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.
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.
Honestly, I don't understand why everyone trashes Coinbase.<p>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.<p>Coinbase is, in my opinion, the most reputable exchange out there by far.
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.<p>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.
Say what you will about Coinbase, but I really appreciate their willingness to adapt and respond to customer feedback.<p>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.
Coinbase could easily avoid, or be unable to, provide BCH balances to their bitcoin holding customers.<p>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.<p>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.
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?<p>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?
so inflation comes in terms of forks in the realm of crypto currencies.<p>Isn't it how it started with gold-based government currencies as well? every government created their own currency/fork of gold.<p>edit: typo, inflation
Summary:<p>"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."
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.
<i>"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."</i><p>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?<p>This is what lawyers call "conversion"[1]. <i>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.”</i><p>It's legally equivalent to theft.[2] The typical example of conversion is renting something and then refusing to return it.<p>Coinbase execs, you really need to be talking to good securities lawyers.<p>[1] <a href="https://conversion.uslegal.com/criminal-conversion/" rel="nofollow">https://conversion.uslegal.com/criminal-conversion/</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1317-national-stolen-property-act-stolen-converted-taken-fraud" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1317-n...</a>
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.
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...
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.