The Farcaster formerly known as Kchamp. Books, beats, bodybuilding, bright ideas and beautiful things.

katherinechampagne.com

would love to be a fly on the wall for their internal discussions about this, seems like an existential PR problem

I would rather have Fidelity manage my crypto than Coinbase especially since I don’t give af about new trash getting listed in a timely matter or some of this other stuff 

I need safe storage, reliable on ramping and off ramping, and good USDC support 

The upshot of Trump is that hopefully he can end the reign of CB being the only game in town and give tradfi the confidence to make bigger moves 

Beyond the constant threat of account freezes, I like old school. I don’t want to know about these executives. I don’t want to see my financial institution CEO making tweets about the size of blueberries and asking why is no one talking about this because he ate a really big blueberry. Be a weird little demon in private and just f’ing let me talk to a person on the phone ffs

If we want to be charitable about why Coinbase is freezing accounts (trying to prevent hax, trying to comply with shitty regulation, etc) then I can't imagine Fidelity would be a better option. 

But also quite possible that their policies were setup in a different environment and they need real competition at scale to re-evaluate the policies.

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS.

shazow.net

Currently: WhatsABI

I can easily imagine it’s better. I had an issue with my Fidelity and I called them and got an English speaking person to hand hold me. And then the Fidelity CEO is focused on work, not blabbing about blueberry conspiracy

You could be right! I have had very very bad experiences with trad-banks (no number of followers will get the CEO to override debanking me because some policy changed which triggered an intern to write a query which flagged my account), but trad-brokerages sit in a weird middle spot.

I have had nothing but happiness with my JPMC. And my Fidelity. And I’ve had identity theft done to me as a Chase customer and had mistakes I needed to rectify as a Fidelity customer. Both times same day phone support in English from someone who knew the products and details 

If they are freezing acct to prevent funds being illicitly moved onchain why is there no more immediate recovery path for legit customers other than wait a month and maybe get it back maybe ? 

I respect risk management and proactivity and it would take very little to make me happy here. So little. This continuing to blow up on social to the point ppl in the industry are making Stockholm syndrome jokes while the CEO goes on LA fires rants is unacceptable

But tech culture is NOT the model. BANKS AND BROKERAGES ARE THE MODEL. I would be happy to pay a monthly fee or maintain a minimum balance here to get the same benefits as my bank. 

With Coinbase, I have one option to pay, and that is Coinbase One ($30/mo) or Coinbase One Premium ($300/mo). I don't need 99% of either of those things the plans offer. And that's expensive!!!!!! 

For a Chase account I can maintain a minimum balance (what I do) or pay a monthly fee $5-$25. For Fidelity again because I don't use advanced services they just take a % on my trades (and only some trades at that). 

AND BOTH GIVE ME REASONABLE SERVICE 

Why are we being asked to accept the both the worst of tech culture and noncompetitive pricing and service to tradfi? 

It's insane because they seem to be the BEST one too. I'm even MORE afraid of all the other ones especially post FTX. At least CB is publicly traded and stuff. 

I just want an adult in this arena man. IDK

> If they are freezing acct to prevent funds being illicitly moved onchain why is there no more immediate recovery path for legit customers other than wait a month and maybe get it back maybe ? 

100%

Maybe it's a larger tech culture thing. Same with Google, Apple, etc. If your account gets locked out, there's no real recourse outside of of hoping to make it to the front of HN and that a relevant employee will see it and feel enough responsibility to ping internally.

Also another appeal of smart contracts, being able to specify social programmatic triggers (even providers who can monitor/lock your account for you!) and use social recovery to unlock (eg specify a friend you trust).