Bitcoin Forum

I'll start: This is for experienced traders... Your opinion is wanted.
Do you trust linking a Bank Account to the Bitcoin Ecosystem with CoinBase?

Imagine if you were doing $5,000 worth of transactions every 2 weeks, or maybe you currently are, who knows
And you are withdrawing increments of $5,000 to your Bank account.  Would you use CoinBase to do this with?

And would you trust it going to your bank account in such large amounts?

Yes definitely, and for a time I was doing $5,000 worth of transactions PER DAY.

You are covered if they tried to take more than authorized out of your bank account. It's not like bitcoin, ACH transactions can be reversed.

I would have just wired money if I was moving 5k PER DAY.

Awesome. So using CoinBase is a good way to go? and what about selling it at a price,
and the price goes up or down... what does CoinBase base the transaction on?

For Example: if you sell the 1/BTC at $100 - then 10 minutes later, it goes to $105,
but the transaction hasn't hit your account yet. Do you get $105 or $100?

I would assume $100 because it was during that exchange time.

Coinbase is the about the best to send BTC to sell and about the worse to buy BTC from.

I've had a great experience with Coinbase so far as well.

As to your question: Coinbase transactions record the price when you made the transaction.  If I buy a coin today at $108 the amount is deducted immediately/soon and then usually receive the coin in around 5 days, regardless of what the price is at that future point.

I was using coinbase to sell, not to buy. And you will quickly run into monthly withdrawal limits if you sell $5k per day on mtgox while there are no monthly limits on coinbase.

I've not had much experience with buying, but selling has been smooth.  Sell coin, 7 days later the money shows up in your checking account.  If you can deal with the 7 day lag, this is pretty much the most painless method for selling btc.

Sigg

That's awesome. 5 Days isn't bad, but I wonder if there is a faster way to receive and sell. I wonder why it takes long for the entire transaction of receiving them.

My bank (USAA) allows me to easily create as many checking accounts as I want so I made a special one just for services like Dwolla, Coinbase and PayPal so that they would not have access to my primary account.

part of the banking system? it takes time for the bank to move money around!

So awesome, even getting money in/out of banks reinforces BTC's aspect of usability ;)

That's great. I am familiar with people who use USAA. It's restricted for the military or any special services for the USA, right?
or can the general public join them? I like your concept because of many trust factors.

Their banking services are available to everyone. It's only the insurance products and possibly loans which are restricted.

Does anyone know how much of this is bank lag and how much of this is Coinbase lag? Basically, how does this compare to Dwolla?

They are about the same in my experience when it comes to how quickly they can process a withdrawal from your bank account.

Your bank's policy will affect how quickly funds arriving from Dwolla or Coinbase become available for spending.

Ahh perfect. That's what I figured. I need to get with USAA because it seems like the benefits outweighs the regular banks like BOFA/WELLS/ETC..

What about Credit Unions? Does anyone use multiple credit union checking accounts for it?

Their only disadvantage is a lack of local branches, but other than dealing with things like cash and money orders this isn't a problem because you can do absolutely everything else on your phone, web browser or at worst via a phone call. Unlike almost every other bank they don't nickle and dime you with bullshit fees and onerous balance requirements.

Does anyone know why there is a GAP between the two prices on CoinBase?  (BUY VS. SELL)

https://i.imgur.com/tHkcvqk.png

Hmmm, guessing the difference between buying from the first sell order compared to selling to the first buy order?

Yeah, it could be that. so that way they don't have people buying/selling instantly for a profit, right?

We had some good discussions here. Let's keep it going.

What are some other thoughts about using CoinBase?

I'm in the process of buying from Coinbase right now.  If anyone's curious, I'll be happy to explain how long it takes once it's finished.  I don't plan on actually keeping my bitcoins with them since I'd rather have them in my own cold wallet, but it seems like a great way to buy, at least so far.

Any updates and thoughts of buying/selling? with coinbase?

The bitcoin buy worked beautifully, except for the part where I lost about 21% in value (so far) since I bought the bitcoins, but that's not really Coinbase's fault.  I submitted the buy order on Sunday, they said the coins would arrive the following Friday, and they did indeed show up in my account on Friday when they said they would.  Coinbase emailed me when they were available.  The only part I'm not wild about is that my bank account actually got debited quite a bit before the coins were available to use - as in, a full day before I could use the coins.

I see. That sounds smooth and yeah its about 3-7 days from what I hear. The last part about getting debited a day prior isn't actually a bad thing. I would say that is at least fair for CoinBase to properly operate a business without worrying about much, and I am sure other things that go with it as to added reasons why they needed to do that.

Maybe it was processed midnight then once cleared by coinbase billing, coin was dispensed in your account.

It's like when you get a check submitted, it takes sometimes until Midnight to let it clear or when the funds are received, there is a hold on the balance until all is cleared the next day (on the sellers) account. I am assuming there is these processing steps provided by their financial institution and yours.

Otherwise, this sounds all good, except for the 21% value in loss. Hope you make it up later on.

