Sent $35,104.11 USD to CoinBase. Never received Bitcoins
December 13th came by and it was this past Friday. No coins ever came in, the only thing CoinBase did was lock in a price for me @ $868.91. Again, they locked in a price and didn't give me coins on the day they told me they would deliver the coins.Ever since the 13th, my transaction page has been showing the following:
http://i.imgur.com/R2qEn8E.png
As you can tell, the funds cleared their end on the 11th. BUT... it still says pending for crediting the coins.<p>This is how the history page looks like:
http://i.imgur.com/BQ4fUwZ.png
Just take a look at that...it actually says that the transaction has been completed here.
Let us now look at the email conversation:
http://i.imgur.com/6SQht98.png
http://i.imgur.com/eNlIS0V.png
I gave their team eight hours to get back to me and settle the issue. They have now missed that deadline so I am taking this matter a bit public. Further avoidance by them will lead me to make a few calls to news stations. I have the right contacts to easily put myself in the media.
Now the real dilemma for me here is the fact that while CoinBase.com has locked in a price for me, because they have failed to deliver I cannot sell my coins at any rate. Bitcoins could drop down to $200, and only then might they deliver the coins. The issue at that point is that I would be down a crazy percent already. If they had delivered the coins on the 13th as they had initially promised to, there would not be this issue.<p>Give me a break, the company just secured $25m in VC and this is how they are treating their clientele.<p>
514 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 325 ms ] threadAlso once you threaten the reversal there isn't much reason for them to work with you. What if they give you BTC tomorrow and you reversed the ACH already.
Of course, you could be contributing in a bank run, though that's not your concern.
But all I am asking for them is that they had delivered the coins on the day they said they would.
If BTC went up, I would have had no advantage of them crediting me the coins on the day it was actually due or today.
This is a clear case of "bucketing"[0] whether done intentionally or not. Its illegal regardless if it seemingly "worked out".
[0] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bucketing.asp
Hope your situation gets settled quickly.
The "price lock in" is perfectly valid so long as they inform the buyer the length of the processing period. If they give false information about that, though, it's the vendor's fault, not the buyer's.
If not, why didn't you start with 1k to make sure the transaction went smoothly before sending over 35k?
From what I can gather coinbase makes their money by throwing away or backing out transactions they would take a loss on. You sir, gave them $35k for digital beanie babies. You get what you pay for. And you did.
Why aren't you buying btc at an exchange? Were you planning on moving them?
Eek. The best case scenario is that you'll get a news blurb on local TV where you're portrayed as a sucker. "Weird online currency thing does weird stuff in the way you'd expect weird online currency thing to do, and look at this greedy rube who got sucked in and lost it all! Film at 11."
I mean, I don't know who he is but I generally wouldn't fuck with someone who has $35k to drop on pretend money. Anyhow, main stream news can be foolish, regardless of who the subject is.
Edit: Oh gawd, at the end he actually says "you only live once."
Edit2: "Money drives me completely ... I've gotten so used just being able to go anywhere without looking at any price tags ..."
Let's go ahead and [dead] this thread. Forget it ever happened. (or make a movie out of it)
ಠ_ರೃ
Looks like an utter douchebag too: http://instagram.com/mgrunin
Looks like he works hard, plays hard...
Regarding my instagram, isn't such a social networking website in existence just to fool around with? Practically all my followers are my college friends and those sort of posts interest them. I just turned 22 for god sakes, you expect for me keep every bit of my life as professional and humble as possible? I am sure many here have done much worse when they were my age.
I think most people would agree that your instagram page has some extremely materialistic pictures. You tagged the rolex pic with the line "#money #suits #rolex #rkoi" (rkoi = rich kids of instagram).. I would look into making those pics private, because to many people outside your friend group, they come off as super douchey.
Props to you for attempting to address many of the detractors, but doing so will take time from your more productive pursuits.
There is some good advice below on lowering your profile a bit until your skin thickens and your manner of expression becomes a bit less brash.
You have good reason to be proud of your success in a legal area that inspires your passion. Keep it up.
a̶n̶d̶
h̶t̶t̶p̶:̶/̶/̶w̶w̶w̶.̶y̶o̶u̶t̶u̶b̶e̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/̶w̶a̶t̶c̶h̶?̶v̶=̶U̶c̶H̶j̶X̶q̶V̶_̶5̶m̶k̶
R̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶o̶s̶t̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶c̶k̶e̶d̶f̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶w̶e̶l̶l̶.̶
W̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶p̶o̶w̶e̶r̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶w̶i̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶p̶o̶w̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶o̶r̶r̶e̶c̶t̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶f̶u̶c̶k̶e̶d̶.̶
Nevermind, I've been reading his posts and threads on wickedfire and he seems like a pretty alright guy.
I am sorry that my appearance comes off as an "idiot".
Where can I get me some of those Bitcoins!?
Basically they're showing a transaction of selling BTC that I never made or authorized. Also, it's showing up in my transaction list but not in my history...
They said they're looking into it, but I haven't heard back in days.
> Coinbase does not guarantee the value of bitcoin. You acknowledge that the price or value of bitcoin can change rapidly, decrease, and potentially even fall to zero. You acknowledge that holding bitcoin is high risk. You agree to deliver the agreed upon payment for bitcoin upon confirmation of an order, regardless of changes in bitcoin value.
> Coinbase will make reasonable efforts to ensure that requests for electronic debits and credits involving bank accounts, credit cards, and check issuances are processed in a timely manner but Coinbase makes no representations or warranties regarding the amount of time needed to complete processing because Coinbase services are dependent upon many factors outside of our control, such as delays in the banking system or the U.S. or international mail service.
It's possible that Coinbase is experiencing delays, and their terms of service give them a clear escape path. It sucks that they are holding onto your money, but consider this a learning experience: always start small, make sure everything smells right, and then scale up. If they were holding onto 35.10 rather than 35.10K, I suspect you would react differently
The courts tend to as well.
The settlement amount may defer for the plaintiff, but the as it would be considered as/or similar to securities fraud the repercussions for the company could be dire.
I can understand it not being legal in the case of brokerages that submit orders to an exchange but if I buy fuel (or sell a futures contract to buy fuel) the other end of that doesn't have to have the fuel at the time of agreeing to the contract, just when its delivered right? It transfers the price risk to the counter party which seems to be legal and how (to continue the example) most home heating oil companies work.
