Coinbase Launches Instant Exchange

https://blog.coinbase.com/2015/06/17/instant-exchange/

by markmassie • 11 years ago

70 30 11 years ago

blog.coinbase.com

pjc502• 11 years ago

So it's now possible for two people to send and recieve local currency through coinbase without touching the blockchain? See what you can do when you have a money transmitter license, suddenly all the electricity spent computing and discarding hashes is no longer required.

colinbartlett• 11 years ago

Why do you say it doesn't touch the blockchain? Aren't they buying and selling bitcoin for each transaction?

peteretep• 11 years ago

Why on earth would they do that?

Sealy• 11 years ago

Is this the equivalent of them 'netting' transactions?

smtddr3• 11 years ago

But they don't have to. That's the genius of it all.

"You can also receive bitcoin and Coinbase will execute an instant sell in the background."

If I can use my money to send you bitcoins that'll be automatically sold and credited to you as your local currency... then how about secretly skipping the bitcoin step and just move money like Western Union or any other bank? ;) It'd be more profitable for them and lower risk, I think. Whatever transaction fee Coinbase charges, I'm sure it's less than what I pay Western Union to send money to my family in Nigeria.

pjc502• 11 years ago

I was assuming that if a user had "instant recieve" turned on and someone did an "instant send", it would go straight through their coinbase counterparty accounts. Other comments are now making me think this isn't quite true.

However, it's a set of interactions that presents a problem. Suppose two Coinbase accounts set up for instant recieve.

(1) Someone double-spends a transaction from a non-coinbase account to both accounts

(2) Both accounts immediately "instant send" their balance to a non-coinbase address.

(3) Some time later, the next blockchain confirmation goes through.

What happens? Either the transactions are not instant or Coinbase is defrauded.

DiThi2• 11 years ago

No, it allows Coinbase users to send or receive money to/from anywhere without a long wait of fluctuating prices. I'm not a Coinbase user but I'm affected by this.

veritas20• 11 years ago

Previously, if you use the coinbase wallet to purchase BTC, then you would have to wait 6 days to get the BTC unless you transferred money to Coinbase Exchange and purchased them directly.

This simply removes that step and executes your buy order against the Coinbase Exchange presumably.

beaner• 11 years ago

You're misunderstanding the feature. Coinbase has supported off-Blockchain transactions for a while now, and it does not require a USD wallet; it can be done with any transaction internal to coinbase.

Instant exchange let's you send bitcoin from your USD wallet, meaning you don't have to hold bitcoin to use it, because your local currency is "instantly exchanged" into bitcoin when you send it.

It has nothing to do with on/off Blockchain transactions.

DiThi2• 11 years ago

About time! I asked several times to be paid in Bitcoin but the fluctuations from the time the coins are bought until they arrive to me was too high.

noobie• 11 years ago

So thanks to this, volatility risk is down to 0. It is, however, Coibase-centric, making them similar to, a bank!

doiwin• 11 years ago

This page makes my browser crash the very moment I try to scroll down.

I tried it 3 times and every time it does that. Latest Firefox on Linux Mint.

I will not put my money there.

smtddr3• 11 years ago

fwiw, doesn't crash for me.

FireFox devEdition 40.0a2 (2015-06-17)

pikachu@POKEMONGYM ~/Music $ cat /etc/issue

Linux Mint 17 Qiana \n \l

dfox• 11 years ago

Chromium 41.0.2272.76 on Debian unstable does that too. Well it does not crash per-se, it just eats up all system resources and hangs ("Page(s) unresponsive" dialog does show, but is also unresponsive)

wmeredith• 11 years ago

Oh, please. I still have fresh memories of well established banks (think, too big to fail) that required IE to view their sites. The fact that they do not support Firefox on Linux isn't much of an indicator of anything funny going behind the scenes.

StavrosK• 11 years ago

You should see my bank's website. It doesn't let me use passwords longer than eight characters. Or symbols.

evbots• 11 years ago

This is awesome. In my mind the ability to send money or pay for things without worrying about what currency you're using was the main thing holding bitcoin back. now people can reap the benefits of the bitcoin network without having to deal with bitcoin. I know there are those that will hark on how "centralized" Coinbase is. I mean I agree it's not ideal but this has mass consumer appeal.

jron• 11 years ago

Some more discussion of this feature: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3a3z82/coinbase_lau...

Coinbase Launches Instant Exchange

Related Stories