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Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#201

Post by sowbug »

Fej wrote: post #194
stanmancan wrote: post #35

I'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…

Bitcoin transactions in which the payee retains the currency instead of immediately exchanging it for USD, EUR, GBP, or another usual currency are largely done for illicit purchases, especially those involving narcotics. This is done because Bitcoin is extremely easy to launder through "tumblers". Unlike, say, paper currency, an individual 'unit' of Bitcoin (insofar as that exists) is not tracked with a serial number…

TL;DR: holding Bitcoin means you're probably a criminal.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#202

Post by kristopolous »

seiferteric wrote: post #43
stanmancan wrote: post #35

I'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…

Are there any instruments like options or futures for btc? Seems like these could be used to solve this issue.

futures + debt based investing are the two canaries of market crashes. It was true in 2008, 2000, 1987, 1929, 1873, ... heck all the way back to tulip mania or arguably the financial panic of 33AD.

The question of "who's buying, how many of them are there, how long do they intend to hold for, and how are they buying?" you can't answer for sure, but when the capital to buy starts getting more scarce and people start leveraging other assets to continue buying...you'll get to a point where market velocity surpasses speculative velocity and the leveraging ability of the buyer.

In the physical world, this is a vendor of widgets on the street and a buying frenzy. Buyers spend money on the widgets and turn around and open up their own widget shop as sellers to feed the craze. Eventually enough buyers are converted into sellers, not enough buyers remain and the price crashes.

Futures contracts are a form of credit in this model. Bitcoin's crashed 4 times in 6 years - don't think it won't happen again.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#205

Post by sillysaurus3 »

keypusher wrote: post #200
vadym909 wrote: post #197

Unrelated, but it still blows my mind- that the creator of this cryptosystem thats now worth $50B is still unknown. He has to have been lived somewhere, gone to school somewhere, studied, worked somewhere, left some track somewhere about who he was.

Dave Kleiman - Look him up. It's actually all a kind of sad and sordid story. The myth is far better than the reality.

I think that story was largely debunked. It even turned into a dicey situation for gwern, though I respect his commitment to chasing down a lead.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#206

Post by 1_2__4 »

skizm wrote: post #55
stanmancan wrote: post #35

I'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…

Bitcoin purists will say that, eventually, there is no "cash out" phase. 1 BTC = 1 BTC and who cares about what the dollar equivalent happens to be. Once everything is in BTC you will never exchange it for dollars. Do you spend dollars today wondering if tomorrow the Euro will be worth more or less? No, so why would you care what the dollar equivalent to a BTC is when everything you buy is priced in BTC? This is long…

I think traditional currency can remain solvent longer than cryptocurrency can remain irrational.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#207

Post by zebnyc »

Can anyone who has been investing in digital currency provide some alternatives to Coinbase vis-a-vis fees?

If I am plunking down $65k, then that is almost $1k in fees. In comparison, if I buy stocks, I pay around $7 in commission. I know that it is not a direct comparison cause there is currency conversion fees involved.

Are there any better alternatives? How do you guys invest to avoid fees?

Thanks

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#208

Post by MichaelBurge »

stanmancan wrote: post #35

I'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…

Something like Bitpay guarantees the exchange rate for 15 minutes between invoicing the customer and conversion to USD.

More generally, you'd outsource those risks to dedicated finance companies and handle USD: Exchange rate risk, fee calculation risk, confirmation/double-spending risk, etc. Just like in how there is an entire shell game of risks being offloaded between companies when you accept credit cards, and no merchant directly accepts credit from an unknown customer.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#209

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

panarky wrote: post #142
skizm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin purists will say that, eventually, there is no "cash out" phase. 1 BTC = 1 BTC and who cares about what the dollar equivalent happens to be. Once everything is in BTC you will never exchange it for dollars. Do you spend dollars today wondering if tomorrow the Euro will be worth more or less? No, so why would you care what the dollar equivalent to a BTC is when everything you buy is priced in BTC? This is long…

I'm sure there are some "bitcoin purists" who think someday bitcoin will be used to buy everything, but that's certainly a minority viewpoint. There's a more pragmatic way to think about it. Bitcoin can coexist just fine with national currencies, and with other cryptocurrencies, and with precious metals. Bitcoin doesn't need to "win" by replacing any of these. Bitcoin is valuable because it's a secure way to store an…

Basically bitcoin becomes digital gold, and I think that's the most likely outcome of it.

Re: Coinbase raises $100M Series D led by IVP

#210

Post by pmorici »

anilshanbhag wrote: post #58

Coinbase makes a killing with their fees. The spread between the buy and sell prices on coinbase are 1-1.2%. On top, their bank transfer charges are proportional to amount transferred instead of standard flat fee. I wonder why they need another $100M ! For people who want to buy, I would recommend Kraken - they have much higher volume and sane pricing. There are others too like Bitfinex, Poloneix, etc.

> their bank transfer charges are proportional to amount transferred instead of standard flat fee.

I don't think that is true. From everything I've seen they only charge a nominal fee of 15 cents to do an ACH transfer.

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