Topic: Coinbase is turning into some sort of anti-bitcoin Mordor (Read 4069 times)

I don't particularly care whether or not I have a Coinbase account - my need to convert a USD income into bitcoin has run its course.

The next generation of new Coinbase users, on the other hand, deserve to know what they are getting into so they won't be able to claim they weren't warned when the inevitable Goxxing happens.

Ya, so what?  Seems pretty reasonable and rational on the part of Coinbase IMHO.  They did the same thing to me more or less.  Obviously I don't like it a lot, but it makes perfect sense.  Coinbase is in business to make money, and you don't stay in business very long by telling the authorities to stick it up their ass.  Even an outfit of Google's size can get only so far by attempting to do so, and trying it as a start-up is a sure-fire way to make some angle investors very unhappy.

It is the case that Coinbase retains a monopoly in their market space (as best I can ascertain...Circle has not yet replied to my request to be a customer...)  It is reasonable to infer that Coinbase is particularly compliant with the regulators.  Again, that would not be shocking to me and I'm pretty neutral about it to say the truth.  Helps, I suppose, to be not especially threatened by it personally.  I'm pleasantly surprised that simply telling Coinbase to talk to Kenna about my BTC (via analysis of the blockchain) was sufficient to get them off my case.

http://bitcoinism.liberty.me/2014/07/08/re-enhanced-due-diligence/

Not discussing practical aspects, but in essence dictating someone how to deal with his/her money has a definite taste of totalitarianism. Come to think about it, Jeff Tucker is right when he mockingly calls money laundering "a thoughtcrime".

Wise words.

For my part I very deliberately routed things through one account and went out of my way to make sure I did some transactions exceeding $10k.  This was very much so I could not be accused of 'structuring' for the purposes of avoiding detection or whatever.

Any 'structuring' (deliberate or not) is likely to be trivially detected at this point such is the nature of the surveillance state.  This is particularly the case in the financial arena.  These are, of course, only my guesses, but they are vaguely educated guesses on my part.  So, primitive attempts at gaming are relatively pointless and usually counterproductive.  Long term poster 'proudhon' made a statement recently which I liked: "Don't try to beat them at their own game."

Now, for my troubles on being fully transparent I did have my accounts canceled.  But I am not in jail!  Not yet anyway, and I don't expect to be unless the simple act of making some money off Bitcoin is criminalized...and ex-post facto principles which are pretty basic in any semi-functional legal system are shit-canned.

 - edit: correction.

It's hard to imagine worse advice than what you give here, which is illegal and subjects the victim of your advice to huge fines as well as potential jail time.

Will you be visiting the victims of your advice in jail? Or donating to their legal bills and substantial financial penalties?

You are almost certainly correct in all of your estimates outlined above.

I do hope that at some point it will be more possible to stretch Bitcoin operations out as months-long tactical plays, but at the present time and for the near future Bitcoin is far to volatile.

I understand and indeed welcome financial institutions looking for criminal activity an attempts to criminally exploit their offerings.  Ideally I WOULD be flagged and investigated.  If any questions remain outstanding, all they would have to do is contact me and I would explain the details and provide documentation which could be cross-checked against other data that the various entities have (which is probably a lot.)  Then I would be told to carry on, or normally I would never have been bothered in the first place.  Coinbase seems to have performed in this manner and I appreciate it.

In actuality what happened in mainstream-land is that I was very significantly impacted on the the basis of suspicion alone and with no opportunity to supply input.  This might be more 'efficient' (e.g., add to Wells Fargo's next few quarterly earnings and bonuses for their execs), but it's not a maintainable method of fostering and enduring economy.  If legitimate players are forced out of the system it does nobody any good (except that it might spur development of crypto-currency alternatives which, I must admit, I very much welcome.)

I believe that when there is credit card and other fraud, the banks just distribute the cost of the fraud to their non-fraudulent userbase and make little or no attempt to hold the perps accountable.  They probably do send a note to law enforcement, but it usually goes into the round file for 'efficiency' reasons.  Again, this is a form of corrosion of our financial systems (and political systems) and the effects will increasingly felt (higher fees, etc) but more threateningly will form a weakened structure which is prone to play a role in a more systemic collapse.

After reading your posts about  your banking issue, to me it sounds like you have sold a lot coin for a lot of money in the past few months. (im thinking in the hundreds of thousands range, at least) The reason I think that is that you have or had a personal banker which you only get if you transfer a large sum over period of time. You have to remember that the Govt is focusing on illicit vendors that use bitcoin. You probably raised flags since you probably fit that mold. Im not saying you are by any means, I would find another bank, or a couple of banks and not transfer so much money. I would keep it to under 25k a month.  But when you transfer  tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands and its all from bitcoin, of course they are going to assume that you are getting them illegally. Thats why coinbase is now asking where you got your coin.

The guys that were on the silk road case have now formed a KYC organization and all they do is go thru all bitcoin exchanges and look at everyones personal info and when they see a red flag, you will be investigated. I learned this from looking at a linkedin profile of one of the head guys at the DEA that brought down silk road and he actually put that in his profile, lol... So, anyone that is going to be withdrawing a substantial amount of money with bitcoin is going to get looked at. Especially a USA based company that wants to stay compliant.

