Transferring funds from Coinbase to Copay today proved to be extremely challenging! I'm fairly new to cryptos but I've managed to set myself up on the exchange Coinbase, open a wallet on CoPay and set up an account on Steemit.
I feel like I've entered a bizarre videogame where I need to solve cryptic puzzles, navigate new territory, learn a new language, overcome challenges, achieve rewards and go to new levels!
I found Jeff Berwick's Dollar Vigilante website years ago when Bitcoin was dirt cheap but never bought any. I was excited then about it, thanks to him, but didn't invest. Really dumb of me I know! I'm sure that I'm not the only one who didn't take that opportunity at that time.
Fast forward to 2017 when I finally decided to get onboard. I've been buying small amounts fairly regularly, up to my weekly limit on Coinbase. I've managed to accumulate about $500.00CAD in Bitcoin. My goal is to own at least one! Let's not talk about how many Bitcoin I could have owned if I would have invested that same $500.00 when I first learnt about it! Needless to say, I haven't really earned any profit on it since the price has been so high since I jumped in.
I'm a subscriber to The Dollar Vigilante Newsletter and today I read an article by Juan Galt a Crypto-Analyst for TDV titled Bitcoin Scaling Wars. In it he talks about problems and tensions that Bitcoin is having internally regarding Blockchain size and disagreements on how to resolve it. He recommends that users don't keep their Bitcoin in Exchanges right now and to transfer them to cold storage until the issue is resolved. Hence my attempt at transferring funds from Coinbase to CoPay. He obviously recommends even more security than this but I have a hard enough time trying to manage and figure out these two accounts that setting up another wallet right now just seems overwhelming.
So first off I go to Copay to get a bitcoin address in order to receive the amount that I want to transfer out of Coinbase. I press the Recieve icon and try to copy the address but it doesn't work despite multiple attempts. So then I go to my desktop thinking I can scan the code from my mobile but nope that isn't an option either. So I manually fill out the address, check it over MANY dizzying times so that I don't lose my hard earned Bitcoin forever and then I go to put the dollar amount in. I want to transfer the whole amount but it won't let me!! I guess because I just made a purchase this morning, which was confirmed but needs more confirmation???? I don't know. It's just too slow for my liking. Slow and laborious and confusing. So I ended up settling for transferring $400.00 out since it wasn't accepting my request to send more.
Needless to say I'm frustrated with the system. I'm basically one of those 'grandmothers' that you Crypto people are always talking about. 'Bitcoin has to be easy enough for my grandmother to use' I always here you saying. Well this is still far from the case! Although I'm not quite a grandmother yet, I could become one anyday. I'm not your average 'grandmother' either. More like an Anarchist Granny, way ahead of the curve. So I'm your test, if I'm getting frustrated then I can't imagine how frustrated the average granny must feel!!!
So here my Coinbase balance shows that it's transferred out:
And here in my CoPay wallet, it's not showing up, it doesn't even acknowledge the request:
So what's the take home on this??? Well my coveted $500.00 in Bitcoin is nowhere to be found. I'm sure that it will turn up eventually but in the meantime I am forced to 'let it go' and 'hope for the best'. This is seriously an uncomfotable position to be in when it comes to one's finances. It shouldn't be so difficult to figure out, use and feel confident in. They (the developers) should be able to do better than this for their customers but I guess they're too busy trying to figure out how to scale so that they can make even more people frustrated and annoyed.
Getting into Steemit, I'm finding myself confused as well. I still don't know the basics of how the platform works so the basics are certainly not all that basic or easy to understand. I don't mind a challenge but I don't have money to throw around and sometimes the complicated functionality and usability of these cryptos seems to assume that I do!!!! I guess they really are more like a game than I ever really imagined except a high stakes one, like playing the lottery or going to a casino, you really don't know if you're going to win, let alone play the game right.