlines.

It does seem like they're understaffed. Maybe they were hoping the fork would
wither away quickly and they wouldn't need to deal with it. As one of the
largest exchanges they should have better contingency planning than that.

I hope they continue to succeed because I do like Coinbase.