Although with a monopoly they likely could be profitable on transaction fees, that is probably not the goal or strategy.  It's a happy accident of fate which won't likely last.  A very common strategy model for startups these days is to simply make something which larger companies will want then work on being acquired.  A sensitive market segment such as that in which Coinbase operates is especially suited for this.  It is a win/win for both the mega-corp who doesn't have to expose themselves to the variety of risks involved, and the start-up who doesn't have to worry excessively about how they are going to scale, attain profitability, fund lobbyists, and so on.  Indeed, it's sometimes a benefit to the consumer who can realize a subsidization of a valuable service...for a while...

Hopefully we'll see Circle enter the mix pretty soon and a bunch more follow.  One for each of the handful of meaningful financial sector mega-corporations.

Although more Coinbases will mean more competition, my more immediate concern is that I'm being forced into a very unwelcome game of cat-n-mouse in order to try to complete my speculation on Bitcoin as mainstream banks cancel my accounts.  Wells Fargo forbid me from Coinbase by name, but they didn't forbid 'Circle'.  So, I'll happily fire up a new account and attach it to Circle and play similar games until they run me (and my rather large demand account deposits) off completely.  I can probably play that game until the Feds get involved and banish me as an individual from the entire banking system.  At that point I'll have to try to operate overseas I guess.  What a fuckin hassle.  The ironic thing is that I have a strong desire to pay my taxes and even accomplishing that is now tricky due to interference brought on almost certainly by Federal level market interference of one nature or another.

Perhaps they will do like any bank does with FLOAT and trade on it? If they gained a meager .5% day on holdings, that would grow daily for a long time. They only need to cover the coin as it's needed by customers. Additionally for all we know the function of CB.com is meant to better enable the movements of their mining and other operations ( I do not know if they have this, but it could be ).

Say they touched 10% of FIAT movements per day , and we assume that on average , that would be half of what's mined, and 10% of that. So, 360 BTC / day they "touch" in movement ( which is low, because they service both sides of conversion ),  that would be 10k / day in fee's alone and I'm being very liberal in saying they ONLY make .5% in that transaction.

That would be 300K / mo , 3.6 M / year. Now that's cash flow, so it can get loans against it. If they are betting LONG, thats a 10 year outlook in the worst case. Which to me, is a good sign for the industry. Considering they could easily make 1-2% in "price arbitrage" on any day, you can see this figure balloon nicely.

Realistically I'd imagine they turn around the 30M in about 3-4 years. The good thing about this, they are promoting adoption and user base growth, which could speed that up for them, and make your coin all the more valuable over time.

They are a payment gateway and an exchange baked into one, so they have a lot more going for them than others.

Gotta look long if you want BTC to be long. I much prefer to see investments publicly than privately. Good signals for other investors in the other verticals.

/endrant

In the name of being regulated, CoinBase has become to close to the government, which is against the basic of bitcoin. It is time to look around and find other alternatives.

It would seem that, as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox hunting, bullfighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.  -George Orwell

I think your bottom line nails it - Coinbase seeks to be as legitimate as a US bank.  Still, that sounds like an unnecessary level of questioning unless you were doing more than 10K USD worth of transactions in which case they probably have to file a report.

I have also heard of Coinbase "having issues" with trades, especially when the market is moving against them, but the two times I've used them for small transactions, there have been no issues.

I do appreciate hearing that at least they are not requiring verification for their btc wallet services.

Thanks and good luck!

I guess this is worth asking a question

What are the best alternatives to coinbase moving the user-base in reaction to their policies seems like a logical choice.
Mainstream adoption is good and all but for users who want to have more privacy there must be a few good choices to choose from

Anyways another story from the reddit thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1pr4bt/why_i_think_we_shouldnt_promote_coinbase_to_new/

They invested +30m dollars. How do you think they will get it back and with profit, just from transaction fees?

I personally have never had a problem with selling BTC on coinbase with 10+ transactions.

But if you are having problem perhaps you need to stop using them and find a better avenue to buy/sell bitcoin.

how do you figure? I'm usually all for the muck raking , but this piqued my interest.

I've sold 2000+ BTC with CB, never a hitch. Honestly, I have gotten some deposits a day earlier then projected, but never late. They operate in the US , the US has laws that deal with money, banking and every vertical of the process they service for clients.

Buys maybe fill a little slower, but they need Market Makers.

Greedy companies like Coinbase distroy Bitcoin.

well that explains a lot.. cheers for an info

Coinbase only links US bank accounts and in order to verify you need to send them your US SSN and answer a lot of questions to confirm that you are based in the US. I went through this process long time ago and there was no issue with it. I suspect their sudden "due diligence" was more due to me purchasing quite a bit of BTC recently - right around the bottom.

Many people reported previously that Coinbase becomes quite unhappy when people buy cheaply from them. To the point of canceling already confirmed trades. This is understandable - as a trading intermediary, they are only happy when their customers buy high and sell low. It is only natural that they try to eliminate smart alec customers they consider a threat to their casino.