As this can get very lengthy I will just point you to the right resources where good information is available.
In terms of futures it is correct that the other party does not need to possess the underlying commodity. In the US commodity futures and options trading comes under Commodity Futures Trading Commission[0]. With futures contracts institutions that you would initiate the trade through are required to maintain strict margins this is usually the case for speculators and small hedging operations. Most if not all trading platforms I have come across automatically close/roll-over the futures contract, thus delivery does not usually become a problem. If delivery does arise, the definition of delivery is not the traditional definition, you can read more about it at [1],[2] and [3].
In terms of a small purchase of physical crude oil from a middle man with upfront cash it comes down to the paperwork and the terms that were agreed to. For example if you were given a delivery date of 5th December with a guaranteed latest by 10th, and they failed to deliver you'll be able to take them to court if you feel the losses and hardship suffered due to the delay justifies the lawyer and court fees you would incur.
In terms of a large shipment of crude (may also apply to a small purchase, but would be more trouble than necessary), the money is rarely given upfront but is usually on the basis of Letter of Credit(LC) issued by a financial institution that works similar to an Escrow, with the performance terms built-in. So in case of failure to deliver, damage etc. the monies released conform to the terms of the agreement. There is a ton of information available about how LCs work, start of with the wikipedia page [4], it would also help to learn how delivery works in international trade(Incoterms) [5].
[0] http://www.cftc.gov/index.htm
----------
Futures
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[1] http://futures.tradingcharts.com/tafm/tafm10.html
[2] http://investdaily.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/450
[3] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/failuretodeliver.asp
----------
International Trade
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[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_credit
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms
That being said, now that I've cashed out of BTC for a sizable profit I wont be touching it with a 10foot pole.
Does AmEx call you if you buy a Ps4 or TV at Best Buy after only every buying a few $30-40 games? If so, you're in their high fraud risk group.
They are acting as financial services provider and must be in compliance with those laws.
The law gives the OP a clear resolution.
There's a pretty clear resolution here, give the customer back their money because your business doesn't actually work, or give the customer the coins at the most favorable price.
They are much closer to ebay than to IB
That's the whole point of this, CoinBase doesn't want to be like IB so they should refund the customer his money rather than acting like a fraudulent IB.
There are plenty of more serious operations like http://bitcoincapitalpartners.com that take client money seriously.
At the end of the day, it's up to the judge.
Please explain to a judge how something called 'bitcoin' is more like a car than cash. If it was called bitcar and people were could redeem their bitcars for a ride then you might have a point.
You can't do that with Euros, either (assuming you're in the US, otherwise s/Euros/USD/). But that's obviously closer to cash than commodity.
There are merchants that accept bitcoins in return for goods. You're just purposefully avoiding them in your argument.
It seems that the overwhelming popular opinion is that it's a digital currency.
According to Coinbase: Bitcoin, safe and easy. Coinbase is an international digital wallet that allows you to securely buy, use, and accept bitcoin currency
So pretty much everyone agrees that bitcoin is a digital currency.
So you're right, it's not a matter for the SEC, but it definitely is a matter of concern for several other federal agencies, all of which have more teeth than the SEC.
Coinbase confirmed the banking side of things, and then failed to deliver the coins. As a result, the investor is taking a material loss solely due to Bitcoin's failure to deliver. You can't TOS a failure to deliver out of the equation.
At the least, he should be entitled either to cash or Bitcoin credit for the difference in value between the delivery date and the actual delivery date.
They are very careful not to use the word "invest" or "investment" or even remotely suggest that BTC is an investment. They merely discuss buying and selling BTC. This is akin to a marketplace for buying and selling Magic the Gathering cards. An MtG exchange doesn't treat the Wrath of God cards as an investment; in the same way, Coinbase doesn't treat BTC as an investment.
What breach of contract? Coinbase didn't agree to deliver by a specified date. I will emphasize the key phrase:
> Coinbase makes no representations or warranties regarding the amount of time needed to complete processing
There's a reason these CYA clauses exist. And the time frame (8 business days) isn't entirely unreasonable (in the sense that banks generally give themselves 3 days for ACH, with an additional 7 business day holding period if necessary).
Downvoter: if there is some other contract that I am unaware of, please reply with a quote or link
Your system can't say "Bitcoin deposit, 13 December", whilst your TOC says "eh, can be whenever we want".
> 5.3 Disputes with Coinbase. If you think we have made an error, write to us at 14525 SW Millikan Way #26680 Beaverton OR, 97005, or email us at support at coinbase.com. In your correspondence, you must give us information sufficient to identify you, your account, and the transaction on which you believe an error occurred. You must contact us within 30 days after the transaction occurred. Within 90 days of receiving your request, we must either correct the error or explain to you why we believe the transaction was correct.
The key phrase here is "Within 90 days of receiving your request, we must either correct the error or explain to you why we believe the transaction was correct." Notification must have happened after December 8, but let's say December 8. That means, at the very least, they have until March 8 to give an explanation.
BTW: I agree that making the customer whole is the right thing to do, but strictly speaking they have time to respond.
More generally, on the issue of online displays, I checked my bank's terms of use (http://www.tdbank.com/exc/pdf/internet_banking_agreement.pdf) and it clearly says:
> We agree to make reasonable efforts to ensure the full performance of the Bank’s Online Banking Service.
> We are not responsible for any indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages arising in any way out of your use of the Bank’s Online Banking Service.
They indemnify themselves against issues with the online display.
As another poster on this thread noted, Coinbase's terms of service appears to give them great flexibility in processing transactions. The OP, on the other hand, seems to have the understanding that Coinbase was obligated to complete his transaction within a very specific period of time.
This is a dispute between two parties to a transaction. One is arguing that his counterparty failed to meet its obligations; it appears the other has the ability to argue that under its terms of service those supposed obligations never existed. Given the amount of money involved, either party might be motivated to resolve this matter through legal action.
Again, this is all an inherent part of the wonderful world of counterparty risk.
If I were doing thousands in transfers, I'd absolutely be using an exchange. They're also a small start up, funding or not.
Their support team has always come through and usually eats the cost difference if it was a bump on their end. I'd just wait it out.
