Coinbase resumes buying bitcoins today?

[zby]

There is a rumor about Coinbase stopping buying bitcoins and resuming them 'approximately' today. For example http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/bitcoin-price-record-low-best-time-buy-bitcoins/2014/08/18 :

As TheGalaxyWarrior reported on Reddit, Coinbase has been delaying Bitcoin purchases for a while now and will start with purchasing bitcoins again on this coming Friday, August 22nd. The reason for their halt is explained by:

Then there is a text in an image with a Coinbase message - the interpretation of which is not entirely clear. It might mean that their USD funds at the exchanges was depleted and that they should have new funds today - but it might also mean something else.

It seems that at least the blog authors believe that this can have a big impact on BTC prices.

What do you guys think?

What would be the amount they need to buy?

Has the message changed at Coinbase?

Update - fixed the name.

[brewsterz]

coinabase

[abercrombie]

The article is based on inaccurate info. "TheGalaxyWarrior" was quoted off some reddit post, really?

Coinbase buys a certain amount everyday, turns out lots of buyers that tried to purchase on the drop Sunday morning got that error, which I've seen in the past.  Coinbase soon fixed it later that morning. 

That message just means at that time, the broker Coinbase can't guarantee the buy with their exchange Bitstamp.  It does not mean that they held off on purchasing all Bitcoins until Friday the 22nd.

Reference this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=742591.0

[Torque]

Keep in mind too, that probably 90% of buyers that get "stopped at the door" with that irritating Coinbase message get turned off, and just decide to buy later.  Or many not at all, if the price has started to top out in the charts.

People want to buy when they decide the price looks good, not when Coinbase decides.  Their business model sucks.

Very few take a gamble that the market price will be the same or lower several days later, as no one can predict that.

[maker88]

Just want to point out I had no problem buying at 475 the day coinbase told a bunch of people to go screw, but then again I've been on their buyer white list since last September( they tried pulling that crap once and I flipped out on their tech support haha) and I was only ordering one coin so that could also be why.

[peeveepee]

Coinbase needs to have enough cash on bitstamp to be able to broker a deal between buyer and bitstamp.

If there are more buying then the cash they have on bitstamp, of course they will need to stop their operation for a day or two.

[Nagle]

Coinbase's main business is processing merchant transactions. They probably don't buy Bitcoins on exchanges much; they just wait for them to come in as sell transactions. Since Bitcoins have been dropping lately, they'd lose money if they kept much inventory.

[coinableS]

Just want to point out I had no problem buying at 475 the day coinbase told a bunch of people to go screw, but then again I've been on their buyer white list since last September( they tried pulling that crap once and I flipped out on their tech support haha) and I was only ordering one coin so that could also be why.

Same here I had no issue buying from coinbase when it dipped to $445 on the 18th. Coins were available just a few days later.

[zby]

...

That message just means at that time, the broker Coinbase can't guarantee the buy with their exchange Bitstamp. 
...

You only rephrased that error message here - yes - it does mean that, the point is that people ask why they cannot guarantee the price and they speculate that this is because they don't have enough money at Bitstamp and that when their wires arrive there - then all this buying would start.

[simon28]

Has Coinbase resumed buying bitcoins today?

[razorramon]

i don't really know but i thought that the spike at 14:30utc has something to do with them...at major exchanges there were 500btc bought at the same time up to the same high (525 usd or 3200 cny) all in all about 1mio usd in a few minutes
of course it could have been something different

[EXPATINVESTOR]

Bought 10 coins (2 right away, 8 four day wait period) from Coinbase over the last 7 days and have had no issues. and I don't think they have any merchant issues. So all should be good

[itsAj]

Coinbase needs to have enough cash on bitstamp to be able to broker a deal between buyer and bitstamp.

If there are more buying then the cash they have on bitstamp, of course they will need to stop their operation for a day or two.

This is not true. What the OP was describing is the opposite of this. The OP was saying that people were unable to sell BTC on Coinbase. The thing is that if someone were to sell bitcoin on coinbase and not enough buyers were buying on coinbase then they would sell an equal amount of BTC on bitstamp and use that money to pay the seller. I would be very much surprised if bitstamp did not have a letter of credit that would guarantee that coinbase would receive their fiat within a certain amount of time.