StopCoin

@zackshapiro I wished this came out earlier! awesome idea. :)

@zackshapiro congrats!! so cool to see the first project up. Tell us more about the Built in Public project. What is it exactly? What inspired it? In 6 months, or a year from now, what would constitute success for Built in Public?

@eriktorenberg Thanks Erik! Built in Public is a year long experiment in being incredibly transparent and opening up my creative process. It's also a product studio where I can create all kinds of apps, web and mobile, and see where they lead. I want to see if I can build a community around sharing ideas from the earliest stage to shipping an actual product. When I learned how to code, I stopped sharing fresh ideas I was kicking around, so in part, Built in Public is a way to overcome that. In 6-12 months, Built in Public will be a success if I can create a whole suite of products that I'm incredibly proud of, ones that genuinely help people out.

@edtoh Thanks Edwin, give it a try. It's out now! :)

@zackshapiro really slick bro.. and it eases the adoption for potential new bitcoin purchasers to get in where they are comfortable at. p.s. Order placed for my first bitcoins!

@rrhoover Thanks Ryan! Coinbase right now has over 2 million consumer wallets and most importantly, Coinbase is wallet, not an exchange. I built this because I feel that it's the piece that's missing from Coinbase, more granular control over the bitcoins that you currently own. If I have 5 BTC in there, it shouldn't just sit, it should auto-sell if the price dips drastically or maybe I want to double the amount I own if the price drops $50. We take a 1% fee of the transaction up to $10. My hope is that all of Coinbase's users rely on StopCoin to help them manage the bitcoins that they hold now and in the future.

@rrhoover @zackshapiro @davidlee @percival @tylerwinklevoss also cc'ing @AdamDraper @amlg23

@zackshapiro because it's a wallet, and not an exchange -- is this why they haven't done this as a feature themselves yet? I used to day-trade, and when I first used Coinbase, I wondered why they didn't allow the standard market + limit + stop orders.

@malcolmcasey yep, that's the reason.

@zackshapiro @rrhoover Congrats on the launch Zack! While this is great from an investment standpoint, I imagine this could potentially increase short-term trading around BTC causing more volatility. What do you think?

@ak310i You can! Just make sure you have a Coinbase account with a bank account hooked up, then you can take full advantage of StopCoin, even if your bitcoin balance is 0

@zackshapiro gracias! now to just add this to the never-ending to-do list :)

@edtoh Good feedback, Edwin. I'll definitely do that. Before it was only 'less than or equal to,' I built the greater than functionality quickly so that was more placeholder than anything. Your idea is definitely a better implementation

@zackshapiro Just a thought that came to me when I set up my first order! Now, to wait for the bitcoin value to go back up to its previous glory!

@NeilThanedar Great question. Volatility of the market definitely plays to our favor. Theoretically in the long term, volatility should greatly decrease as Bitcoin becomes more trusted and adopted in many different forms. My bet is that the price of Bitcoin will look a lot like a single stock. Events happen in the life of the stock that send the price up or down slightly. If you're holding onto a stock or onto Bitcoin long term, you likely want some controls in the event of any kind of market fluctuation, whether that's a price floor or an easy way to sell when you're happy with a return. I also agree with your tweet, right now the general sentiment is "Blockchain yes! Currency...maybe" as bitcoin sentiments in China have changed in the last year, Chain and other companies are making the Blockchain more accessible to build on, and regulatory rulings in the US and elsewhere are still shaking out. Bitcoin is a very long game and we're just at the start of it. I'll likely be wrong about what the currency will actually do, but it can't hurt to have this functionality on Coinbase.

@zackshapiro Agreed on all points. I'm definitely more of a Wealthfront-style investor, but I've still been very interested in products like Robinhood, Coinbase, etc. that make it easier to make your own individual trades. Congrats on the launch!

@GeoffreyWeg @jasongelmant Thanks Geoffrey! Right now we rely on Coinbase to make the transaction happen, StopCoin is built on top of their API. We can't offer a guarantee that the trade will go through since they're actually doing the transaction but given how well built and well supported they are, the reality that the transaction will fail is incredibly low. I showed Coinbase what I was working on months ago and have a good relationship with them so any potential errors I can work out with them hopefully very quickly. In the future, when we hopefully have thousands of orders at many different prices, we will be able to match users in our own system to do the transaction and have Coinbase as a fallback rather than rely solely on them. That's a ways away. I hope we can get there.

@erictwillis Sorry to hear that Eric. The price can be brutal, that's why I built this. I hope StopCoin can help you out next time!

@zackshapiro Yeah. I'll be adding this to my tool kit for future use.