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Comment by tfang17 | Hacker News Reader

Uniswap is the biggest current threat to Coinbase.

Uniswap was trading more than Coinbase Pro during certain periods of 2020.

Money has to enter and exit the system somewhere.

Exactly. As long as people have the need to pay in regular currencies, decentralized exchanges aren't an alternative to Coinbase, Kraken, etc.

Honestly this is something that somebody like fidelity/other banks are going to solve and push coinbase out.

A friend is going through the following scenario (and reached out to me for help): they have over half a million dollars sitting in a coinbase account, but coinbase has lost the link between their coinbase account and their bank account.

What this means is that they can't get their substantial amount of money off of coinbase and into their bank.

In some banks, if you have that amount of money, you have a 24/7 number you can call where somebody will greet you by name and solve whatever problem you have immediately.

On coinbase: post on reddit, annoy them on twitter, and try to navigate their knowledge base until you get an answer.

Completely terrifying IMO.

Here's my actual prediction: something that I think still includes coinbase in the process:

Coinbase just becomes coinbase custody. My bank account now has a "cryptocurrencies" tab, with deposit and withdraw addresses. This all happened with debit cards, and it's going to happen with cryptos now as well. I'm still bullish on coinbase, but coinbase becomes visa. I never interact with them directly.

Yeah with DEXs and more traditional banks starting to offer crypto on/off ramps don't see coinbase being that essential anymore.

Most of these banks are going to be using 3rd party custody services from organizations with expertise in managing crypto assets. Coinbase happens to be one of the most experienced and reputable in this space. It's likely 3rd parties will white label Coinbase Custody rather than build their own crypto department.

What is even more insane than the insanity you describe is that it's not an oversight, Coinbase has actually made that their quasi-official policy: support is provided when you irritate them sufficiently through social channels in their ambient awareness They have literally externalized the support channel of your friend getting her half a million dollars to fucking Reddit. [Insert gif of house on fire + "This is fine" dog.]

Can't they just link a different, or the same bank account to Coinbase through the UI instead of waiting for support to respond?

Alternatively, open an account at a different exchange (e.g. Kraken or Bittrex), then transfer the crypto and sell/withdraw fiat from there?

Obviously not defending Coinbase's absurdly bad customer service, just trying to offer a potentially quicker solution.

They tried. When you add another account, it never becomes an option to actually withdraw the money. So you go to withdraw, and there are no options there. Click "add bank account" again, and it will appear to add it, but never become an option for withdrawals. Eventually, the message of "you have exceeded the number of times you can try to add a bank account. Please try again in 24 hours" appeared.

Seriously this has flabbergasted me and I don't know that I can continue recommending coinbase to people after seeing this. It is an unbelievable kafkaesque nightmare where you have half a million f*cking dollars that you are trying to withdraw from an institution that purports to be a type of bank...and the robot just can't do it. It's not that you're trying to do something weird, but there is just some bug preventing you from withdrawing your own money, with no real way to actually even report the bug.

It legitimately feels like a type of cyberpunk nightmare. You can see the money, it's yours, but you can't have it, and there isn't even a person you can talk to to help you. Don't worry, funds are safe. They're yours. You just can't have them. Oh and also btw: you owe taxes on them lol. Good luck!

Wow, that's just bizarre.

There's still my second option though, open a Kraken account and transfer the crypto there.

Do your own research as always, but Kraken has been around since 2011 and has a solid reputation -- I've never heard of anyone losing their funds.

It's not as slick as Coinbase, and used to have a well-deserved reputation for somewhat frequent outages (rare nowadays). Additionally you'll have to pay for a wire transfer to withdraw fiat ($5 to Kraken, plus whatever to the receiving bank). Presumably, in this case none of these would be a serious concern. In the plus column, their customer support is quick to respond and actually helpful, unfortunately a rarity in the crypto world.

Why not just withdraw to an Ethereum wallet and either leave it there (in stable coins or whatever) or again, as OP suggested take the route: Coinbase -> ETH Wallet -> Other exchange?

Max fees would be like $50 for such a transaction.

tl;dr basically your friend never even emailed them about it and lets you run around "completely terrified" and "flabbergasted" because everyone is so uninspired to fix it.

mmmk

Not sure why you'd post a pointlessly inflammatory comment like this. Coinbase is well known for failing to respond to support inquiries for weeks or months.

It's just that OP's comment makes no sense. Losing a bank link somehow still leaves you about a dozen options that don't involve waiting on coinbase support. If I had half a million in cash stuck on coinbase/unable to ACH home I'd withdraw to ETH/DAI within 10 minutes.

If the goal is to withdraw to fiat, and Coinbase is your only fiat ramp, I don't see how withdrawing to an ETH wallet helps.

And then do what with it? Do you think most people selling land in northern Minnesota accept “dai” as payment?

and then you use a different exchange.

Square’s cash app accepts Bitcoin deposits

Kraken exists

Gemini exists

And if you were moving larger amounts there are dozens of OTC desks, some of which are operated by the above companies including Coinbase.

The point of them mentioning Dai is to have stable value long enough to figure out what the next move is

My friend did email them. A “specialist” was assigned 2 days ago. But there is high support request volume, you see.

For now.

Likely in this order:

Entering:

1) Power companies

Entering & exiting:

2) Off-market large trades (sometimes brokered through retail OTC trading desks)

3) Retail outlets such as Coinbase

Coinbase has effectively become a USD / USDC wrapper and unwrapper for me. Most of my trading has moved to dexes.

That's interesting, I feel like the fees I pay on coinbase pro are magnitude smaller than the ones I've paid with dexes with much lower slippage as well.

I'm curious which dexes do you use? Any aggregators?

Is that risk found in their S-1?

It is, which is how you know it is not a real risk.

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