A stock/foreign currency/whatever to-be-settled on 16th december is one item, the same stock to-be-settled on 17th december is a completely different item - it certainly has a different price, and there are a bunch of valid finance situations when you don't need the purchase at all if it's delayed; you just need the money back + compensation for the breach of agreement.
There's a term for when a financial institution is unable to settle deals on the agreed day and needs to postpone - it's called insolvency. Such repeated situations are quite valid reasons to require them to cease operating and liquidate all assets in order to pay out their debts.
Coinbase acts as a nice middleman where you can securely link your bank account, and for this convenience Coinbase charges you a higher fee than the exchanges. They procure your coins, handle the financial leg work, and suddenly you have access to bitcoins.
I wouldn't worry about it. I've used both quite a bit. It was a huge pain in the ass to gain access to Mt Gox. Coinbase is just better imo. The support team always comes through for any problems.
If it was any regulated financial deal - say, purchase of stock or Yen - then there are clear rules on how to handle that, namely, you'd be entitled to at least compensation for any decrease between the 'locked' price at the agreed settlement date and the real settlement, whenever it may happen, and the interest for the period. Repeated such situations would result in a rapid audit to verify if they really have enough assets to pay out all their debts, and if not, shut them down immediately.
Now you're quite screwed, while coinbase has taken a profit on this (and probably other) deals by delaying these settlements. And what are you going to do if you don't get all the losses covered? Your options are quite limited.
And from history of 'classic' banking we know very well that the 'lost reputation' doesn't work - we've tried that all over the world in the earlier times, it resulted in people creating new 'fresh clean reputation' companies one after another and sucessfully repeating such things over and over.
Raising the barrier of entry is the whole point - if you're unable to meet your agreements, you should be kept far, far away from that business permanently.
I personally think that no-regulation will lead to implosion, as the bad reputation of a few firms quickly turns into a bad reputation for the currency, defacto scuttling the project as consumers learn not which bitcoin companies are untrustworthy, but that the whole system is untrustworthy by design.
You're right that some Bitcoin companies have screwed their users. Consumers need to educate themselves on who they're doing business with. A lot of these Bitcoin companies operated anonymously without impunity. Coinbase is an entirely different case. They are a US based company with VC backing. You know who you are conducting business with.
If you as a consumer want to purchase something from a company that isn't transparent, you don't know where their located, and don't know who's behind the operation, it doesn't matter whether you send bitcoins or your credit card number. It's still stupid. Common sense must prevail somewhere.
Your examples are unbelievably silly, as both Enron and the financial crisis of 2008 occurred in the context of deregulation of those "traditional markets".
Wanna watch Bitcoin absolutely implode and die? You libertarians keep up your adolescent, blind fervor for nonregulation.
One of the major problems at Enron was deregulation specifically. You need to a do a little more research to bolster your regulation = bad for bitcoin argument.
I will never, in my life, understand why so many Libertarians take the argument that if some criminal might engage in a crime, then everyone should be allowed to do that same thing. It's the stupidest argument possible, yet you all parrot it unquestioningly. It blows my mind.
I never held the position that you stated.
Your writing clearly implied that regulation is useless because sometimes criminals evade regulation. If you were capable of understanding how communication works, you'd admit this.
Further, I encourage you to learn how not to be a jerk. because you are one, and it undermines any value that you might have, by ensuring that no sane person (who disagrees with you on you on any point) will ever want to have a discussion with you. That said, I can see where an ignorant jerk like yourself might consider it a feature that only people who agree with you completely are capable of having a conversation with you.
My point was that I don't think that regulation is the answer. I honed in on the idea that regulation has failed in the past (I have more research to do here) and thus, maybe alternatives should be considered. I wasn't trying to imply that because laws don't prevent criminals, that we should not have laws. Obviously, that's ludicrous. It's ludicrous because regulation != laws, or the principle of having laws. I think we can safely say that regulation may be an implementation of a law, or a specific law. Much like pizza is food, but not all food is pizza. Follow me so far? So, philosophically, if we have a bad set of laws, I wasn't suggesting that we throw out all laws, I was suggesting that we look for alternatives to the bad set of laws. To bring it home a bit more to other areas in modern society, it'd be like if I said that I think the war on drugs is failure, "tell me how the war on drugs has helped stopped drug abusers and criminals" and then you were to respond with your same response of "And laws against theft don't prevent all theft so theft should be legal." when that clearly wasn't my position.
Does this clear up my position a bit? Anyways, sorry I came off as a jerk.
Don't act like the only way this can be "fixed" is by inserting government control over the situation.
That's great for all the people who watch and learn that Company A will steal your money, but not so great for the people who provided that evidence for everyone else.
Ah, Libertopia! It's almost upon us, Comrades!
The stupid libertarians get their stupid pie-in-the-sky currency and you get to sit back with a bowl of popcorn (purchased with a government-secured currency of your choice) and enjoy the show.
The whole point that libertarians fail to realize -- and one of the most basic and obvious lessons of thousands of years of recorded human history is that one way or another, we're all stuck on this same, leaking boat together. And we're just going to have to find a way to cooperate on some basic level.
Else things start to get really inefficient and wasteful -- or potentially really, really ugly and violent -- really, really fast.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
It's what happens if you smoke weed and it what happened if you were gay until very few years ago. It's what happens if you're really annoying on Twitter in the UK.
But the golden irony is that you follow up with an analogy about the greatness of coercive government. Leaking boat? Cooperation? Sounds great, clearly that's why we need to throw Aaron Swartz in jail for 35 years.
I'm not convinced that no government is the right size, but the current scope of government across the western world has an immense moral authority problem. We may well be on a leaking boat, but it seems clear to me that the life raft isn't going to save us.
In this paradigm, where anonymity is rampant, reputation is just a word. As an anonymous entity/non-entity has no consequences to their actions.
Except for the missing piece of the puzzle: worthy competitors. Very few people who would otherwise run great businesses to compete with Coinbase don't want to operate in this sector because of the ridiculously onerous criminal laws that now surround money transmitters and exchanges.
As just one example of these laws, to operate in this sector, you have to agree to be a government informant against your own customers, even if you think they're not doing anything wrong.
