I cannot recommend Coinbase at all. I operate an adult comic book publisher and they shutdown our account without notice and blamed the bank they work with (despite the fact that we were not converting our BTC to USD). All support tickets took 3 - 5 days to get a reply and it was always unhelpful.
For a company like ours the whole appeal of Bitcoin is the anonymity, so our readers don't have to worry about buying lewd comics and having it show up on their statements. Coinbase tarnishes what Bitcoin stands for and they do not protect artists/publishers.
Coinbase CEO here. I think this boils down to a misunderstanding about what our product is.
There are some companies which operate purely in the digital currency world, and never store people's money. They are not regulated businesses. I'm glad these exist (and it sounds like this is what you are looking for) but this is not Coinbase.
Coinbase is an exchange that integrates with the traditional financial system to help people convert their local currency into and out of digital currency. I wrote a post about this here which may help: https://medium.com/the-coinbase-blog/coinbase-is-not-a-walle...
When you say Coinbase tarnishes what Bitcoin stands for, I have to disagree. We are enabling millions of people to get access to digital currency so that it can succeed. We do this successfully by playing by the rules in the existing ecosystem. You may not like these rules, but if you want millions of people to have easy access to digital currency (so that a new economy can develop etc) we are the greatest ally you have on that mission.
One company can't play both roles, of integrating with the existing financial ecosystem, and creating the brave new world that you want to see. That role probably needs to be filled by separate companies.
Are you implying that by supporting my business you would not be playing by the rules? If that's what you're saying, you don't seem to be fully aware of the rules. That, or you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the financial ecosystem or somehow believe that a company selling mature content is not "playing by the rules".
My business has a physical store, existing relationships with banks, existing relationships with credit card companies, approval to sell adult comics on Amazon, and even approval to sell with PayPal (yes, they know we sell adult comics). When our customers requested we accept Bitcoin we turned to Coinbase, and you banned our account without providing a reason.
It's ironic, given their history, that PayPal is more accepting of merchants like myself than your company.
This is why I chose to speak up.
You may be an ally to the big banks, but you are not an ally to small businesses or consumers.
There are many banks with many rules out there. Paypal may be in a different negotiating position than we are. Believe me, I'd love to support all legal businesses (including yours). Sorry we couldn't get there yet - we may be able to eventually.
I've had and heard somewhat similar experiences as the person you are replying to. Buying? No problem. Selling? An error, but only once you go the actual page to do it. No notification on the main accounts pages and no information with the error. Just something like 'there is a problem please contact support' (which of course means waiting a couple of business days).
If I want terrible, uninformed, opaque service only when it is convenient for the other party, I can already get that at every bank I've ever dealt with.
You could be better than that, but it is hard to believe that that is what you are trying to do.
From your link:
"As a result, the decision to support a business is not solely up to Stripe; it involves the various financial companies in the credit card processing chain. Their restrictions tend to be broad and, as a result, often pretty confusing."
You don't deal with visa/mastercard payment network companies do you? If not, how can you have the same rationalizations as Stripe? And of course if you share the same problems as credit card companies (of which there are SO many), what problems are you solving?
I notice that BitPay - a Coinbase competitor - seems to be able to interact with the US banking system, accepts Bitcoin, and allows adult content(they made a deal with Verotel, for example).
Is it just that payment processing is an easier problem than storing money and acting as an exchange? So perhaps Coinbase's larger scope comes with more restrictions?
I know your pain, but that said; you don't have to be 'another Paypal' by being a bastard about things; fast response and explaining why you do the things you do instead of just closing an account and saying 'rules blah' when being publicly (on HN) (and yes, I am aware of the scheme rules, hence I know your pain, but explaining yourself will keep people happy, hiding behind banking & scheme rules with unhelpful canned responses does not) outed for what you did is not acceptable in this day and age. Paypal is hated by many for this behavior, as is Google. Why do you want to join those ranks instead of explaining things like you did here?
Your verification system is completely broken Brian. All my attempts to verify for past two years give "Unknown error". Any attempt to upload a new ID goes back to main screen.
I am exhausted from waiting for a reply from your helpdesk: they just send the same canned reply, when this might be a code bug in your verification workflow.
On a side note, you have raised 100mm+ from VC. How do you ever hope to deliver these VCs a profit? Is Coinbase going to be a write down for these VC funds?
I cannot recommend it on good faith either. I've had confirmed ETH tractions (20+) simply not show up on my account due to an "error." Not "pending," but straight up not there. Mind you, this was worth around 2-3k USD and I've transferred coins back and forth from the same addresses before.
