Bitcoin Forum

I'm going to buy a bag of weed for you but I need the money up front. You'll see me again in 3, 4 or 5 days. Maybe a little longer.

When I get back to you, I don't have the weed but I do have your money. I used your pledge, and the pledges of others, so that I could buy a pound of weed and distribute it amongst my friends. If we keep doing this deal, sometimes you might get some weed.

hahaha +1

lol! Sounds about right!

Your story needs more Wall Street in it.

Change it from weed to powder?

Or 15 year olds.

Fun fact of the day: did you know HashKing (gigavps' other bankrupt/scammer miner (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=108405.0) friend) sarcastically claimed he's 15 which ended up with people missing the sarcasm and weeks' worth of "omg he's 15" statements played straight all over the place?

Explain to me how this makes any sense when no funds ever leave the consumer's bank account at any point during the "pending" process.

Here's my question:  If you buy BTC but the price of BTC drops during the "pending" process, can you simply move funds out of your bank such that there wouldn't be enough funds to cover the wire transfer?  Or are the funds "locked" as soon as the request to purchase is initiated?  For example, if I have $100 in my bank account and request to buy $90 of BTC, but afterwards I try to make a $20 purchase, will my $20 purchase be declined?

That would be double spending, so I think they would be declined. Never experimented myself.

I would like to know others' experiences with this.  Anyone?

I accidentally double spent against Coinbase once. I got an email saying the sale was complete (not realizing that I had accidentally specified the wrong checking account when I started the order) and withdrew my bitcoins. Then a couple hours later I got an email saying the transfer failed due to insufficient funds.

We got it straightened out in the end, but I was surprised their system didn't catch it before I did.

Coinbase having a bunch of open orders backed by bank drafts is like a company walking around the Bitcoin market with cash. Not all of those orders are being filled, obviously.

If Coinbase customers want to help fund Coinbase for free while only getting bitcoins every now and then, it's their choice as the informed consumers that they are to be treated like that.

Well, I might as well point out the factual error here.  A bank draft is a type of check where the payment is guaranteed to be available by the issuing bank.

Therefore, this is not a "bank draft" but a pending ACH transfer.  A pending ACH transfer is not guaranteed by the issuing bank, as there is always a chance that there aren't enough funds in the account to cover the transfer.

EDIT: Source: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bank_draft.asp#axzz2N0OwxWaU

Your point is taken. But I hope you see the point I'm trying to make.

The way I see it, if I can withdraw funds from my account such that the ACH transfer won't clear (and, subsequently, neither will the BTC purchase) then you can essentially play the same 'uncertainty game' that Coinbase plays and the whole thing becomes a non-issue aside from a little frustration.  Actually, it could be an excellent way to prevent loss at times.

Exactly!  They never hold your funds or anything.  If you don't like their fraud detection, go somewhere else and buy Bitcoins with the money that's still in the bank.

It's not fraud detection. It seems to be a random "let's piss people off and see who responds" metric.

I dislike Coinbase immensely. You're more than free defend the service but you're wasting your time trying to persuade me of anything in relation to it.

Well, the same with every online money transfer service, right?  And the same with every bank in existence?

BTW: I'm not trying to convince you to like it.  I'm just saying that they have a right to use fraud detection.

Coinbase: These are very serious allegations. When people want their weed you better give it to them.

It's more serious because, Wall Street. Change the weed to powder and you get a different kind of discomfort when someone is missing their fix...

+1

Ageed, I've been greeted by their sold out sign pretty much every time I have tried during a dip for at least the past week.    >:(

I was only trying to purchase 1 or 2 coins each time, pretty lame excuse for an exchange.

Gee.  So if you were a Mexican weed cartel and you wanted to destroy the domestic (US) weed suppliers, you'd always give people money for their weed, but seldom give them weed for their money.  And then, once you had lots and lots of weed, you could sell it really, really cheap to the mid-level dealers and consumers who had always bought domestic weed... I bet that'd hurt the domestic people pretty badly, wouldn't it?

Sometimes I think that HRU* MPOE-PR occasionally makes a very good point:






*His Royal Unpleasantness

It's a shame more people ain't seeing it.

The words "clip joint" come to mind.

Oh hey - entirely off-topic, and just as a matter of curiosity - did you know that one of the principals of Coinbase used to work for Goldman Sachs?  I've always been very reassured to know that the level of professionalism in the bitcoin business community was increasing so nicely.

Quite aware of it, thanks. I'm frequently told by some in the Bitcoin community that it's nothing to worry about and that I should just shut the fuck up.