Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#211

Post by kirse » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

_rohan wrote: post #93

I see a lot of people talking about the market being in a bubble, and that they’re holding cash waiting for a crash. Even if that’s true, I recently read about the bubble potentially “bursting up”: instead of prices coming crashing down, prices stay stagnant or grow slowly, while earnings grow quickly. The net result is the same (P/E ratios stabilize), but you lose out on a lot by staying out of the market.

I think the other practical issue is that a "bubble" can go high enough where a 70% downward correction could still land above where you originally decided to cash out. I made this error back in 2016 thinking that Obama had juiced things for 8+ years and there'd be no way for Trump to keep the party going. And that taught me a hard lesson on the foolishness of trying to time the markets.

The other issue we are dealing with now is also asset inflation, where the number on the screen does not reflect any intrinsic value, but moreso the ongoing devaluing of the dollar we hold in our pockets.

I personally think this whole "modern monetary theory" is a game where the smart folks at the Fed realize that rather than have people watch the number on their savings and 401ks obliterated in a crash, they prefer to keep that number appearing the same and bury the "cost" of the bubble into a deflating dollar. It keeps the masses happy because they see the $s in their savings account still going up, which retains confidence in the system. Who knows when everyone will catch on, but it's been working so far.

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#212

Post by graeme » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #197

graeme wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I’d be interested to know is how it compares relative to energy costs for transacting with and securing fiat currencies. Very hard to compare. One thing I’m unsure of for bitcoin: do costs go up if there are more transactions or does mining difficulty adjust so that costs don’t rise no matter how many transactions bitcoin does? I realize this is a major gap in my understanding. The finance and currency system…

> Actually how do miners make money once there are no more coins to mine? With BTC (and I would assume most other cryptocurrencies), by transaction fees.

Wait is my whole calculation wrong then? I thought miners only got paid for receiving bitcoins.

They also get additional payments in fractions of a bitcoin for transactions and this is in addition to the costs I wrote above?

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#213

Post by bob33212 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

TheBlight wrote: post #198

bob33212 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are trying to "Exit". That is what they call a IPO or a Sale in startups. They get paid with cash, then they buy houses, stocks, bitcoin, cars with that cash. The "Mission" of Coinbase exists because they don't want to say "Our mission is to build a 100 billion dollar company and then cash out" it sounds better and feels better to say that you are democratizing and decentralizing power for the people.

Both can be true. ie. wanting to build something cool and potentially good for society while also enjoying the fruits.

Certainly. Just look at some of the people on Etsy. Some of them are pure artists who do what they do because they love it, not because they were hoping become a 100M brand some day. Some of them make good money because their products are so great and unique. But those same people are generally not looking to sell their company.

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#214

Post by wtf_is_up » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #125

antonislav wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can train yourself to get good at judging price vs value Could you give some guide lines on how to achieve this?

Some if it is time and experience. Seeing markets come and go, seeing valuations come and go. You could perhaps study historical markets to gain some of that, but there is no better teacher than going through it (including taking some beatings along the way, along the process of learning and instilling discipline). The absolute easiest things to look for (things most anybody can do), is growth vs valuation, along wit…

I find it interesting that BRK did not sell any SNOW in its latest 13F. They own 12% of SNOW...

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#215

Post by lottin » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #142

eloff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was wrong then either. I think this is a greater fool style of bubble like the famous tulip bubble, eventually we'll run out of fools. That's my opinion, but we'll see.

The other possibility is that it will be widely used in the future as a store of value or for some other purposes. Might be rational to put at least some percentage of your net worth into it. People need and want something like that to exist where they have complete control over their assets without any worries about government or institutions.

> People need and want something like that to exist where they have complete control over their assets without any worries about government or institutions.

Are you sure? I have never in my life met anyone who thought they didn't have control over their assets or that they needed to have more control.

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#216

Post by sjg007 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 7:00 PM UTC

wcoenen wrote: post #205

giarc wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when markets closed on Friday, BTC was at about $55,000 and BTCC-B closed at $10.83. BTC continues to trade over the weekend obviously and is now at $57,000. Given this inbalance in trading times, should we see BTCC-B pop on Monday morning to catch up to BTC? Could one not buy/sell BTCC-B each morning depending on overnight activity of BTC?

> Could one not buy/sell BTCC-B each morning depending on overnight activity of BTC? If the price went up, the sellers also know this and will adjust their offers though, so you won't be able to buy underpriced BTCC shares in the morning. You can bid at the previous day's closing price but good luck getting your bid filled.

I think the real arbitrage is between crypto exchanges.

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#217

Post by lottin » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #65

01100011 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't inflation the economic equivalent of gravity? If an asset isn't growing faster than inflation, it's losing money. If there are other assets offering better risk/reward then money will flow to them and out of the inflated assets.

Inflation is high, but it's nowhere near enough to explain the recent market mania. Likewise, stimulus isn't enough to explain the market mania, especially after you subtract out COVID economic losses. Personal savings rate is up, discretionary spending is down, people are stuck at home, and everyone is glued to their phones. I think a lot of people's extra money is going into crypto and the market. FOMO reigns supre…

Inflation isn't high at all.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#218

Post by lottin » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

_rohan wrote: post #179

hiq wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instead of prices coming crashing down, prices stay stagnant or grow slowly, while earnings grow quickly Do you have a link where I could read more about this? As a layman I fail to understand how this would work, and I couldn't find a page explaining it. My naive understanding is that a bubble pops when investors lose confidence in the market, and instead of anticipating growth, anticipates a correction and create…

The market is overvalued when the price-to-earnings ratio is too high (ie, valuations outweigh the actual money that a company makes). When it gets really high, investors can panic, and sell stocks, driving prices down and hence reducing the PE ratio. The alternative I’m describing is one where panic selling doesn’t occur. Earnings can continue to rise (because earnings reflect consumer spending and other similar tre…

Bitcoin has no earnings so I don't know how that could possibly work in the case of the bitcoin bubble.

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#219

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

solosoyokaze wrote: post #206

dragonwriter wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't really make sense to measure this in USD if one of the major hypothesis driving Bitcoin is that USD is being hyper inflated “USD is being hyperinflated” is an easily falsiable (and obviously false) statement, so basing anything on it is nonsense. (That it is imminently going to slide into hyperinflation is less easily falsified, which is why that is actually the perennial cry of cryptobugs, as it was for…

Isn’t it easy to verify? How much did a house cost 20 years ago? A 4 year college degree? How much were you paying per month for health insurance in the 90s? Salaries have not kept up. They’ve been amazingly static my entire life.

You've mentioned three items that have experienced specific inflation at higher than the general rate of inflation (but even then mostly not at rates anywhere in the remote neighborhood that would qualify as hyperinflation [> +50%/month] even if they were the rate of general inflation.)

So,yeah, when even the rapidly inflating segments aren't anywhere close to hyperinflation, it's pretty clearly not general hyperinflation.

And stagnant wages are a completely unrelated issue to hyperinflation, though obviously wage increases mitigate and wage stagnation or decline exacerbates the effect of whatever inflation there is on wage earners.

Re: Coinbase valued above $100B, ahead of direct listing

#220

Post by wtf_is_up » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

rapsey wrote: post #83

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fed contributes, but it's hardly a singular explainer for the current market mania. The chart you shared hasn't even changed significantly since July. The Fed didn't print enough money to buoy Tesla 1000% or send Bitcoin up 100% in a month. There's no mechanism directing money straight from the Fed into the riskiest assets. Market mania has taken hold.

For bitcoin at least, Tether printed enough.

Tether FUD Era of this bullrun ended 15 Jan. See you in a few years.