I had to add up all the transactions from their logs to figure out they made the mistake on their end. I got it all resolved but to have cryptocurrency transactions disappear after it's been registered?? Just boggles my mind as to how this could have happened.
From a consumer side I've used coinbase because of its great website and simplicity compared to alternatives I saw when I signed up a year ago. It offered a polished interface that helped me feel more comfortable about purchasing Bitcoin and making exchanges.
I understand that many of these qualities are somewhat superficial when it comes to security and reliable service. What competing companies out there do a better job in your experience?
There are horror stories on the consumer side too. Multiple withdrawals when only one was instructed, delays in getting money after a buy/sell, locking people out of their accounts still with Bitcoin in them without providing a reason, canceled buy orders during a volatile market, and what not.
r/bitcoin is littered with such user complaints. It is sad that the best way to get support on Coinbase issues is to go on reddit to complain.
Many people have moved to Circle for a smoother consumer experience.
p.s. no relation to either Coinbase or Circle except as a consumer.
Coinbase blocked my personal account, holding my Bitcoin until I provided photo ID. Just to get access to my money already purchased.
Then they incorrectly decided my immigration status and removed my bank connection.
I closed my account and asked for my inappropriately obtained information to be deleted. They refused to "protect" me from "identity theft". Screw them.
r/bitcoin also has a vendetta against Coinbase because they're for a blocksize increase. That forum is actually incredibly childish (just read the comments). You don't find the same concentration of complaints in other cryptocurrency reddits, and r/bitcoin definitely is not the only one or the most important.
Coinbase CEO here. This is (sadly) quite accurate.
The other reason you see so many complaints there is that there are many scammers trying to buy digital currency with stolen credentials, and a common scammer tactic is to appear angry (via support channels, or any public forum) in the hopes that we will approve their purchase.
Happened to me 2 weeks ago. I got a call from my bank asking for approval to send back the duplicate transfer after one week. For a second I hoped they will not notice :)
After this I don't trust them to handle my money anymore.
Very easy to use Circle to purchase bitcoin with a regular card, then move that bitcoin to your own external wallet. I can recommend this as a smooth experience.
Coinbase employee here. We're providing the bridge between finance 1.0 (e.g. banks) and finance 2.0. This means we're subject to requirements of the banking partners we work with and can only support merchants within their comfort level.
Your verification system is completely broken Dave. All my attempts to verify for past two years give "Unknown error". Any attempt to upload a new ID goes back to main screen.
I am exhausted from waiting for a reply from your helpdesk: they just send the same canned reply, when this might be a code bug in your verification workflow.
If customers are paying BTC in to a Coinbase account, and the account holder is removing the coins as BTC, then why would the bank's policies impact anything? It's understandable, because (presumably) financial regulations mean Coinbase can't offer a "no USD withdrawal" account that doesn't have the link to the bank, but it's a shame too.
I'm certain there's a contract provision involved along the lines of "We will only provide banking services to you if you agree not to engage in or serve customers who engage in our prohibited industries in any manner."
I find it odd how in all these first employees articles they are all investors now. Would you want to raise from someone who just happened to be a first employee??
First employees have an excellent vantage point to the growth of the company, and are bound to learn tons about running a company.
I would gladly raise from someone who's gone through the gauntlet, as opposed to someone who won the birth lottery and is investing money from the bank of mom and dad.
I was one of the remote hires brought on through the first Bitcoin SAT on Reddit. I recall completing the test and thinking "well, that was fun, but there's no way I aced it," particularly because one of the questions, I was pretty sure, was a trick meant to see how you'd handle not coming up with an answer.
To my surprise, a few days later Olaf emailed me and asked whether I could meet him on Skype. The interview lasted for around an hour and we found a lot in common (Olaf studied sociology and I studied anthropology, we're both rock climbers, and, of course, massive crypto nerds), and toward the end he asked whether I was okay with working support. The quote's not mine, but I answered "when you're asked to join a rocket ship, you don't ask where you sit."
A few days passed and Barry Kwok contacted me to make it official. I joined the team on November 1st, 2013. Those early days were wild, even from North Carolina where I lived. Bitcoin's price was soaring and the users (and tickets) were pouring in.
The rate at which Olaf's team became acclimated, with so few existing resources, is a testament to his leadership and their outstanding caliber, and something I'll never forget. You really had the feeling that you were "a part of something big," surrounded by talented and inspiring minds.
