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Comment by cbase22 | Hacker News Reader

Coinbase stole $30,000 from me and won't return it. They listed a new coin (bitcoin cash) without prior announcement. I bought $30,000 worth at $5000 each. It went from $500 to $9000 in a matter of minutes. However, while allowing people to buy the coin at very high prices, they also froze everyone's ability to sell the coin. They only allowed people to sell it on their market again, about 24 hours later, after the coin went down to $1,000.

They say that coinbase engineers knew about the coin being listed beforehand (obviously) and bought a bunch before listing it publicly (an unannounced), then the insiders sold it all for a huge profit.

What lesson did I learn? Coinbase is crooked.

Oh well. Lock 'em up

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Stole has a particular legal definition.

Assets being stopped for trading occurs in all markets, including in the highly regarded US stock market.

You wanted to participate in a pump and dump, and now you are angry that you couldn't do the dump. You thought it was easy money, well, now you know one aspect that you didn't consider (that selling might be suspended)

Either the market is open or closed, and when that changes is a very well-known schedule (for the most part). Even the US stock market would run into some very unhappy people if they partially closed a market (e.g. only allowed buying, not selling) or they closed a particular stock at their whim.

I'm not saying this wasn't risky or dumb, I'm just saying the US stock market is a poor counter-example because both of the things that happened in this case are exceedingly unlikely to happen on the US stock market.

Individual stocks can be frozen, and things like the flash crash can trigger circuit breakers with little to no warning.

Plus, a company can (hell, typically does) release news after-hours and leave you in the lurch, or go suddenly bankrupt. Ask me how my couple dozen Lehman Brothers shares are doing...

Yeah but just because the stock market may have been a poor example, it does not invalidate the rest of his argument. The OP tried to pump and dump, now he's complaining because he got burned.

No such thing as easy money.

Trading is ‘closed’ (aka halted) for individual securities relatively frequently in the US. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_halt

> I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.—Warren Buffett

> or they closed a particular stock at their whim

This happens all the time, a ticker will get halted for a time and no one can trade them even though the market is open.

http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=TradeHalts

You invested money in a completely unregulated asset class. Buyer beware

Coinbase did not steal anything from you.

Sometimes you get lucky with a risky investment sometimes you lose it all. That’s why they are called risky investments

> What lesson did I learn?

"Gambling is dangerous"?

You still have your Bitcoin Cash dont you ? Trading is high-risk, you have to learn to recognize pump-and-dumps yourself, because they're gonna happen whether they're organized by the exchange or not.

live by da pump; die by da pump

>They say

Sounds reliable

You are full of it.

> They only allowed people to sell it on their market again, about 24 hours later, after the coin went down to $1,000.

This is completely false, and a lie since you say you were trading it at the time. BCH was trading between $3200 - $4300 when it reopened later the next day.

Not only do you not understand what the verb steal means, you give false information as to how the BCH market traded. You also don't seem to understand that for every buyer there is also a seller. Further, you provide no evidence of your claims of insider trading. I for example, "knew", that BCH was highly likely coming to the exchange based on public information that was already available. BCH API entries were added to coinbase/gdax DAYS before it was open for trading. That you conflate people that were paying attention for clues to the same as people of being guilty of insider trading is sour grapes.

What lesson did I learn from your post? That some people are liars and look to cast blames on others for their own decisions.

Why in the world would an expert trader like yourself place an order for something that was over $1000 higher on GDAX compared to other exchanges? Why because you thought you could scalp it and sell it for more to someone else. You played a very dangerous speculative game and lost - I hope the tuition payment you spent will be taken to heart.

Their allegations are not entirely off base. The Coinbase BCH launch was a complete disaster. The BCH price pumped for days on other exchanges leading up to the announcement. See here for some more information:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pam4xn/coinbase-i...

In addition, they opened up trading on GDAX, but waited to open up buys and sells on Coinbase until Roger Ver’s segment on CNBC Fast Money (right when the price was at its highest).

That said, I do not think Coinbase should pay someone back for making a poor decision with their money. People like to deflect their own mistakes instead of taking responsibility. Coinbase didn’t make this person buy BCH at $5,000.

That the rollout of BCH was problematic is not something I disagree with. It was a huge embarrassment professionally for coinbase.

I am well aware of BCH increasing in price prior to the launch but #1 EVERYTHING was going up in price at the time - BCH started ramping up the prior week from ~ $1700, and #2 really took off once the API keys were publicly found that weekend. That there was a peak of insanity on the release of BCH, I don't dispute, I merely claim that these other claims of nefarious actions can be easily explained through more mundane behaviors.

You bought shitcoin cash.

This is your fault you idiot.

Its literally fake bitcoin.

Commenting like this will get you banned here. Please don't do it again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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