My interpretation is precisely the opposite of yours. Every other method to exchange bitcoins and USD has been shut down (or at least had its US presence shut down). Coinbase nearly has a monopoly in the United States (I say nearly, because there are certainly still ways to get on other exchanges based in other countries, they're just much more difficult). Coinbase, from what I can tell, must have some political advantage that allows them to stay in service.
As an aside calculating settlement dates for currencies is actually pretty hard because different currencies have different rules, observe different holidays and roll-over differently. When calculating for a cross-pair you basically need to find the first settlement date which is a valid trading date for both currencies (except some currency pairs which have special rules).
The problem is with risks and consequences of the counterparty failing to deliver on the settlement date.
Do we know that this was case of Coinbase taking a free option, versus incompetence? My thought... If they lock in a price, they are taking a risk. There's no risk-free arbitrage. They could wait and hope for the price to go down, and make some money, but they'd also owe money if the price went up.
This does harm the customer, but if it's not a daytrading platform, you can't fault them if they honor the original price no matter what direction it turns.
The real concern is if this happens to a lot of trades at once, the firm could go out of business honoring the original price.
If these regulations weren't so onerous, a dozen more of us would have jumped into the arena, and the one of us who gave the best customer service would be the market leader.
Instead, buyers are stuck with Coinbase.
^ Not suggesting anything purposely illegal -- just incompetence combined with too much business. Yet another reason regulation is hurting everyone here: less regulation would have left Coinbase left overwhelmed with so much business (since there would be more competing businesses).
However, it would also bring in a bunch of far worse companies, including purposely illegal ones. I'm fairly sure that the average 'quality' would go down even more. There could be a benefit to the more careful users, but consumers in general would simply get defrauded on scale.
If the current quality level is unacceptable, then IMHO it is appropriate to say "guarantee X or get out of the business". Even if it results in 100% everyone getting out of the business - then it simply means that the potentially profitable niche will be waiting until someone is ready to do it properly.
The only ones the laws are keeping out are honest businesses who do pay attention to the laws, and who would provide strong competition to Coinbase.
I have a problem with Coinbase for a much smaller sum (luckily): ordered at what I was convinced was a fixed price and just received less BTC at a much higher rate. Their customer support refuses to help (or even to cancel the transaction) and banks just don't get involved in direct transfers on your side, the way they would do on a credit card transaction.
Short of going to the police and lamenting on forums (hello!), there is nothing you can do.
Where? Wherever you are, assuming in the US? I'm sure they could motion for dismissal under their TOS but at that point they will have probably taken note and fixed your issue.
Summon whom? You file suit against the corporate entity, this is how most lawsuits against corporations work. They get a notice and its up to them to either show up or not.
So if they ignore it and you get a default judgement, you can then use the judgement to collect from their bank since I doubt they are structured to hide money across international lines. Or you can just sell the judgement to a collections agency and let them deal with collecting it. Either way, if they ignore it you will likely get your money back. (Again this all assumes both you and Coinbase are in the US, if either of those isn't true then its possible for them to ignore it and have no issues)
We should have things squared away for you by end of day.
Edit: your bitcoin credit has now been processed. It looks like as we were performing server upgrades last week a handful of jobs didn't run as normal. We should have certainly caught it and responded sooner so that was our fault. My deepest apologies for the delay and trouble on that. We've credited $50 worth of bitcoin to your account for the trouble, as a small way of saying thank you for bearing with us.
Edit2: we'll push through the bitcoin credit at today's price instead of the original buy price (which should be in your favor) since the mistake was on our part. Sorry again for the trouble!
This is disclosed up front, and again when you purchase bitcoins.
I agree... but being a market maker is one of those things that requires some reserves, and especially the early exchanges? when bitcoin was under a buck, I can totally see getting together with a couple friends and putting $20-$30K in the reserve pot and giving it a go. But with bitcoin appreciating 1000x? yeah, uh, that got serious fast. Thirty grand is no longer anywhere near a reasonable amount of operational reserves
Add to that the fact that their fucking site LIES TO YOU about how you can withdraw 100 bitcoins per day, and then surprises you with how you can't actually withdraw any until you get verified first.
> Thank you for contacting Coinbase Support! Unfortunately, we are experiencing a tremendous volume of support requests, and have not been able to answer your ticket in a reasonable amount of time.
It goes on to tell me my issue is closed and I can reopen it.
BTW in equities trading I believe this kind of botched transaction would be treaated as a "Failed to Deliver" (FTD), and that's exactly how these things are handled.
They made a promise to deliver bitcoins at a certain price and on a certain date. The original poster's issue is equivalent to Amazon promising 2 day shipping but the book came a few days late.
Unfortunately, for the amounts involved its borderline not worth pursuing. It's too large an amount for most small claims courts, and too small an amount to justify the time and cost of civil litigation (unless it settles at the very early stages). Indeed, based on Coinbase's record (refunding purchases if BC prices increase rather than executing the transaction), it's very likely that they are factoring this arbitrage into their business model.
The value of BTC lies predominantly in the market value.
So the book analogy is ridiculous and patronizing.
As I mentioned in a few other comments, just seems to me that frustration over the Coinbase's error and frustration over the price swing are both being heaped only on Coinbase.
I've had great experiences with the product and company, I would hate for this particular screw-up to be seen as representative of their overall service.
You don't need to be called an exchange or sell currencies in order to be financially liable for delays; and the more perishable/volatile the product is, the larger the possible liabilities.
If its the latter why would anyone use your service?
Why does it take a public shaming for you to do your job?
"To not expect some errors from a startup with an emerging technology is just silly. Users should expect some errors, and expect fixes to those errors by Coinbase as properly happened in this case."
Huh?
A startup dealing in financial instruments doesn't just get to say "Startup!" "1.0!" "Beta!" or "MVP!" and wash its hands of responsibility.
If I do $10,000 worth of damage to your car due to my (in-)action, and throw $50 at you "by way of apologizing", your losses are somehow mitigated?
My statement was that any users of a startup should understand that there are risks that come with using any new service/technology/etc. That's not to absolve a new company of their responsibility, it's just prudent business sense from a user perspective.
I just think that too much blame is being put on Coinbase. There is anger at the delay mixed with anger from the price swing, and too much is being directed at Coinbase.
Now, care to take a guess at whether I'll ever be a customer?