It was a wonderful experience in my life, but one that I don't talk about very often and haven't posted about until now. All the best to Olaf in his continued adventures: no matter the route, I'm sure he'll send it.
I'd love to hear something about your thoughts on anthropology and computers (and work).
My girlfriend is finishing her master's in anthropology. I'm going to the Anthro/IT conference in Tartu (Estonia) in November. I'm curious about the intersection.
Sure, though I have to confess to trending more toward IT than anth, and being limited in exposure to my sub-discipline (cultural anthropology).
Immediately after my time with Coinbase, I started working at Duke University. My team provided web application development and protected data management to social science researchers, and worked with the Department of Public Instruction on certain projects.
Without question, data management is the thing. Field data is almost entirely electronic (collected through the web, SMS, or downloaded off of tablets (mobile engagement is also big)), or will eventually be made electronic. This benefits later analysis in something like R, Stata or Julia, but introduces a host of concerns relating to secure storage, access, egress and ingress. Large data sets are also sometimes shared between institutions and typically come with stringent use requirements (up to and including air gapping).
It's very new territory for many in the social sciences, and they rely on IT to provide them with solutions and answer their questions. Interestingly, the medical field have already covered a great deal of this ground, so their work can often be used as a template for - or at least a vision of - the future of best practice in the social sciences.
I thought we were over the "torture the interviewee" interview stuff, this blows my mind
-------
Olaf : This is just to Fred. Fred and I probably talked for 45 minutes–a long time. Then Fred gave me a really brutal mathematics problem ...
Okay. So there are 100 lockers in a row. They’re all closed, okay? A kid goes by. He opens every single locker. A second kid goes by. Now he closes every other locker, every second locker. Third kid comes by, every third locker. If it’s open, he closes it. If it closed, he opens it. Then the fourth kid goes by. Every fourth locker, he changes the state. And now 100 kids go by. What is the state of the lockers after 100 kids go by?
I interviewed with Coinbase a couple years ago and had a horrible experience from start to finish. The whole team was super disorganized throughout and the people I talked to weren’t inspiring in the least. The CEO was super rude at the end of the process too.
I aced the stupid online test they wanted, then aced the phone interview with Brian (the CEO), and then on top of that they wanted me to come in and contract with them for a week as a “trial” which I did do partially (didn’t do the full week because I was busy that time of year). Their expectations of the trial were entirely unrealistic, misguided, and in some cases nonexistent (which is worse than misguided imo). It was doomed to fail from the beginning.
Anyway, jokes on them because they lost out on a great engineer. I wonder how many more they lost out on due to misguided and mismanaged hiring practices. Now I’m shipping software to more users than Coinbase can ever dream of, having more impact on those users than Bitcoin ever will, and making far more money to boot while working with a higher caliber Eng team. So I'm incredibly thankful for having dodged that bullet.
I wonder if they expect this "trial week" out of all candidates. A trial week of work, paid or not, pretty much eliminates from the hiring pool anyone who currently has a job (i.e. people who were already qualified by some other company at least once).
Look, I've failed and passed many many interviews in my time. I’ve seen many different interview processes.
I've passed many interviews where I thought: "Wow that interview process truly sucked, even though I made it through".
I've failed many interviews where I still walked away thinking "That was a great interview experience, I respect everyone I interviewed with, it didn't work out, but I still admire the company and will cheer them on, and I learned some things too“.This was not one of those experiences, and I have no reason to dress it up as such.
If you think I’m an empty cart making a racket, feel free, I don’t really care for such one-liners. The only reason I even shared my experience interviewing at Coinbase is because I think we’re obligated to share our experiences in the industry for the benefit of our colleagues (past, present, and future!). I literally don’t gain anything from unfairly ranting about some random interview experience from a couple of years ago. This post just happened to remind me, and I figured some people might find it useful.
For all I know, Coinbase might have changed their process significantly since then and maybe the CEO stopped being rude to potential hires. Who knows? Certainly not me. They could even be an awesome employer today. But I do know that I personally won’t recommend the company just based on my single personal datapoint.
Not only that, but the whole interview seemed to be from bizarre-o world. A mix of awesome and WTF. Five minutes after sending an email to jobs@ you get asked to "hop on Skype"? Wow, that's pretty great. With most companies you're lucky if you even get an automated "We got your Email" message after 5 minutes.
