
Coinbase to Waive All Fees on 11/29/13 in Support of Bitcoin Black Friday - miles
http://blog.coinbase.com/post/68147862129/coinbase-to-waive-all-fees-on-11-29-13-in-support-of
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jyap
Actually buying Bitcoin on Coinbase takes 3-4 business days for the bank
transaction to clear and for you to have the Bitcoins to spend.

Unless you have Bitcoins already most people won't be able to participate in
Bitcoin Black Friday deals.

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jmcqk6
I tried purchasing part of a bitcoin on coin base last week, and 3-4 business
days is generous. It says I'm going to get my coins tomorrow, a full week
after putting in the order. I was incredibly disappointed by this, but there
is nothing to do about it.

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yebyen
I'm not sure of the timeline of what you did, but you can appreciate at least
that they're giving you the market rate at the time you bought it (right? I
also remember about a week ago reading a message on coinbase that they were
over their buy limit, and in order to buy right then you had to agree to pay
the market rate at the time of delivery)

Cause right now, it's looking like you made approximately loan-shark many
dollars off of however many coins you bought at coinbase, that you're getting
tomorrow, for which your bank probably still has not debited your account.

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jmcqk6
Yes, you make a good point. I did get the market rate back then. The only
problem here is that I had different expectations, and expected a more
immediate turn around. I'm not sure if waiting a week is really sustainable as
a purchasing platform, but I'm also sure as time goes by, that time will
decrease.

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yebyen
Yeah, every time I look at my bitcoins and their value I think "that's way too
high, I'm not buying at that price" but I hold out and don't sell, and every
new day that comes it seems like the prior day would have been a great time to
buy. I don't think this momentum is sustainable either, but I'll tell you one
thing: I'd be a rich man (at least I'd be out of debt) if I had bought more
bitcoins instead of spending the ones I had on preorder mining equipment from
Butterfly Labs.

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cperciva
Not having fees is great... having a sane API would be much better.

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coinbase-craig
What changes would you like to see?

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cperciva
1\. Separate private and publishable keys (like Stripe does).

2\. Get rid of the "create a payment page" nonsense and just let me send
someone to
[http://www.coinbase.com/payme?mykey=FOO&amount=10.00&currenc...](http://www.coinbase.com/payme?mykey=FOO&amount=10.00&currency=USD&custom=BAR)

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andrewhillman
Wasn't bitcoin founded on the belief that it should be a currency free from
transactional fees? Oh the irony of this Bitcoin Black Friday schtick!

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oleganza
No one promised free transactions. Bitcoin miners compete for transaction fees
while transaction makers compete between each other for a place in the
blockchain. Miners are interested in accomodating as many txs as possible (at
least, to increase value of BTC as a whole which affects their own earning),
but network latency limits the growth (too big blocks would have higher chance
to become orphans if they propagate too slowly).

Bitcoin is a free market of validators and transaction-makers who try to find
the lowest possible fees to support the most profitable operation for
everyone.

PS. Hard-coded block size limit is not approached yet and will be raised by
majority of miners when they see huge demand in transactions. If they don't
they are undermining the value of the whole network and thus the value of
their earnings.

