Hacker News Reader

Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

...at the time that we receive your USD from the bank, 4 business days later.

Is there really no faster way for coinbase to receive a payment? This doesn't seem practical, or rather it seems a bit too practical for a company that wanted to set up a one-way "pump" to profit by alternatively: immediately completing, or stretching out, transactions based on which action pulls value directly out of the customer's pocket.

View on HN

4 days is very reasonable. My broker settles most trades in 3 days. And, that's for public stocks which have been around for a couple hundred years and are well understood. 4 days is also in line with what credit card gateways will settle in for higher risk accounts. And, yes, bitcoin is high risk. Oldschool guys who still don't like email get to decide what's high risk so bitcoin will set off red flags for a while.

That being said, I personally think coinbase should burn some of that VC fuel to bring that 4 days down. They will lose money to do it but they'll gain customers like you who aren't used to a 4 day settlement period.

This is the speed of ACH bank transfers. There is nothing we can do it about it. It's part of the reason bitcoin is important.

Sure, but why can't I transfer money to you, receive confirmation that the transfer has completed, wait some reasonable amount of time (no more than a month maybe?) and then convert to BTC at the exact moment I prefer? Then I would feel like an investor, rather than a chump.

EDIT: actually it would be nice if you responded to some of the many seemingly-reasonable customer complaints on this page.

They on purpose don't allow balances in USD as maybe then they will be considered a bank. Once you go thru their verification process, you get buy instantly up to 10 BTC/week without waiting (although sometimes they turn this feature off for whatever reason). Also, you don't need to wait a whole week - you get hourly increases of the 10 BTC quota, which is nice... when it works.

They on purpose don't allow balances in USD as maybe then they will be considered a bank.

It seems e.g. PayPal, Amazon, Coinstar, and Bitstamp have negotiated this particular obstacle somehow.

Yeah, I found several arguments against my own statement - even in the Bitcoin context such as CampBX.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com