1. How many other customers were affected by the server upgrade?
2. Why was this not caught at the time or after?
The customer response bug
1. What steps are you taking to correct the issue it took a front-page HN story to get traction?
2. Will you commit to writing a post-mortem blog post?
If you don't learn from your mistakes, then you are deeply doomed. I don't want you to be doomed :)
The OP thought it was worth it then, and bought them then.
This is a pretty close to being a classic contract law case, except with bitcoins rather than tangible goods. If this goes to trial, the outcome is not likely to be favorable to Coinbase.
Only if Coinbase can prove to the public that they are consistent on matters like this would your assertion be correct. But if Coinbase were inconsistently applying their policies... they can make a very pretty penny on scamming their customers.
Transaction Delays are a serious problem.
Now, according to the edit, Coinbase did the right thing here and are eating the loss. So Coinbase is doing a good job at damage control...
He suffered a $12k loss because of price fluctuations most likely tied to People's Bank of China news, not because of Coinbase's error. There are no grounds for a lawsuit here.
What they probably should have done is just reversed the transaction entirely, but if I was deciding this, barring some agreement on delivery time, Coinbase would be mostly blameless.
This sort of settlement process is a scary thing to throw very much money at.
The reason for this is, they failed to deliver, that is not under debate. But they are assuming that someone who was long on BTC as a speculator, is still long on BTC.
In the latest edit Brian from coinbase mentioned that they are now honoring today's rate, which is a step in the right direction, and has subsequently save the OP substantial losses, but this does not absolve them of the original screw-up.
I doubt the OP will complain. If I were in his shoes I would personally request a complete reversal even if I wanted to buy at today's prices, and manually make a new request.
Any seasoned/experienced business would do this.
Example: If amazon fails to deliver/the shipped item is lost in transit, they reverse the credit card transaction and request you to re-order if you still want to purchase.
So he should get $35K worth of BTC at todays price (~60 or so BTC)
Rather than refunding the dollar value ($35,104.11) of the original, clearly botched transaction, you ended up giving him the 40 BTC at their current trading value (about $560), that is, for net a loss of $35,104 - $22,400 = $12,704?
And you think $50 plus a thank-you note(!) is enough to make him whole on this loss?
For now its swings are like the Zimbabwe dollar
Bitcoin has an approximate "intrinsic value", which in economic terms is a bit above the cost of mining. Current market price has been very far from that.
Bitcoin market right now is pretty much the definition of a bubble. Beware. In a "bubble" market, your money can disappear overnight.
But again: that's not Bitcoin's fault. It's the fault of idiots vastly and irrationally driving up market prices.
This is really a textbook lesson in why Wall Street does not represent the "real" exonomy.
The current cost of mining is a rough replacement cost of bitcoin (and thus, in a sane market, ought to be a ceiling on its market value, since if the exchange cost is higher than that, you are better of mining then buying), but since mining isn't inherently reversible its not an intrinsic value.
It IS "value", because the resources used for mining have measurable value, and can be traded for things other than Bitcoins.
It may be an indirect measure of value, but it's still a measure of value.
So what? That is about the farthest thing from a valid analogy I've seen in a long time.
The difference between it and Bitcoin here is that no one is claiming that automotive exhaust has intrinsic worth due to the resources expended to produce it.
The VALUE is not indirect (i.e., extrinsic). The METHOD OF MEASUREMENT is indirect. Those are two different things. One does not imply the other.
If I measure the "worth" of your automobile in units of "old Chrysler convertibles", that doesn't mean your automobile has any more or less economic value than if I measure it in helium balloons. The method of measurement (if it's done properly) does not affect the actual value.
In the case of Bitcoin, it CAN be traded directly for goods, not dollars. There is nothing REAL distinguishing it from any other commodity, such as rice. The value is roughly equivalent to the cost of production + distribution.
I take that back. There IS one difference, but (at this time) it is minor: that is the ultimately limited supply, but that isn't even remotely close enough yet to affect a RATIONAL market.
An EXTRINSIC value, on the other hand, and to use Wikipedia's example, is like the "value" of a song played on a guitar. It has its own subjective and economic values, but that is completely separate from the cost of manufacturing the guitar. This is NOT even remotely the same situation as Bitcoin.
The "value" here isn't "indirect". Only the method of measurement.
This is economics, not quantum physics. The method of measurement (as long as it is rational and consistent) does not change the value being measured.
It is value, but its not value of bitcoins. It is the value that would need to be sacrificied to replace the bitcoins by mining, but its not value that can be recovered from the bitcoins, so its not intrinsic value that supports the market value of bitcoin.
Intrinsic value, as the term is used for currency, is value that you can recover from a currency without trading it -- e.g., the use-value of gold for ornamentation or industrial uses is intrinsic value.
You can trade Bitcoins directly for more hardware to mine Bitcoins. So it IS a reversible transaction, and Bitcoins are DIRECTLY (not indirectly) valued at approximately the cost of mining and distribution.
Don't confuse "indirect value" with "indirect measurement of value". They are different things.
The value for which you can trade a currency is its extrinsic value. Insofar as "intrinsic value" is meaningful, it refers to the value you can derive from a thing without exchanging it with someone else.
> You can trade Bitcoins directly for more hardware to mine Bitcoins.
Yes, you can buy things with Bitcoins. That's the definition of a currency's extrinsic value.
> So it IS a reversible transaction
No, if mining was reversible, you could recover the resources expending in mining bitcoins without trading the bitcoin to someone else in the market, the way you can make industrial or ornamental use of gold in your possession without trading that gold to someone else for industrial tools or ornamentation.
> and Bitcoins are DIRECTLY (not indirectly) valued at approximately the cost of mining and distribution.
"Direct value" isn't a well-defined phrase, and isn't the one that was under discussion. Intrinsic value of currency is better defined, and is what was being discussed, and bitcoin doesn't have any of that traceable to its mining cost.
Modulo time preferences...
But yes, bitcoin's intrinsic value is that it is the only method to pay transaction fees to have work done on your behalf by the bitcoin network. I don't know how to price that, though.
Here some cases where coinbase uses the original price even after a price increase:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1qlvgj/psa_rest_eas...
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1qlvgj/psa_rest_eas...
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1cxmuf/bought_5_btc...
And in this current case, coinbase used the new price even though the price decreased. So whether the price increases or decreases, coinbase is taking a loss and gives the money to the consumers.