Then it's "do two presentations by tomorrow". (I guess they assumed he had no plans for the evening). Then after what sounded like typical tech interview hazing, it only took 4 days for the company to decide? Wow!
It was bizarre to me, too. I thought most of what you mentioned was just testing his commitment. Solid commitment should mean something decent looking would come out of those efforts. The email and 4 days are probably just their instincts in action with some deliberation on latter after doing this kind of thing regularly for a long time.
I'm curious how long it takes on average for most VC's to go from good interview to acceptance.
Hustles are all about commitment, and one of the ways you can tell you're being hustled is when your side has to establish its decisionmaking ASAP while their decision process then can take however long they feel like.
That is a common pattern. I recently blew someone's alleged deal off because they needed a decision immediately. It's usually a bad sign but might be normal with VC's.
Exactly. The question is effectively equivalent to "have you recently taken an elementary number theory course", which, apart from being not at all a brutal mathematics problem, is totally irrelevant to what makes a good customer support hire.
The whole interview process comes off as having been designed by someone who had no idea what they were doing.
The worst part is this is implied by Olaf himself where he points out that he just lucked out on that problem in a way he doesn't expect to repeat. He accidentally passed the contrived problem unrelated to the job. They were just a hair from eliminating the good candidate in the interview.
I am not a math genius, but I spent a few minutes thinking about the locker problem.
It seems to me that:
1) Every locker essentially is open (let's say "1"), and it will switch to the other binary state ("0" from 1, or 1 from 0) a number of times.
2) The number of switches is based on number of factors that comprise that number, minus one. E.g. position 1 = zero switches. Position 2 = one switch. Position 3 = one switch. Position 4 = two switches. Position 5 = one switch. Position 6 = three switches. And so on.
Am I correct?
In case, the final result is something like: 100100001000000... Which is essentially 1 + a number of zeros equal to two, then four, then six, then eight, etc.
Edit: I've now continued reading the article and, well, the solution is down there. In a way, it seems I was correct.
He said the perfect squares are the only ones with an odd number of factors, which doesn't make sense to me. 16 for example has 4, 25 has 5, 36 has 4 again, so I'm not sure what he was getting at.
One easy way to see this: if d is a factor of n, then n/d is a factor of n (since d divides n evenly). So, for any integer, we have pairs of factors (d and n/d) and thus an even number of factors, except in the case when d and n/d are the same.
When are they the same? When d = n/d, or d^2 = n (n is a perfect square). Therefore, only perfect squares have an odd number of factors (2 * the number of pairs of factors + 1).
The first door will only be flipped once, by the first person.
The fourth door will be flipped by the first, second, and fourth people (three times).
The ninth door will be flipped by the first, third, and ninth people (three times).
The sixteenth door will be flipped by the first, second, fourth, eighth, and sixteenth people (five times).
The twenty-fifth door will be flipped by the first, fifth, and twenty-fifth people (three times).
The thirty-sixth door will be flipped by the first, second, third, fourth, sixth, ninth, twelfth, eighteenth, and thirty-sixth people (nine times).
It should be clear here that the number of times the nth door is flipped is the number of unique divisors that n has.
For any non-perfect square n, for any divisor p, n/p = q is another divisor not equal to p. So non-perfect square numbers have an even number of divisors.
Perfect square numbers are the only numbers that have an odd number of divisors, which in this game corresponds to being flipped an odd number of times.
You could take this a step further.
For any number of lockers/kids, if you start at 1 and square each number until you get a number that exceeds the number of lockers/kids, you've found all of your perfect squares in that range. Which, of course, is the square root of your original number, rounded down to the nearest whole number.
So, for any number of lockers/kids, n, the number of open doors is simply floor(sqrt(n)).
Yes. Not too hard to confirm with a tiny little program:
lockers = ['Closed'] * 101
for i in range(1, 101):
for locker in range(i, 101, i):
lockers[locker] = 'Open' if lockers[locker] == 'Closed' else 'Closed'
print ([locker for locker, value in enumerate(lockers) if value == 'Open'])
>>> [1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100]
Coinbase told me I need to verify my residence information. I cannot start that process with funds in my account (0.01e), I cannot move a sum that small away from Coinbase, or buy BTC for just 0.01e.
I complained about this to customer service, and got a canned reply saying I need to empty my wallet to proceed.
A lot of companies are guilty of the same sins, having weird catch-22 glitches on the platform and customer service that wants to close tickets, not help customers, but if Coinbase seriously wants to handle my money, they need to start doing better.
