Coinbase: Bitcoin's Biggest Systemic Risk

[25hashcoin]

Bitcoin Bank Coinbase is the most pro-government, pro-regulation, pro-status-quo company in Bitcoin space. They bend over backwards to over-comply with any and all AML/KYC/ABC regulation the bureaucrats of the world invent. As a consequence, they treat their "customers" like criminals on parole and keep their bitcoins hostage to the fullest extent. I shudder to think of the moment Coinbase is able to enforce their "vision" on Bitcoin ecosystem at large. God forbid Brian Armstrong becomes our Master of the Protocol! We are truly and deeply f*cked if this comes to pass.

It would not be such a concern if Brian Armstrong were just another egomaniacal nobody aspiring to become King of Bitcoin. But unfortunately it's not the case - Coinbase currently has huge influence and power. Not only is it the most popular 'online wallet' and significant exchange. I've seen estimates that currently more than 10% of all BTC in existence reside in addresses under Coinbase's direct control. This gives them enormous leverage. Potentially, they could engage in all kinds of 'fractional reserve' tricks, with their customers none the wiser. Like using 'borrowed' coins to crash the price on their exchange at a convenient moment, dragging the whole Bitcoin market down via arbitrage (doesn't it look like this is exactly what happened with the markets TODAY?)

In order to prevent Coinbase from taking over the ecosystem and dictating us their will, the community needs to take a decentralized action. We need to weaken Coinbase's power. How? Quite simple - defund it.

Don't keep any of your coins in Coinbase wallet (owners of those 10% existing BTC! hello!) Even better to close your account altogether, thus sending Brian Armstrong a message.

Don't use their exchange if you can help it (there are many decent alternatives: Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Kraken, Gemini, etc). If you are using their exchange, remove purchased coins from your Coinbase wallet immediately.

Don't fall for 'Buy with Coinbase' trick that some of the merchants try to pull on you. Demand that your merchant accept direct bitcoin payments, not 'bitcoin bank debit'.

Don't recommend Coinbase to anyone and actively discourage people from using it in favor of the alternatives. Hell, even if somebody wants to purchase BTC directly from their bank account, Circle is not that bad. At least their CEO is NOT on a self-assigned mission to take over Bitcoin.

In order to pro-actively prevent this takeover, we have to act - and the time for your action is NOW!


- full credit to /u/bit_novosti on reddit

[MFahad]

Whats action can we take to stop this?
Stop using coin base or some other thing?

[Jet Cash]

If coinbase are selling customers coins to depress the market, then the best thing we can do is to buy and hold Bitcoins. That would force them to buy back at a loss. I'm happy to do this.

[Denker]

If coinbase are selling customers coins to depress the market, then the best thing we can do is to buy and hold Bitcoins. That would force them to buy back at a loss. I'm happy to do this.

I'm already waiting for a price of below 400 to buy a bit more.
Sure I would prefer the price would go up, but if some idiots would give more the opportunity to accumulate even more for a nice price I wouldn't regret that.

[Hirose UK]

Whats action can we take to stop this?
Stop using coin base or some other thing?

I think OP mentioned 4 ways to do. one of them is stopping usage of coinbase wallet.

I myself don't use coinbase no longer.

[franky1]

the issue of coinbase is that coinbase handles FIAT.

this regulations are not due to bitcoin, but due to fiat.

if you dont want to be slapped around by fiat regulations then stop trading between bitcoin and fiat. and instead use the altcoin to bitcoin markets.

if you never touch a fiat exchange you will never get hit by fiat rules. its that simple
if you dont want to see fiat rules never use a fiat exchange.

if you care about bitcoin as a independant currency that is not reliant on fiat or government. then dont even think or care about fiat. dont use fiat exchanges and just buy things with bitcoin direct.

if your obsessed with the bitcoins fiat value, you want to trade between bitcoin and fiat for profit. then expect that profit to be snooped on, taxed and limited by the fiat based governments you love so much.

there are many ways to transact to buy things without touching fiat. there are many ways to daytrade without touching fiat. so if you dont like fiat. dont touch it

[Raimonn]

This was one more reason to not hold bitcoins on exchanges. I supose that lot of users think that coinbase is a secure place to store their bitcoins, but you don't have the private key .... you can't know what they do with your bitcoins.