Kudos to Brian and team for getting on top of this and solving the problem quickly. They executed the order as originally promised, admitted their mistake, and gave him a credit for the inconvenience.
I've executed many transactions with Coinbase and although one of my transactions was delayed briefly, I've been very pleased overall with the service.
They are go much farther than most other Bitcoin exchanges and services, which barely have any support channels and have frequently stolen user money entirely.
With that much spread and at prices as high and fluctuating as much as they currently are you cannot expect to take 10 DAYS for a transaction of this nature.
Honestly, looking at this from the outside what is the difference between this an actual larceny? A large purchase comes in while the commodity is priced high, the commodity is not purchased but instead funds are held on to while the price drops and then the bitcoins are purchased at the lower price and the company pockets the difference...
Not even saying that foul play truly happened, but instead saying you cant run a business whos actions LOOK indistinguishable from foul play and expect to stay in business...
If you're in a business where you can tell customers i lost 30% of the value of your transaction due to a mistake on our end its eventually going to turn into a scam, even if that wasn't the initial intention... its just too much temptation
If an exchange gives users an SLA stating "orders will be fulfilled within X business hours" then that's a contract between two parties. If the exchange says "yeah, we'll get around to it someday and you agree to deal with that" which is the usual intent language in the small print then you don't have much to go on if there is a delay, other than trying to raise a public outcry in the hopes they will back down.
This is not good for coinbase, even if it was an accident.
I agree this is not good for Coinbase, but I am also far less surprised or indignant than many posters here seem to be. This is what the early stages of most markets look like, with fuck-ups and manipulation galore. Read a book on the history of the NYSE (and later, Amex, which was called the "Over the curb" market because it consisted literally of people shouting orders at each other on a street corner in NYC) - this is far milder than the stuff that went on then. At least Coinbase seems to be exhibiting incompetence rather than the naked greed and malice that characterizes many other nascent markets.
edit:grammer
My theory? Proprietary trading. The CoinBase guys were probably trading on behalf of the company and screwed up royally, taking a big hit, so they decided to try and pass that loss onto customers or until they balanced the books
I'm an avid user and big fan. I've tried a lot of alternative products, and none compares to Coinbase in terms of reliability and overall experience.
Sure, they screwed up. Brian owned up to that and fixed the issue quickly.
I just think some of the anger at the market swing is being wrongly directed at Coinbase.
Again, not saying that this is not a major screw up.
I just think Brian and crew deserve more support than they are getting.
You keep mentioning market swing. Market swing is relevant if OP had the bitcoins in his control which clearly was not. So while the market swung, he lost money not because he was sitting on his ass but because he could not do anything about it to minimize a loss. See the difference ?
You clearly have some agenda for saying things you say. Noone is that stupid.
They should simply wire back the money to end this matter and blame a back-end gremlin.
As a gesture of goodwill, maybe comp the guy $100 credit, cash, starbucks gift cards, whatever.
They've actually made it worse now by executing the trade but only after a public outcry.
The whole point is that 'comparatively small' players shouldn't be allowed to take up insane amounts of volatility; if you accept consumer's money then it would be reasonable to require to put that $25mm as a bond to pay out your debts, and put a ceiling on how much deal volume you're allowed to hold if you've got only tiny amounts such as $25mm.
Look for an increase in this kind of whinging in the very near future, and it won't be fun for anyone.
What is coinbase doing to prevent this from happening in the future? Both from a customer service perspective, and from a technical one. I want to assume good faith, but I'd also like to verify before doing business with you.
That is probably the scariest part about the current Bitcoin community. Many of the big names are simply "playing a role". We have no idea of their technical expertise, the viability of their software, their USD/Bitcoin reserves, how they plan to address disputes like this, or even whether they are skimming of the top.
That's really the weird part. This is a business that does money in, money out. They should be balancing the books and checking inventory every day.
It can take Amazon a while to realize a mistake because it takes time for somebody to go around the warehouse and count all the boxes to discover they're holding excess inventory. But how long does it take for Coinbase to compare the number in column A to the number in column B?
I actually work for a startup selling reconciliation software as a service to the financial industry, so it's something I'm learning about myself. Lack of it suggests Coinbase are a little bit clueless.
In fact it seems that most Fortune 500 companies, regardless of industry round things to the million. It's pretty easy to lose a few hundred thousand if you are doing that.
Bitcoin is great, but the exchanges still suck.
Is this a reference to MySQL, pre-InnoDB, not being ACID compliant? InnoDB's been around for a decade and has been the default database engine for years.
No way. Not on fin-co ops.
That's like a car tire store without a pressure guage in shop.
For this reason I switched to Bitstamp and the experience is night/day different. Bitstamp withdrawals/deposits have so far never taken more than 4 working days, sometimes 3, for me.
Many banks are powered by duct tape and loose Excel spreadsheets. That's why things like Basel exist.
Excel was over-used in many places, but was not used for day to day transactions and operations.
Yet again, bitcoin apologists inaccurately claim (lie) that banks are actually worse to excuse failings by "their" services.
No-one is an expert on every part of a bank's infrastructure -- its too big for that. But definitely, we had software requirements, as a matter of IT policy, that kept stuff like MongoDB out of production.
Does Coinbase have external auditors?
This is literally an economy of "shut up and take my money," but no one wants to play ball.
If I could post on yc and quickly get a response from my bank, I'd be a happy customer.
1. Let's suppose I employ an old gambit: process a large transaction through CoinBase, receive the coins and say "I never received them." I'm sure they have at least enough controls in place to avoid double-credit fraud.
As a coinbase customer and someone who manages a team and large complex distributed systems, this is an oversight I would not expect from an industry leader and makes me nervous to continue doing transactions with coinbase.
How can we be made comfortable that this won't happen again? $50 isn't the root cause fix and could have cost the OP $15,000 due to the delay. What if those BTC was going to be used to make a purchase? He is left holding the bag, leaving a sour taste.
I've had to deal with micropayment reconciliation for a minor handset mfgr (multiple currencies, payment processors, timezones, products, on and on). Sometimes the credit card processor up and changes the API without notice, and a whole slew of payments have to rerun. This is where fields in the local reconcilation db start to creep in and all sort of weird flags get made. What the heck is flag F? (IOTW, document the heck out of the db schema AND have lots^10 unit tests.)
