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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

#211

Post by dajohnson89 »

fpgaminer wrote: post #133
45h34jh53k4j wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance on cryptocurrency holdings? might be hard to find a provider that would accept that level of risk and volatility. Would the premiums increase with the value of the BTC? What if there just isn't enough bitcoin in circulation to cover the loss (there is a 21 million cap on BTC). Bank robberies don't usually leave the bank with nothing :-) Exchange gets rolled, it might not even afford the claim. Agree about a…

> What if there just isn't enough bitcoin in circulation to cover the loss (there is a 21 million cap on BTC). It's being defacto established that when a cryptobank gets robbed, the funds are repaid to customers using local currency, not BTC, priced at the time of the loss. So, from the underwriter's perspective, it's just insuring whatever total USD value Coinbase currently holds, with consideration given to Coinbas…

FDIC makes this analogy a tad more difficult, afaik.

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

#212

Post by pmorici »

zebnyc wrote: post #207

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

If you are investing that kind of cash you should be using Coinbase's GDAX exchange not their brokerage service. If you place limit orders on GDAX with the "post only" option checked you will be able to buy coins with zero fees.

Other exchanges have similar fee structures so if you don't want to pay the 1% brokerage fee you really need to learn how to use limit orders regardless of what exchange you ultimately use.

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

#213

Post by dajohnson89 »

richardknop wrote: post #75
vocatus_gate wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the fees they charge, and the volume on the exchange, I don't see how they couldn't be making a profit? Of course I'm not a business guy, might be something I'm not thinking of.

If they were making profit, I'd assume they would make a press release. They would want the business world know.

No. If they're making a killing and released it to the public, there would be a clamor for lower fees.

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

#214

Post by pmorici »

richardknop wrote: post #75
vocatus_gate wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the fees they charge, and the volume on the exchange, I don't see how they couldn't be making a profit? Of course I'm not a business guy, might be something I'm not thinking of.

If they were making profit, I'd assume they would make a press release. They would want the business world know.

Privately owned profitable businesses don't usually go trumpeting to the world how wildly profitable they are. That is just inviting competition. Kind of dumb.

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

#215

Post by fpgaminer »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #211
fpgaminer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if there just isn't enough bitcoin in circulation to cover the loss (there is a 21 million cap on BTC). It's being defacto established that when a cryptobank gets robbed, the funds are repaid to customers using local currency, not BTC, priced at the time of the loss. So, from the underwriter's perspective, it's just insuring whatever total USD value Coinbase currently holds, with consideration given to Coinbas…

FDIC makes this analogy a tad more difficult, afaik.

How so? FDIC doesn't cover theft.

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

#216

Post by puranjay »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #109
puranjay wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just about the most absurd belief any smart person can actually hold.

Why? Currencies existed prior to governments. What prevents that from happening in the future? Beyond that, the USD is just one of many mediums of exchange. What prevents the USD from becoming the next Deutsche Mark, French franc, or Spanish peseta? While I don't believe BTC is The One, calling it "the most absurd" shows a blatant ignorance of history, and hardly supports a notion of superior intelligence.

If the USD collapses, other currencies will take its place - GBP, EUR, etc.

The only reason the USD would collapse in the first place would be if the US government collapses.

In that event, you're looking at apocalypse. Or at the very least, a world war. To assume that the world is as isolated as it was when the Spanish peseta collapsed as it is right now is absurd.

Good luck exchanging a digital currency in the event of an apocalypse.

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

#217

Post by fapjacks »

AgentME wrote: post #191
thanksgiving wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know miners will hate me for saying this it will bring up the lightning network but I think the transaction costs are too high. They have to come down (close to zero if not zero) even if it means miners and node operators are working for no gain. I don't understand why it means that Bitcoin is insecure for people to be able to mine in their gpu. Maybe we need to leave Bitcoin alone and come up with another currency…

>I don't understand why it means that Bitcoin is insecure for people to be able to mine in their gpu. What do you mean? People can mine with a gpu, but they won't make much because of the many miners using much faster ASICs. If you think Bitcoin should have been made so that ASICs weren't possible: a number of altcoins agree with that idea, but there's an argument to be made that optimized hardware is always possible…

Yes, but this way you're trading an elite made of hardware specialists and people that can afford to hire hardware specialists, with an elite made of people that can afford to fill datacenters with the most specialized hardware. Mining quickly becomes a game of "who can throw the most money into the problem" and ends up skewing the pool significantly because you are rewarded with money for winning the game, which means you can afford even more of the specialized hardware. That's the big thing with Bitcoin: All the miners are rich folks (these days, mostly Chinese) with huge datacenters and tons of cheap electricity. I have 12 of the USB ASIC miners that are many times unable to even pay for themselves in electricity costs because the difficulty is so high, which is the problem that squeezes out grandma's GPU miner and pushes even more people out of the mining game (not to even mention the ballooning size of the blockchain).

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

#218

Post by icebraining »

ehxcaet wrote: post #189
icebraining wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Why do you spend any currency when you can buy Bitcoins instead, let it grow and then sell them back into the original currency? Any reason you can give applies to spend…

Not sure that really applies. You NEED to buy things. Rent/mortgage. Food. Transportation expenses. The guy's right - at this point, why would you ever spend BTC on those transactions when you can spend $ instead? The reason why you spend any currency instead of buying BTC is because you need to. Not because you're willingly buying something unnecessary to forsake potential earnings in the future.

Right. I'm not in any disputing Gresham's law; if you have enough USD to cover an expense, you're surely spending it first.

But the idea that "the reason why you spend any currency instead of buying BTC is because you need to" is just plain wrong. You're essentially saying that people spend strictly what they need to live and save every penny beyond that, and can only wonder whatever led you to that conclusion.

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

#219

Post by ktta »

paulcole wrote: post #153
ktta wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

> While downvoting this is warranted Why exactly is downvoting my statement warranted? It's factual.

HN hates short comments without references. Also it looked like you were writing it off because it is used to buy drugs.

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

#220

Post by semi-extrinsic »

cesarb wrote: post #169
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…

> 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? Moving the analogy a bit: everything we buy is priced in Reais. However, we still care if tomorrow the Dollar is worth more or less, since it does impact the price of several kinds of goods. For instance, the Dollar increasin…

But this is exactly the point - in countries where the local currency versus USD has had volatility comparable to BTC, it's been a big problem. E.g. in South Korea, where the volatility (and general upwards trend) in the Won last year was an order of magnitude less than BTC, the currency fluctuations have caused major losses and uncertainty for exporters. If you walk around Seoul, there are signs everywhere showing the current exchange rate.
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