Why not put that free time into a second job and put the earnings solely into Bitcoin?  You will probably make more that way than with any other method.

It would be nice if somebody could create an exchange where people can get money in through a credit card processor, using models similar to those discussed here to minimize the risk of chargeback.  Somebody was floating the idea of doing this with paypal, but I think the idea is even better if paypal can be skipped altogether.

Lol, I wish.  No relation.

I deleted my Coinbase posts on other threads.

So far my coinbase experience has been positive overall.  The first issue I have had was this order that I thought was canceled, and that appears to have been a mistake.  The unconfirmed transaction issues last week and the zero balance issues were minor annoyances; I'm sure they would've been worse for me if I were more dependent on coinbase at this point.  But in my opinion they were resolved acceptably, and I'll bet if Coinbase hadn't been so busy with those last week, support would've told me my order was still active and told me how to view it.

I stand corrected.

I think I've been making a mistake this whole time.  If so, I apologize to coinbase.

My bitcoin purchase is not visible under "Transactions," which is why I have been convinced my purchase was canceled.  But it is visible under Buy/Sell bitcoin -> Transfer History.  It is there, and it is correct, and I have nothing to complain about other than possibly the fact that the user interface is a bit confusing.

My apologies to Coinbase.  They have had an extremely rough week and been under a ton of pressure, and here I am clogging up their pipes with a clueless newbie issue, and worse, damaging their reputation.  I will continue to use Coinbase in the future, and will continue to recommend them and I look forward to watching them grow.

I got another reply from Coinbase.  This time they resolved the zeroed out balance.  But my 1.0 BTC purchase from last Wednesday is still gone without a trace, and there was nothing in the Coinbase response that addressed or even acknowledged it.

Nope; I was wrong.  According to Yankee, they were under attack for awhile and removed the option during that time.

I noticed that bitinstant no longer shows an option to send coins via Coinapult or directly to a bitcoin address.

It sounds like everybody is running out of bitcoins everywhere.

I've received a response from coinbase, but it seems to be a form response about the unconfirmed transaction issue they had last week.  I'm aware of that issue; in fact, I explained it to several people here.  I thought it was very interesting and was only slightly inconvenienced.  But my issue is separate, I believe: I bought 1.0 BTC from Coinbase, and my purchase has disappeared with no notice.  Now I have an additional issue: the rest of my coinbase balance has zeroed out for no reason.

I've seen a couple of comments that coinbase is "out of coins," like over on this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144189.0;all

Has anyone seen this from some official source?  Is that the reason why my order was canceled?

Would like to hear something official from coinbase.

Wednesday I purchased 1.0 BTC from Coinbase (at the beginning of the downturn, for about $24.50).  Thursday, this transaction showed as pending with an ETA of next Wednesday.  But yesterday, the transaction had completely disappeared, without a trace.  There is no record of my purchase in Coinbase any more.  I did not receive any notification of my transaction being canceled or of my transaction being deemed "at risk."

I have contacted coinbase support, PMed Brian Armstrong on this site, and also tried to contact Coinbase through twitter.  So far I've received no response at all.

I would like to know what happened and whether or not I'll be able to continue purchasing through Coinbase in the future.  I'd like to get some closure on this and get going getting my 1.0 BTC somewhere else, or get my transaction to come back into existence preferably with the same original ETA.  I'd like to hear something.

Resolved, see below (clueless user / awkward interface)

I like 'coin, but it'll probably never catch on.

Any of the above might be permissible if you'd fix the problem "alot" in your poll and say "a lot" instead.  That's going to grate on me all night long!

Word.

I'd like to see TRC and other altcoins as well!

Mostly bitparking, which is my favorite so far.

That's true, but an address is not a public key.  An address is an irreversable hash of a public key.  You can't turn an address into the corresponding public key.  The public key is only disclosed when a transaction spends from that address.

(I think I have this right, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

Because an address is a hash of a public key, you can think of them as the same thing for the purpose of simplification and understanding.  But technically they are different.

Thanks, Brian.  Made for some excitement.  We don't have enough of that around here.

blockchain.info now shows these transactions with 23 confirmations, but coinbase still shows them with 0.

I have to say I don't actually know.  I'm fine with paying the fees.

If it's not a feature you can set in the menus, you can recompile the client to just not include fees.  The point is that the protocol, in and of itself, doesn't require fees.  The catch is that individual miners may require fees.

I think there has been talk of making the fees more relative in the future, such that the client would observe how long it takes transactions to get included in a block based on fee, and suggest something appropriate relative to how quickly you want your transaction included.

And now here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=143915.0