> Okay. So the first one was on the pharmacological induction of lucid dreams. It is complicated, but it’s a mechanism to induce lucidity in your dreams. You can control your dream by waking up in the middle of the night and taking an over-the-counter supplement called galantamine, which increases levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the synapse. Fun fact is that I’ve been writing down my dreams for 11 years.
Uh, what? Has anyone heard of this kind of procedure? I'm aware of other methods to induce lucid dreams but never ones that involve OTC medicine.
>This article explores the effectiveness of using supplements to induce lucid dreams. The method of combining a cholinergic stimulating substance (galantamine & choline) with a deep sleep suppressing substance (sulbutiamine, caffeine, or desmopressin) is examined. Eleven nights of EEG data were recorded from a subject skilled in lucid dreaming techniques. On each experimental night, the subject slept for 3.5-4.5 hours before consuming either a deep sleep suppressing substance (DSS), a cholinergic stimulating substance (CS) or a combination of the two.
>The subject experienced a lucid dream in five out of five trials that included a combination of cholinergic stimulation with deep sleep suppression. Furthermore, the five lucid dream events occurred in the span of 10 calendar days and were all characterized as Wake Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILDs) in which conscious awareness remained during the transition from the waking state to the dream state. A second observation relating the influence of dopamine uptake to the subject’s control over the dream environment is also discussed.
Not sure there's anything to explain. Waking up and then going back to sleep is going to help with inducing lucid dreams, supplement-assisted or not, that's the point of WILD.
Yes, popular method is also to drink a lot of apple juice. It worked for me a few times but could just as well be a placebo effect. I've learned to lucid dream before that though.
Caffeine does indirectly promote release of acetylcholine (along with the monoamines, dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine) via antagonism of adenosine receptors.
I've heard anecdotal evidence on caffeine giving people nightmares and vivid dreams, especially when consumed immediately before sleep.
After digging a little more, I also found that caffeine is also an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (it disrupts the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine) which have medical use in promoting REM sleep and induce lucid dreaming.
>I’m actually buying units of the protocol. I’m buying scarce blockchain tokens and creating a portfolio of those tokens. I’m basically buying ownership in all of these new 2.0 peer-to-peer protocols.
Is this any different from buying actual bitcoins, ether, litecoins etc?
No, but the VC world has been ill equipped to attempt to profit in this sure to profit way in the blockchain space.
A lot of capital backed projects in the blockchain space were attempting to "responsibly not buy the speculative asset because we don't want to lose money irresponsibly", and they all lost money irresponsibly because they couldn't find a way to make any money
There are ways to improve the blockchain space, with capital, and it so far requires getting capital into the tokens itself.
There really is no rebuttal to the clever savant that makes this observation whether you are at a VC fundraising event, an Amway meeting, or talking to Charles Ponzi himself
I think the [Laughter] part is important to get a sense of how the conversation was going, and whether that particular comment was said jovially. A lot is lost otherwise on plain text.
This is now a thread about lucid dreams and the galantamine/choline stack.
Galantamine is marketed as an Alzheimer treatment, and although me and others are weary of pharmaceuticals (side effects? cancer? higher-morality rates in clinical trials?) drug induced lucid dreams sound very interesting to me. Has anyone on HN experimented with this?
Extremely small doses of Yohimbine (~300mcg) and Mucuna Pruriens are lesser known and quite effective for me. Yohimbine is a norepinephrine agonist and Mucuna Pruriens has L-dopa and can cross the blood-brain barrier. Keep in mind it's much more important to be extremely diligent about writing down your dreams, every night.
Don't pay attention to how galantamine/yohimbine are marketed - do the research yourself.
Lucid dreaming is fun. You can use apps like Android sleep coupled with Android wear and hue smart lighting to help learn how to do it. No drugs necessary.
It does take a bit of practice/getting used to. The apps monitor you heart rate and movement patterns to try and detect REM sleep and send a signal to you. At first these signals will wake you up but with practice you will recognize them in your dreams without waking up.
Interesting subthread. I've noticed that it tends to be easier when I haven't been drinking alcohol for a while -- I've had it occur a few teams a couple years ago, but it almost always ended with me flying and waking up. I couldn't sustain it for more than a few seconds. I was also writing music more then -- I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it.
For a company like ours the whole appeal of Bitcoin is the anonymity, so our readers don't have to worry about buying lewd comics and having it show up on their statements. Coinbase tarnishes what Bitcoin stands for and they do not protect artists/publishers.
Do not use Coinbase.