Thanks, yeah, I'm hoping it regains the value and then some so I'll hopefully earn it back later on with an increase (from what I bought at $100) to a higher price.  I'm still bullish long term, but I know it'll probably be a wild ride until the long term happens. 

The only thing I have to say is that if you're thinking of buying now, you may want to buy elsewhere where the buy can go through more quickly like with Dwolla.  The price has been dropping so much lately that I'd want the buy to go through pretty fast if I was buying bitcoins today.  Either that or just wait until the price quits dropping, no clue when that'll be though, it's been doing this for I think a couple weeks now.

Hang in there. The market is doing a dip which will kick out a-lot of the people who see 'bitcoin dieing'
and shoot back up once its all mature enough. If your not so much looking to get your money out yet,
try investing into BTCT.CO to earn you some more coins, then when the market is mature, you can start selling.

Also, doesn't hurt to buy once it stabilizes at the lowest peak.

I have my coins invested with Coinlenders and plan on keeping them there for the year.  The interest rate is high enough that as long as bitcoin prices don't go down too much more, I should maintain the purchasing power of what I put in, which is nice, but not quite the appreciation I was hoping for.  Basically, the extra bitcoins will probably just barely cancel out the loss in value - and that's assuming it stops going down pretty soon. 

Haven't decided if I'm going to buy more or not; given that bitcoins are a pretty risky investment, I may just stick with what I originally invested plus the interest I'll be getting from Coinlenders.

LTC-Wallet.com just stole everyone's LTC after implementing their interest loan service. I am not saying this is the case with coinlenders or anything, but your statement is very strong and sounds promotional for the benefit of 'coinlenders'..

Why do you mention their service in this thread? our topic is about coinbase

It's not intended as promotional, but I can see how you see it that way.  The reason I mentioned it is you suggested investing my bitcoins and I was just explaining how I already did.  TradeFortress, the guy who runs the site, has a +76 trust reputation on this board, that's strong enough to me that I'm not inclined to think that he's planning on running off with our bitcoins.  He's running a business anyway, and it would destroy his business if he did, so it's technically in his interest not to do that.

Curious to know what kind of business can generate profit to warrant such high interest rate. And why would anyone offer such high rate given that any business/person with good credit can probably get a cheaper loan elsewhere.

I'm a little late to this discussion but I will say that I've done lots and lots of business (seriously, a lot) with Coinbase and I couldn't be more pleased. There have been multiple instances where they are transferring $10,000+ to me and I have never had any issues with them in any way. Transfers to my account take no more than one full business day and their web site is pretty reliable with uptime. They are also US based and VC backed, which is as solid as you can get in the BTC world. I wouldn't hesitate to use them again.

Sorry to derail your Coinbase thread, maco.

This question would really be better answered by TradeFortress than myself, but it's my understanding that he makes loans at a 60% interest rate and thus is able to offer CDs at 25% - 27% and still make a profit off it.  Why anyone would actually take such a high interest rate loan is a mystery to me, unless perhaps people value anonymity more than money, which wouldn't surprise me in the bitcoin community.  Also, the CDs are also only for a one month term so it's not guaranteed to be that high a rate for the whole year, he could lower the rate and you'd have a lower rate if you decide to create a new CD after it matures.

This is good to hear - this is a much more solid recommendation than mine since I only made one $500 order on Coinbase. 

Anyone know how Coinbase bases its spot price?  It used to be tied to Gox then it decoupled a while back.  Today Gox was at $69, CampBX, Bitstamp, and BTC-E were all around $65.  Coinbase was asking $69.50 to purchase so it can't be an average of the exchanges.  Are they just taking Gox and adding a slight premium for slippage?

Hello, maco.

Sorry to hi-jack your thread.

To answer your question regarding coinbase, my opinion is you can trust them. I have sent over 300 btc there to sell and they ACH money back to my bank in 1-3 days (unlike Mtgox).

The fee is 1% and the spread between coinbase and Mtgox is steep. So if you do large transaction, the cost will be high.

Ive asked this question before and I only get shady answers from Coinbase. They just say that its a mathematical formula and the price is what it is, they will not adjust it for you in any (or their fees). As far as I can tell, it's a mixture of (1) how much BTC you are selling or buying to them - try entering the sales for 10 BTC and then enter 100 BTC and you will see what I mean (2) the number of BTC that they have bought that day. You can see this by checking their buy/sell spread in the morning and then again in the evening. Ive seen instances where there is zero spread between the two and its usually in the mornings and (3) the liquidity providers that they have. This is why the price changed dramatically when Gox went down. My guess is that they were using Gox as a liquidity provider (a counter-party). But once the USD withdrawals stopped, they stopped using Gox and set their own price with a combination of the above and (my guess) the prices on both CampBX and Tradehill (and maybe a few others).

Again, these are all just my guesses after doing many, many transactions with Coinbase

Thanks.  I never tried changing the amount of BTC to see if that affects the price.  I'll have to check that out.  Do you know what time they typically purchase Bitcoin each day?  Is it Eastern or Pacific timezone?

They purchase BTC all the time I think. I've only heard of limits on the sell side - they only SELL so many BTC each day. But for buying, I've never run into a problem there.