Topic: Coinbase Stealing You're Bitcoin (Read 3639 times)

Coinbase works smoothly.  If you do not trust that they are giving a fair price as reflected on bitstamp, then transfer the coins to bitstamp and do it there manually.  From what I can tell, they are doing at least that well, matching what I see on bitstamp.  I posted earlier that it seemed I could "game" them a little, but now it seems to working more smoothly and quickly.  But they should state what price per coin you got after the transaction's done.  You have to manually do the calculation.

People think that it is no big deal, but when bitcoin has the next rise in price. A 10th of a penny becomes a penny, a penny becomes a £$. Then you will look back and realise how much wealth mining pools and exchanges have shaven off the edges. I think the 'work around' is for people to make only 5 decimal orders and keep the other 3 decimals away from the order queue and safely in their balance.

But I do like it when I see people FINALLY wake up to what mining pools (yes they take more then just 1% fee too) and exchanges are doing. It is almost like watching people wake up to what bankers have done, then fall asleep in bitcoinland again. I found it quite strange that sheeple trust bitcoin businesses to be more honourable then bankers. But atleast the sheeple are starting to wake up, well atleast some.

Less than a penny that's most likely the result of rounding. Yea really shaving off those pennies

It's basically the operator's fault since they have flaws in their system and did not patch it. I doubt thats the problem with coinbase though, they have pretty good security imo.

I've long suspected that the Exchanges sweeping the "dust" from all of the individual trading transactions is actually how their owners will get rich someday.

Bitcoin sites get hacked constantly, and hackers steal more than just coins - they steal your identity as well, if your documents or personal information can be found on the server.

I very much doubt Coinbase is stealing your bit coin.

Also, someone said "all exchanges steal money". Um... I hope that's not true. You don't know that all the exchanges have transaction fees.

That said, Coinbase is not really an exchange (Other than buying/selling from coinbase itself). It is a wallet, with a merchant API and also an easy way to buy/sell bitcoin for USD via ACH transactions to your bank account.

As someone said... here from the FAQ:

We only show two digits on your balance if it is greater than 5 BTC. This is just to clean up the interface and try to hide unnecessary detail. If you move your mouse over the balance on your Transactions page, the full amount out to 8 decimal places will be displayed.

Also, they even pay miner fees on external bitcoin transactions you perform:

Yes, Coinbase pays miner fees (typically 0.002 BTC) on external transactions greater than 0.001 BTC in order to ensure these transactions propagate throughout the bitcoin network quickly. For amounts less than 0.001 BTC, Coinbase does not pay the fee required by the network.

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Why would they pay miner fees if the are going to steal 100 satoshi?

I really suggest the OP contact coinbase and see what's going on.

The electricity cost to run your computer to post this thread cost more than the satoshis coinbase took from you.  You should sue bitcointalk instead.

Well, what are the best coinbase alternatives then?

Claiming that "some hacker" took your funds, is a classic Bitcoin scam method.

Coinbase is run by criminals, just like the other exchanges and the foundation

security is good in coinbase like phone code security

Not a new thing for such exchanges

I don't know but If it isn't clearly stated they would do such things in the terms of service agreements or what have you then that is wrong.  Don't no why random amounts would be taking out without you knowledge, just seems odd.

Thing is I'd think that the OP would contact the staff there before starting a thread calling out as major scammers  but that is just me.

I've been very happy with coinbase's system for the opposite reason.  They were (at least when I was trading) matching in near-real time bitstamp prices and bitstamp would have these large swings up or down, usually corresponding to low volume ... lower than what I would buy at coinbase.  Working between the two, I got 5% excess profit 2 times last year, and someone had to absorb that loss because the volume I got at a low (or high) price was more than the volume that transpired on bistamp.  So coinbase and/or bitstamp had to absorb that loss.  Conversely when you lose on trades, one or both of them accidentally gain.  I was looking for it because after reading about their agreement with bitstamp, I wondered how they were going to be fair to everyone and keep their profit always at 1%.  The answer is that they can't.  They have to gain and lose on trades accidentally (beyond what their programming and agreement is able to deal with).  It is not possible for them to give the exact price on bistamp because they are not directly on the exchange.  This is why coinbase has a limit on trades. You've got 50 coins per day to use, if you want to "work the system" at someone's loss, you've got to make the right guess or be the loser yourself.  You can't do a bot at coinbase, so the competition in that type of "trading" environment is diffrerent. There would have to be a serious merger of the trades to get exactly 1% profit on every trade.  I trust they are trying to be as fair to everyone as possible.  

They still don't charge nearly as much as Vircurex for transactions or withdrawals!!!

A lot of exchangers do this.

It's called Penny Shaving.

Superman III
Hackers
Office Space

It makes sense now 

We're Bitcoin coz we all have Bitcoin icon under our names in this forum

i am bitcoin?
ok

Coinbase is a business not a charity. Their sole purpose is to make money. How can you expect them to NOT charge transaction fees? Those fees are why the company exists. This isn't a bad thing, they provide a really good service. They make it easy to buy, sell, and own bitcoins. This obviously is going to come at a small price.

But I don't wanna be a Bitcoin.  I wanna be a Dogecoin!

Coinbase is stealing and everyone else is a Bitcoin. Yeehaw!

And it's "stealing" not "steeling."  Hard to take someone seriously when they can't even spell properly.

i always just sell everything in my account

Time to set the building on fire.   

I believe they have my stapler

There's actually an FAQ about this on their site...  they only go so many decimal places to the right and then they just round. The actual amount in your account is accurately stored in their database, (for example, 0.1578234) but just displayed as 0.158. I'm sure you could submit an inquiry and receive an answer that explains as much.

Couple that with the transaction fee and I can see how maybe it looks like they're taking something off the top... but generally I think Coinbase is cool people.

Office Space? Definitely a good movie 

Well anyway, so if you include the dust, that would be...what... 1.1% fee per buy/sell rather than their 1% official charge? That is still not a bad fee amount.

Your not you're Bitcoin! I came just to correct the title, it hurts my eyes!

Did you check their terms of service?
Perhaps they are honest about "sweeping up the dust?"

doesn't surprise me, from pools to hardware manufacturers to hackers, this is a unregulated market (read cops will not show up on my doorstep)

2000 satoshi is less than a penny. Not much to cry about. I think they're a stable exchange, have extremely low fees, and am glad to give them an extra penny per transaction.

I noticed this exact same thing.  Irregularities with available balance that always seems to be something like 1% off.  Even after all fees are factored in, you're just randomly missing a tiny amount of coin.

Maybe some of you will remember back in the 80's or 90's there was a movie about a hacker that had been steeling small fractions of a cent from every bank transaction somewhere out west. Said hacker ended up making 100's of millions of dollars before getting caught or fleeing to some tropical paradise. Well it went something like that anyways can't quite remember the exact details.

Coinbase is doing the exact same thing! Over the last week I sent 2 small quantities of btc to coinbase as follows

BTC0.13182195

BTC0.05819864

Of the first deposit I sold 0.1318 after which coinbase cleared/stole the resulting balance of 2195 satoshi

The second was similar only this time 0.05819 was sold and they stole 864 satoshi.

Now consider this happening 100 thousand times! That's BTC2195 and BTC864 respectively.

For each individual it's like oh no big deal the "dust" is gone from my account. However collectively they are stealing thousands possibly 10's or 100's of thousands of btc on a weekly/monthly/annual basis!!!