That money would have had better upside if invested in bitcoin directly.
I believe during a gold rush the people who consistently come out ahead are those selling shovels.
Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
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Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#32That money would have had better upside if invested in bitcoin directly.
Are you saying that the investors would get a better return on their investment if they had instead simply purchased bitcoins? That claim seems to require the ability to know the future. Bitcoin may eventually be superseded by a superior alt coin, and disappear into history.
> That claim seems to require the ability to know the future.
One could say startup investing does too.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#33So I'm late to the digital currency game. What are the regular use cases for digital currency? Who accepts it? Is it mostly for person-to-person trading?
As a nitpick the proper term is "cryptocurrency", not "digital currency". A cryptocurrency does not necessarily have to be stored or generated digitally.
> A cryptocurrency does not necessarily have to be stored or generated digitally.
How would a non-digital cryptocurrency work? While signal scramblers, an analog equivalent to digital cryptography, did exist, I have a hard time imagining an analog blockchain.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Raise when you don't need it. VCs are desperate to part with cash ("use it or lose it"), and Coinbase probably has the best chance (after perhaps Stripe and Braintree) of becoming the de facto home for the crypto payment/trading industry.
This. When their hands are so strong, they probably got a pretty favorable terms.
You mean their arm.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#35I'm pretty naive on the subject of Bitcoin so I might be missing something here, but can someone explain to me how it's used right now? Aside from treating BTC like a stock that is. The value of it fluctuates so much that actually buying/accepting it seems incredibly risky. The price can go down just as fast as it goes up.
As a someone looking make purchases with BTC; if the value of a BTC is going up, why would I use it to buy anything? It's gone up $700 in the last week; up $200 in the last 24 hours alone. I'd feel incredible silly spending bitcoin in a growth phase.
As someone looking to accept BTC for purchases, how do I do so with confidence that when I accepted $3400 today that by the time I cash out it's not worth $2700?
My confusion really comes from the buying/selling of legal goods; I can see the risk being worth it if you're operating outside the law. But really; if I'm selling something then there's a pretty good chance I'm buying my supplies with a fiat currency. I have hard and set costs I need to cover. If I accept BTC, there's a chance that when it's all said and done the BTC isn't worth what I paid and now I'm losing money.
Are businesses just expected to accept that risk? If so, how many businesses are actually willing to accept that risk? Or do we have to wait for the price to settle down before seeing more widespread adoption?
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
lots of people have used it to buy drugs
While downvoting this is warranted, this is certainly true. To catch up on the biggest news that has come out of Bitcoin, I'd suggest reading on 'Silk Road' and Ross Ulbricht. Wired has a very good 2-set long form on this[1]. If you don't want such a verbose story, Ars Techica follwed it well too[2] [1]: https://www.wired.com/2015/04/silk-road-1/ https://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2 [2]: https://arstechnica.com/…
That is not the most recent or biggest news, the largest (by a very wide margin) successor to the Silk Road, AlphaBay, was busted just a month ago [1]
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/07/20/alpha...
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#37So I'm late to the digital currency game. What are the regular use cases for digital currency? Who accepts it? Is it mostly for person-to-person trading?
> So I'm late to the digital currency game
Many of us haven't even started !
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#38So I'm late to the digital currency game. What are the regular use cases for digital currency? Who accepts it? Is it mostly for person-to-person trading?
Another use case is fungibility, privacy and anonymity. These are features which are for the most part missing in our current financial system.
Monero (https://getmonero.org/) is a good example of a cryptocurrency which focuses on getting these things right.
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#39I'm pretty naive on the subject of Bitcoin so I might be missing something here, but can someone explain to me how it's used right now? Aside from treating BTC like a stock that is. The value of it fluctuates so much that actually buying/accepting it seems incredibly risky. The price can go down just as fast as it goes up. As a someone looking make purchases with BTC; if the value of a BTC is going up, why would I us…
> When a business accepts bitcoins for payment, there generally is the need to convert them to the currencies used for paying suppliers, employees and shareholders. Some merchants set prices based on the current market rate at the time the price quote is presented to the customer
Bitcoin Prices lists the exchange rate for many currencies on multiple exchanges.
When prices are determined using an automated process, the current market rate can be based on either a current price or on a weighted average basis.
When bitcoin funds for purchases are received, some merchants instantly exchange those proceeds into the preferred currency used. Hedging for each transaction can nearly entirely eliminate exchange rate risk that the business is exposed to when accepting bitcoins for payment. [1]
So it sounds like merchants accept Bitcoin and immediately convert to preferred currency based on the going BTC rate at the time of transaction.
[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_to_accept_Bitcoin,_for_small_...
Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP
#40I'm pretty naive on the subject of Bitcoin so I might be missing something here, but can someone explain to me how it's used right now? Aside from treating BTC like a stock that is. The value of it fluctuates so much that actually buying/accepting it seems incredibly risky. The price can go down just as fast as it goes up. As a someone looking make purchases with BTC; if the value of a BTC is going up, why would I us…
I know it doesn't specifically answer your question, but my understanding is that a majority of 'we accept bitcoin' businesses use a service to translate it in to their native currency at the time of sale (or very shortly after), and often will list their prices in the native currency (rather than BTC + constant adjustment).