Complaining about the complexities does not instill faith that you have a solid grasp on your product. Tell me you dont work at coinbase, please.
There may not be a well-developed specialized regulatory system in place with authority over some bitcoin firms, but in most of the places that bitcoin firms operate there is a legal system in place, and entering into a sale contract, accepting payment, and then failing to deliver the product is the kind of thing that is well within the scope of competence of most of those legal systems.
why, we do - a team who could quickly build a rails app and connect it to third party payment processor.)
And which just ate $25MM in Series B.
PG's reply in the thread is very telling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428372
I feel bad for someone that can't put a finger on his 30K, but I can't feel that bad if he didn't do a little research here first.
Hopefully on the next bubble people will be a little more enlightened.
As PG wrote:
> Strictly speaking I should have killed the post entirely
Now, it's possible that other complaints on HN were nuked by PG or some other moderator, making it difficult for someone to find it.
As PG wrote:
> Strictly speaking I should have killed the post entirely
That's not why he said that. He explains further down thread:
HN is a news site, not a customer support forum for companies funded by YC, and in fact the site guidelines explicitly ask that it not be used that way
If you bothered to read the other thread, you'll see parallels to the current situation:
- transaction delays on the order of 1 week
- Coinbase is blaming technology (last time it was a database migration, this time server upgrades)
- Customer support has been silent (znowi described it as "information vacuum" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985)
- Online account system called into question, users unaware of current positions (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428090)
If this were the first time, you can cut some slack if Coinbase responded appropriately and took steps to prevent this from happening in the future. Based on what played out recently, it's not clear if Coinbase actually learned anything from the previous issues.
And in the future, if you ever do decide to start a company and find yourself in a similar situation, I hope you would be a bit more communicative and proactive than Coinbase was in this case.
You said that the standard approach on HN is to silence criticism -- a stupefying statement, given that at the time you posted it, this conversation had maybe 100+ comments and had been on the front page for a while. Also, in that same comment, you linked to another voluminous thread criticizing Coinbase. Amazingly, the existence of your comment strongly mitigates against your thesis being true.
I think you must realize this at some level, as you have chosen to employ the age-old tactic of the inescapably wrong: quietly change subjects and hope nobody notices.
> Strictly speaking I should have killed the post entirely
And this was 9 months ago. We are left to assume that the policy was enforced (after all, if the post were killed, it wouldn't show up in a search).
And even in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6931168
> I've been keeping my mouth shut here about Coinbase after starting that thread 9 months ago.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear others echo the same sentiment (concern about expressing grievances about Coinbase) especially after PG's responses in the original conversation.
Others in the original thread refuted the argument you are presenting, so I recommend you start https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428757 before rehashing arguments that have already been addressed
Given that many defenders of coinbase, including PG, are seeing support requests as criticisms, (threads that criticize coinbase = threads that seem like support requests) in their heads.
Therefore, (pointing to the statement that HN is not a support forum) + (commenting that PG should have killed the thread) = (PG is likely to kill all threads that may seem like support requests) = (PG is likely to kill all threads that criticize coinbase)
Q: Does MongoDB support transactions?
A: MongoDB does not provide ACID transactions.
( http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/faq/fundamentals/#does-mongod... )
It is crazy to be doing financial stuff in a DB that doesn't provide transactions. It completely blows my mind that anybody would do this.
I've heard of somewhere like ADP using it but they are using it as an analytics database, not for actual payroll processing.
We know all financial companies use databases running on tandem or tuxedo. But that's not cool sounding. How are they supposed to get fun jobs doing nothing with catered lunches? HOW, HOW I ASK!
Perhaps CoinBase (or a rogue employee) were doing some proprietary trading and screwed up badly?
Maybe they were trying to quietly recover their losses and weren't expecting a customer to cause a public outcry and force their hand?
1) stopped replying to support emails even though there was a clear issue
2) only addressed the issue when the victim decided to submit his issue to HN (and only after it sat on the front page for nearly an hour
3) blamed a server upgrade and offered $50 of BTC when the actual loss was well north of $12K
4) only made the customer whole after many HN comments pointing out that the offer was paltry compared to the loss (and that they may potentially be pocketing the difference)
I applaud them for resolving the issue in a way that the victim wanted: "deliver the coins at the exact market price that they are at the moment you are crediting the account". However, this and similar issues in the past have raised red flags that haven't be adequately addressed:
A) why did customer support go dark? I suspect the reaction would be different if they were more proactive
B) as mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6930748 , why doesn't Coinbase have the infrastructure to detect these issues? This is really basic accounting, and if they can't get it right on a small scale why would anyone trust them with more money?
C) what steps were taken to prevent this from happening in the future? I imagine that there will be more server upgrades as Coinbase expands.
D) What is their future policy regarding similar issues? Based on their initial reaction, one should not expect much if any compensation.
E) Will it take an HN post in the future to get their attention?
And looking back at some of the comments in a conversation from 270 days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985) it seems that Coinbase hasn't actually learned from the previous issues.
I think joezydeco said it best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5427985
> You have a company trying to start up in a very tough space where you need to be super-reliable and super-transparent. Coinbase's actions this entire week were neither.
That part only happened after many people criticized the original response: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6930109)
> Edit: your bitcoin credit has now been processed. It looks like as we were performing server upgrades last week a handful of jobs didn't run as normal. We should have certainly caught it and responded sooner so that was our fault. My deepest apologies for the delay and trouble on that. We've credited $50 worth of bitcoin to your account for the trouble, as a small way of saying thank you for bearing with us.
This was understood to mean that Coinbase would honor the original price (868.91) and not the current price. The general impression was that Coinbase made the purchase at the current price (roughly 550) and is honoring the other price (868.91), which would mean that OP lost about (868.91-550)*40 = 12756.40 (and Coinbase would be pocketing the difference).
People correctly noted that Coinbase's move was entirely inappropriate, and they were forced to change course (note the "Edit2"):
> Edit2: we'll push through the bitcoin credit at today's price instead of the original buy price (which should be in your favor) since the mistake was on our part.
The general policy with most financial firms is that firm errors should be resolved in a way that benefits the customer (so in this case, if BTC actually increased in price, Coinbase should honor the original trade price)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6931976
Sounds like they need some people who have actual practical experience building financial systems.
