Not dickish, just naive. If lawsuits were any sort of motivation, they'd hire an intern to send the twelve people their $50 in BCH by manually copying and pasting private keys into a BCH wallet app.
Edit to address your edit after my reply: no, there actually aren't any lawyers who believe they could "get 100 million dollars" in the situation you describe. The multistate bar exam covers torts and contract law (including equitable remedies), so there is no person licensed to practice law in Coinbase's jurisdiction who would calculate potential damages the way you have. In fact, if they did, they would likely be disbarred for incompetence.
Relevant legal terms to look up: compensatory damages, specific performance, contributory negligence, and good ol' burden of proof.
Finally, consider searching Coinbase's terms of service for "supported Digital Currency," "arbitration," and "waiver of class action."
Re:Update on Bitcoin Cash
by josiahtullis on Friday August 04, 2017 @12:40AM
(#14926342)
the reason BCH is worth quite a bit is because it's illiquid because very few exchanges support it. the only reason you or anyone else wants it is to sell it for USD
Re:Update on Bitcoin Cash
by thinkmassive on Friday August 04, 2017 @12:54AM
(#14926392)
Have you been paying any attention to the reason the fork happened in the first place?
The situation changed. Many were convinced BCH would go no where. Now its worth quite a bit. Also, some may not have had time or got the message. 4 months is obviously an unacceptable delay.
The truth hurts. My comment made me look like a rabble-rouser or something, and made me look bad -- maybe it will get me banned from Hacker News. But just maybe that executive will take the hint and help them to push the update out faster. In which case, Coinbase could save itself a lot of hassle in terms of lawsuits and angry customers, and customers (those who did not get the warning or did not have time or were convinced it was going nowhere) could avoid losing a ton of money.
Go ahead, shoot the messenger. Sometimes the truth sounds dickish. In this case, they deserve to get comments like this and should pray that someone in their organization heeds them.