I'm really excited to launch StopCoin today! Buy and sell bitcoins automatically on Coinbase when the price changes. You can do things like set price floors on existing investments, set buy orders to execute when the price drops, or sell orders to execute when the price increases.
StopCoin came out of me buying and selling way more bitcoins than I was comfortable with in late 2013. The price was jumping all around as it ran from ~$120 to $1000+ and I would wake up in the middle of the night scared I'd lost a ton of money, checking the price, ready to sell at any moment.
Everyone should feel confident in their investments, even in bitcoin, so I built StopCoin on top of Coinbase to do just that. I wanted to give everyone who uses Coinbase Schwab-like precision as to what's going on with their money.
StopCoin is also the first product to come out of my transparent product studio Built in Public, so in that spirit, I'm an open book, AMA!
@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.
@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!
YEAHH!! Congrats on the launch, @zackshapiro. I love the simplicity of the product, which has very clear utility for those holding significant amounts of bitcoins
While useful, I'm having a hard time seeing how you can make much money off of this with the current model. Since you only make money off the transactions when bitcoin (and other crypto-currencies in the future, I assume) fluctuate in price.
cc'ing some bitcoin folks @davidlee, @percival, @tylerwinklevoss
@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.
@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.
@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?
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can a newbie to bitcoin use StopCoin? love the "built in public" mentality. keep it up & good luck!
@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
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@zackshapiro gracias! now to just add this to the never-ending to-do list :)
Hey Zack, just a feedback rather than a question. Instead of "flip order type" as a link, why not make "less than" or "greater than" a link so that when you click on them, you toggle the two. It might be clearer.
@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!
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Love the simplicity of the product. It got me much closer to making my first BTC purchase. My biggest issue is with the state of the Bitcoin market in general. Other than a small rally in October, it's been headed consistently downward since June. How much do you think about the volatility of BTC prices as a factor in the long-term success of StopCoin?
@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.
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@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!
Really like the simplicity here, @zackshapiro. I get this and would definitely use it if I ever purchased bitcoin.
Question: Will there always be a buyer and seller that will be willing to buy/sell? What guarantee do you offer? Guess I'm just wondering about liquidity in the marketplace.
cc'ing bitcoin aficionado @jasongelman
@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.
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