You're not being hyperbolic at all. You're just used to the standard Hacker News "only haters expect businesses to be competent" type of handwaving response. But this thread is about money, that makes it different.
It does not even have to be reported.
I have nothing against you or Coinbase and I do sincerely hope I am wrong. This can have dire consequences on your current and future business(es).
It would have been best to refund the withdrawal in its entirety or just credited it, to be used for a future transaction as that would have saved you guys from a world of pain.
For any other service I would have given you Kudos for acting, albeit slowly, and applauded honesty(though not so much due to blaming it on the servers, which in a financial context is unacceptable).
But for a business that a court can deem/classify as a financial institution (regardless if you consider yourself one), this could be considered as a admittance of wrong doing.
edit: grammar
I am purposely not saying 'if'. Because there is no possibility of this not being brought to a judge on the behest of SEC themselves or a consumer complaint.
In layman terms:
(1)they buy and sell BTC on behalf of clients and charge the client for the transaction including their fees.
(2)they are an online payment processor of sorts.
They will need to follow more regulations than Paypal, as paypal is also a digital wallet of sorts, but while it provides a conversion, they technically do not trade(buy/sell currencies) on behalf of clients.
Here's the definition of a security [Securities Act of 1933, Section 2(a)(1)]: The term “security” means any note, stock, treasury stock, security future, security-based swap, bond, debenture, evidence of indebtedness, certificate of interest or participation in any profit-sharing agreement, collateral-trust certificate, preorganization certificate or subscription, transferable share, investment contract, voting-trust certificate, certificate of deposit for a security, fractional undivided interest in oil, gas, or other mineral rights, any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege on any security, certificate of deposit, or group or index of securities (including any interest therein or based on the value thereof), or any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege entered into on a national securities exchange relating to foreign currency, or, in general, any interest or instrument commonly known as a “security”, or any certificate of interest or participation in, temporary or interim certificate for, receipt for, guarantee of, or warrant or right to subscribe to or purchase, any of the foregoing.
Coinbase US understaffed, running fast and loose, and can't handle the spike in attention. This proves bitcoin isn't ready. Coinbase has a long road ahead of it.
I am certain that the Coinbase TOS allow significant discretion as to the timing and cancellation of orders. However, systematically delaying orders and then cancelling or forcing people to buy based upon which will be most profitable for Coinbase, which seems to be occurring, could certainly be construed as fraud.
Having a customer service that actually responds to issues meaningfully would be a first step, but that's only the beginning.
There's a technological solution to this. If you know that for whatever reason some transactions might never complete on your end, one of several obvious solutions would be to introduce a timeout after which the transaction is rolled back automatically. That means introducing a batch process to at least trigger a manual review of these cases, and possibly even an automated cancellation with repayment. Doing that within a business day of receiving the money wouldn't be out of order, maybe even make it an hour or so (this is supposed to be a fast medium, right?)
Oh? Did that also cause some kind of downtime in your customer service operations, considering you sure took your sweet time in getting back to him? Funny how the front page of Hacker News makes things run a bit smoother, huh?
I sent you an XSS vulnerability to whitehat@coinbase.com according to https://coinbase.com/whitehat almost 3 weeks ago and haven't received so much as a confirmation "thanks we are looking into it" email from you guys.
- This was a relatively minor XSS vulnerability which required a bit of social engineering to pull off, rather than being a traditional XSS that most HN readers would need to worry about.
- Their delayed response was likely due to the relative minor nature of this vulnerability.
- I still feel safe using Coinbase
- They're taking care of it and treating me well :)
-1 for the cavalier, "looks like were were performing server upgrades last week..." That is a startup excuse. I'd love to hear Chase Bank use this excuse and see how that flies with banking regulators.
The worst thing is, during this whole time, my support ticket was never answered and is still unanswered. There is no indication that it has ever been read by a human.
Since you admitted to guilt, I shall be entitled to the bitcoin credit at today's price as well.
I started my career as a "customer service superhero" at ZeroCater and was the only employee for a while. There was a staggering amount of work to be done at times, most of it non-customer service related. I'd never leave without making sure every customer email was addressed - and this was a much more trivial issue (lunches). This is not just human decency, but its good business practice. I wanted to speculate (yeah it's speculation :P) on bitcoin using your service, but no longer will, and will no longer refer your service to others (unless something changes, of course). It is not a question of ethics, but a question of me making a good decision - why would I trust my money with a business that doesn't feel the need to address customers on time (especially those who trust them with significant sums of money)
This issue would have cost you a maximum of 2 hours of free time/sleep to fix - now its costing you a customer (I'm sure the cost is actually far greater, judging by the exposure of this thread). Was it worth it?
Sloppiness like this wouldn't fly in actual finance. It would get you fined and possibly more. Lacking any sort of internal controls, even something as simple as balancing your books and verifying all transactions... It's shocking and negligent. Even more so for a YC company. Shame on you.
Not only that, but I was told that my coins could not be released earlier because "they needed to be removed from cold storage". So now we have 2 different excuses for failures in the same time period. The cold storage excuse seemed completely bogus to me too because we're talking about crediting a number to my account, not getting actual Bitcoins. They don't become Bitcoins till I send them out of Coinbase.
Is this an actual policy of Coinbase, or restricted to times when you get bad press?
Because when I saw this post I could swear that it was about me. I gave you $467 about 24 hours after the OP for 0.5 BTC, with the promise that I would have the coins 5 days later (when they were still worth $450 or so). See this screenshot from earlier today
http://imgur.com/4WrTDPy
Since I took that screenshot 8 hours ago, the coins have been credited to my account (finally) and are worth about half what I paid for them.
Now my problem was a couple orders of magnitude smaller than that of the OP here, which is why it hasn't been worth my time to send a lot of emails about it or post on HN (and the market looked OK until 24 hours ago). I had chalked it up to the risk of performing financial transactions in an unregulated marketplace.
But I feel compelled to provide another example given your assertion that this only occurred with a 'handful' of orders.
You are JUST NOW figuring this out? We all assumed you were idiots before for using Mongo at all. Then to know you are using it for financial transactions made it worse. And NOW on top of all of that, turns out you don't even watch your transactions during server upgrades?
You do realize Mongo isn't a very good database for anything you care about keeping right?
You got a +1 here.