Coinbase - Funded by Paul Graham

[R-]

In the end, he paid one Bitcoin for one beer — roughly $6.50 for a beer that normally costs less than five dollars (without a tip).

Brian has his priorities straight. He (and Coinbase) has my vote.

[brian_armstrong]

@ Brian,

Hi, could you please shed some light on this:

- Why should I use coinbase over bitcoin directly?
   - in that relation: Why would I lay the fate of my funds into your hands, where they can be stolen, frozen, lost, delayed... any time?

- What fees apply to use your services?

- Do I need to have a coinbase account to receive/send payments with you? Do you also send to BTC adresses?


Thx

Sure, good questions:

1. I definitely wouldn't ask anyone to trust me with their funds at the moment.  Especially if you are tech savvy and confortable with the existing tools out there.  As a technical user myself, I find them to be quite good and trustworthy.  Coinbase is built more for the mass market (think your mother), and non technical people.  We're making a long term bet that for bitcoin to go mainstream, regular consumers will need an easy cloud solution like this, and we'd like to be that trusted offering.  But while we're still in beta I wouldn't recommend anyone keep larges balances there.  By all means feel free to try it out with a few cents if you want to though, we could use the feedback.

2. 0.5% to exchange into/out of bitcoin (once we launch bank integration) is the current plan.  Once you have bitcoins transactions are free.

3. No, you can still send to BTC addresses on coinbase (everything is using bitcoin underneath).  We just don't default to using addresses in most of the UI since I think non technical users find them confusing/intimidating, so we usually show emails instead as what you're sending to.

[brian_armstrong]

You should get a  bitcoin security professional like Vladamir on board. Also setup cold storage for the coins you dont need to have in a hot wallet to run the site. And get a dedicated server in a locked cage

Edit: and dont keep your backups on the same server your site is on.

Vladamir is some serious security backing behind him get him on board make us all feel good.

edit: oh and welcome Brian was just chatting w/ you thanks for taking the time to chat with us!

Would love to chat with him, how can I get in touch with Vladamir?  Anyone have a link to his profile? 

[proudhon]

2. 0.5% to exchange into/out of bitcoin (once we launch bank integration) is the current plan.  Once you have bitcoins transactions are free.

So, in this respect Coinbase will be operating as an exchange, like MtGox?  Do I understand you correctly?

[Bitcoin Oz]

You should get a  bitcoin security professional like Vladamir on board. Also setup cold storage for the coins you dont need to have in a hot wallet to run the site. And get a dedicated server in a locked cage

Edit: and dont keep your backups on the same server your site is on.

Vladamir is some serious security backing behind him get him on board make us all feel good.

edit: oh and welcome Brian was just chatting w/ you thanks for taking the time to chat with us!

Would love to chat with him, how can I get in touch with Vladamir?  Anyone have a link to his profile? 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3380   thanks for taking advice Brian

[bitlizard]

@ brain armstrong

"We're making a long term bet that for bitcoin to go mainstream, regular consumers will need an easy cloud solution like this, and we'd like to be that trusted offering."

How do you define 'mainstream'? do you define it in terms of market capitalization or user base or both?

Does ycombinator have any plans beyond coinbase to to facilitate mainstream adoption?

[hazek]

2. 0.5% to exchange into/out of bitcoin (once we launch bank integration) is the current plan.  Once you have bitcoins transactions are free.

So, in this respect Coinbase will be operating as an exchange, like MtGox?  Do I understand you correctly?

No.. He is saying they want to operate as does Paypal on top of the traditional banking system. Coinbase users will be able to fill up their "bitcoin" balance with either bitcoins or another currency and then they'd hold only representations of bitcoins which they could send to each other for free or send outside of Coinbase to an actual Bitcoin address for a 0.5% fee. I might have misunderstood about the fee part but the rest I'm pretty sure off.

It's what paypal does but for bitcoin.. which I believe is the expected natural progression that layers on top of Bitcoin will take.

[Bitcoin Oz]

2. 0.5% to exchange into/out of bitcoin (once we launch bank integration) is the current plan.  Once you have bitcoins transactions are free.

So, in this respect Coinbase will be operating as an exchange, like MtGox?  Do I understand you correctly?

No.. He is saying they want to operate as does Paypal on top of the traditional banking system. Coinbase users will be able to fill up their "bitcoin" balance with either bitcoins or another currency and then they'd hold only representations of bitcoins which they could send to each other for free or send outside of Coinbase to an actual Bitcoin address for a 0.5% fee. I might have misunderstood about the fee part but the rest I'm pretty sure off.

It's what paypal does but for bitcoin..

It makes sense to create an internal database coin.

[hazek]

Right, and they simplify the use by offering sending stuff around between their users by simply using an email (like paypal).

[Bitcoin Oz]

Right, and they simplify the use by offering sending stuff around between their users by simply using an email (like paypal).

Plus you can keep coins off the actual site unless depositing or withdrawing, which can be stored on a different server altogether.

[brian_armstrong]

2. 0.5% to exchange into/out of bitcoin (once we launch bank integration) is the current plan.  Once you have bitcoins transactions are free.

So, in this respect Coinbase will be operating as an exchange, like MtGox?  Do I understand you correctly?

You could say that, but I don't think users will think of it as an exchange.  The focus will be on easy payments, and one side benefit of the site will be easy adding/withdrawing of bitcoins to their bank account.  At least that is how I imagine it

[brian_armstrong]

You should get a  bitcoin security professional like Vladamir on board. Also setup cold storage for the coins you dont need to have in a hot wallet to run the site. And get a dedicated server in a locked cage

Edit: and dont keep your backups on the same server your site is on.

Vladamir is some serious security backing behind him get him on board make us all feel good.

edit: oh and welcome Brian was just chatting w/ you thanks for taking the time to chat with us!

Would love to chat with him, how can I get in touch with Vladamir?  Anyone have a link to his profile? 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3380   thanks for taking advice Brian

Messaged!  Would love to get his experience/advice.

[brian_armstrong]

@ brain armstrong

"We're making a long term bet that for bitcoin to go mainstream, regular consumers will need an easy cloud solution like this, and we'd like to be that trusted offering."

How do you define 'mainstream'? do you define it in terms of market capitalization or user base or both?

Does ycombinator have any plans beyond coinbase to to facilitate mainstream adoption?

When I say mainstream I mean non-technical users.  (Bitcoin still feels too nerdy to me.  And by the way, I consider myself a nerd!)

[Spekulatius]

Hmm, I dont like paypal for a number of reasons, especially for their power over users funds and the despotic and in many cases unnecessary use of that power.

@ Brian:

- How are you trying to avoid bad service like paypal (if at all)?

- You have mentioned, the advantage of coinbase use over bitcoin use by the simplicity of its user experience. What will you do once the available bitcoin clients catch up?

- Concerning the exchange topic: Will I be able to fund my coinbase account with currency XY and withdraw currency YZ from it?

[BitLucky]

isn't this the same as Flexcoin?

[bbit]

isn't this the same as Flexcoin?

Now that you mention it...it sort of does seem like flexcoin.

[blksith0]

I gave them all my bank account information. Seems legit.

edit: and yeah, 5 days later, got my coins. Nice.

[bg002h]

Works for me...2 factor auth. They deposit to your bank to verify.

[gadsdengraphics]

Necro thread - but hey, I actually came here today to see if Coinbase's reputation was holding up.

[bbit]

Necro thread - but hey, I actually came here today to see if Coinbase's reputation was holding up.

It is , it is ..I always use them!