
Coinbase is filling orders above market rate - nodesocket
https://twitter.com/johnny5feels/status/934989175413080065
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worduppp
Coinbase has a spread baked into their brokerage price and this is public and
available in their support docs.

Literally just Google "Coinbase fees":
[https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/210959...](https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/2109597-buy-
sell-bank-transfer-fees)

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nodesocket
Doesn't this feel predatory though? They already charge a transaction fee? Any
reputable online-brokerage that charged above market prices for stock market
orders would get destroyed for this.

~~~
IAmGraydon
Lots of online brokerages do this. This is how almost every Forex brokerage
operates - you buy above and sell below market rate, which is how they make
their money.

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Veratyr
Only the bad forex brokerages. The good ones (ECN) take commission instead.

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Deregibus
This is like complaining that the rates at the airport currency exchange are
worse than in your FX trading account.

Coinbase isn't a brokerage, it's more akin to a bank, and like a bank you're
not going to get the market rate if you want to exchange currency. If you want
to use a brokerage, use GDAX.

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ActsJuvenile
Coinbase has a history of canceling orders placed at lower price if the price
spikes to a higher level. All other companies honor prevailing price at the
time of order.

Top that off with Coinbase's buggy automated KYC system, hackable 2FA, and
lack of customer support, and it makes me wonder if this is the best that $140
million investment can deliver?

~~~
memorymappings
Question as I'm not a "hacker" and don't claim to be, but what are the worst
possible case scenarios with hacakable 2FA outside of individuals getting
screwed over as opposed to the platform itaelf becoming unstable? Secondly 2FA
has never claimed to be 100% secure by any company unless coinbase is
promising to be the first company to do so? That is my understanding but if
there is something particularly vulnerable about coinbase or gdaxes
implementation of 2FA what is it? I know you can set up multiple forms of
backup but I use Google authentiactor which becomes just about as vulnerable
as who can get into my phone depending on where I leave it if I lock my phone
if I lock the app etc etc just like any other form of 2FA? I'm genuinely
curious as I am just learning about encryption in my spare time but by no
means an expert.

Regardless about coinbase being insecure in general I was looking/curious
about the bug bounties coinbase has been offering (and for gdax too as they
are under the same company umbrella) and the highest bounty bid range that has
been claimed is $5k but they offer up to $50k in bug bounties up to remote
exectuable code for gdax.

As far as the $140milliom, coinbase/gdax are hiring multiple positions for
backend gdax senior engineers and other support. The recent infusion of
$140million is only from a few months ago so I'm pretending the money wisely
and hiring high quality people doesn't happen overnight.

Secondly, alot of the funding has been spent on fees for liscensing in NY as
coinbase continued to pull through as multiple other platforms pulled out of
NY when it became nightmarishly expensive and overly complicated to deal with
relative to every other state.

Finally, as coinbase is one of the few maybe the only besides one or two
others that is liscensed in NY that means wallstreet is trading on it, so the
spikes are definitely subject to be exposed or show other latency issues on
the platforms that are legal for people to use, now that multiple banks have
come out and acknowledged they are trading with BTC.

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IAmGraydon
What this guy is complaining about is effectively a 0.24% spread. This is
directly from Coinbase's site:

 _Your exchange rate for buying or selling digital currency through our
Conversion Service is calculated as the market rate of the digital currency on
Coinbase’s GDAX platform, plus a spread between 25 to 100 basis points
determined by the size of your transaction, market volatility and length of
time using Coinbase ( "Exchange Rate")._

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panarky
This guy complains about a one-fifth-of-one-percent difference with one-minute
precision.

Bitcoin prices on one exchange frequency change by more than this in any given
minute, so what part of 6:44 PM is he talking about?

Also, there is no "market price" with a 0.2% precision when prices on various
high-volume exchanges vary 10x this amount at any given moment.

[https://imgur.com/a/7gFaI](https://imgur.com/a/7gFaI)

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gomox
I don't get it. Coinbase is more costly than using the underlying exchange
directly. Is that unexpected? It's a convenience service. There are costs to
this convenience.

The $2 "fee" looks like a 4% credit card payment processing fee, pocketed by
Stripe or the likes, not Coinbase's fee.

~~~
nodesocket
They are already charging a transaction fee, why should their execution price
be above market?

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davidmurdoch
I know GDAX's highs at different candle intervals aren't consistent or
accurate. This is probably related to the same kind of UI or data processing
issue and not some wild conspiracy.

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teknopurge
I noticed this too. Anyone want to guess why they are bumping the spread so
much? Their price is over 100 USD higher than Kraken's prints tonight...

~~~
IAmGraydon
Why? Because they're keeping the difference.

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nodesocket
Anybody have better BTC market feeds? The graphs I am looking at show the
market price should have been around $9,600.

[https://imgur.com/a/e0Gtt](https://imgur.com/a/e0Gtt)

~~~
oscilloscope
The best feed to look at is GDAX for Bitcoin on Coinbase
[https://www.gdax.com/trade/BTC-USD](https://www.gdax.com/trade/BTC-USD)

