[yebyen]

I am surprised that nobody mentioned that yesterday, Coinbase crossed their global "daily buy limit"! Users of Coinbase were greeted with a new interface to buy coins, prompting them to click and confirm their transactions would not be completed until Friday (the usual condition on a Monday) and that their USD-quoted price would be processed at the effective market rate at that time (if you're used to doing business with Coinbase, they mention a time but really the deal is done at the time of their choosing) on Friday.

So, you are agreeing to spend a given amount of USD to acquire BTC, but the price is not fixed and you actually don't know the number of BTC you'll be getting until their calculation of the market rate occurs, five days from now. I had the same experience as the person in Coinbase Blog, they white-listed me, now I have an expectation that they will deliver on their promises.

Before that, I don't think I ever did (or had any reason to.) Some company on the internet is agreeing to take my bank details and make a withdrawal from my bank account, but what happens next is anyone's guess.

(A thought exercise: what is it exactly about letting 5 days pass before that makes it safer for Coinbase to part with a sum of bitcoins when a bank transfer is completed? The owner of the account has had zero opportunity to contest the charge as fraudulent, and those bitcoins go "at-risk" on that day when the transaction is completed. If there is a run on bitcoins, how does Coinbase guarantee they will be able to satisfy all of the orders they've accepted?)