[runam0k]

This was one more reason to not hold bitcoins on exchanges. I supose that lot of users think that coinbase is a secure place to store their bitcoins, but you don't have the private key .... you can't know what they do with your bitcoins.

That's not quite true. Coinbase does give you an option to hold your own keys -- check out their "Vault", you can use multisig and control the majority of keys.

[runam0k]

the issue of coinbase is that coinbase handles FIAT.

this regulations are not due to bitcoin, but due to fiat.

if you dont want to be slapped around by fiat regulations then stop trading between bitcoin and fiat. and instead use the altcoin to bitcoin markets.

if you never touch a fiat exchange you will never get hit by fiat rules. its that simple
if you dont want to see fiat rules never use a fiat exchange.

if you care about bitcoin as a independant currency that is not reliant on fiat or government. then dont even think or care about fiat. dont use fiat exchanges and just buy things with bitcoin direct.

if your obsessed with the bitcoins fiat value, you want to trade between bitcoin and fiat for profit. then expect that profit to be snooped on, taxed and limited by the fiat based governments you love so much.

there are many ways to transact to buy things without touching fiat. there are many ways to daytrade without touching fiat. so if you dont like fiat. dont touch it

Sanity and reason have no place here sir.

[ATguy]

Bitcoin Bank Coinbase is the most pro-government, pro-regulation, pro-status-quo company in Bitcoin space. They bend over backwards to over-comply with any and all AML/KYC/ABC regulation the bureaucrats of the world invent...God forbid Brian Armstrong becomes our Master of the Protocol!

Don't use their exchange if you can help it (there are many decent alternatives: Bitfinex, Bitstamp, Kraken, Gemini, etc). If you are using their exchange, remove purchased coins from your Coinbase wallet immediately.

As franky1 told, do not use fiat and do not deal with Bitcoin companies dealing with fiat, they all need comply with AML/KYC. Other fiat exchanges you listed are not much different, dont be naive.

Hopefully noone becomes or stay Master of the Bitcoin Protocol, thats why it needs to be agreed and accepted that any changes can be suggested by anyone and only majority of hash decides whether these changes are added to the protocol because it is the only provable known fair method.

[watashi-kokoto]

In order to pro-actively prevent this takeover, we have to act - and the time for your action is NOW!

What's worse, there seem to be many people who support Classic on https://www.reddit.com/r/btc board.

So we know that Coinbase has full control over the Bitcoin-fiat market, and we also know that they are going to deploy Bitcoin Classic soon (5% of miners), and worst of all there are organized shills posting.

I think the situation is truly desperate and there is nothing anymore we can do to keep Bitcoin under the Core team control.

[Raimonn]

This was one more reason to not hold bitcoins on exchanges. I supose that lot of users think that coinbase is a secure place to store their bitcoins, but you don't have the private key .... you can't know what they do with your bitcoins.

That's not quite true. Coinbase does give you an option to hold your own keys -- check out their "Vault", you can use multisig and control the majority of keys.

I didn't know that if you use their "vault" you can use a multisign, but i think that using the vault has a cost. I used coinbase to store some bits when i was a newbie on bitcoin, now i store them on cold wallets.

[BellaBitBit]

This was one more reason to not hold bitcoins on exchanges. I supose that lot of users think that coinbase is a secure place to store their bitcoins, but you don't have the private key .... you can't know what they do with your bitcoins.

That's not quite true. Coinbase does give you an option to hold your own keys -- check out their "Vault", you can use multisig and control the majority of keys.

I like the vault feature with CoinBase because of the 48 hour window wait time to withdraw prompting many verifications.  This all is disappointing because I like my btc being in CoinBase and now see this infighting.  I felt that CB was good for btc because they are a trusted source to store and use btc.  I will keep my eye on this and make considerations.