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Understanding Coinbase

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71–80 of 157 posts

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#71

The point of coinbase is to be a normie-friendly, trusted onramp into crypto. It has tons of direct and indirect competitors, many of which will give you better rates or more variety, but none of which have managed to market themselves into the degree of "legitimacy" that people give Coinbase. It is an exceedingly boring business IMO.

I think that Coinbase is kind of the Apple of crypto exchanges. Their trading UI is simplified and opinionated but by having reasonable settings is vastly better than everything else out there.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#72
post #2

The biggest threat to Coinbase are decentralized exchanges like Uniswap & Sushiswap. During the peak of DeFi summer, Uniswap handled more trading volume than Coinbase. [0] Uniswap airdropped its token $UNI to all users on Sept 17, 2020. Uniswap is already at a $17 billion market cap. Coinbase is expected to IPO at ~$100 billion. [0] https://www.theblockcrypto.com/data/decentralized-finance/de...

>The biggest threat to Coinbase are decentralized exchanges like Uniswap & Sushiswap. This is like saying the biggest threat to Microsoft is Linux.

Are you agreeing or disagreeing that it is a threat? Linux did take a ton of market share from Microsoft on the server side.

Linux is also not a good analogy IMO, because Uniswap has a lot of direct retail/consumer usage whereas Linux isnt used directly by the average person.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good number of people (in the US at least) legally pay no taxes every year. So it's hypothetically possible to live entirely within crypto (legally) already. But yes, that was more talking about the future. That is the matter at hand, after all – Coinbase's future (or lack thereof).

A good number of that good number of people that dont pay taxes are children that dont participate in the economy first hand.

I'm not talking about children...

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#74
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coinbase is more about turning non-crypto currencies into crypto currencies while UNI/SUSHI are more about turning crypto currencies into different crypto currencies. In my POV, there's only two ways to get into crypto: - Centralized exchanges with KYC - Mining Coinbase is a KYC centralized exchange and enables people to turn their bank account $$s into crypto. Uniswap and Sushiswap are only relevant once someone has…

Don't forget working for it by doing stuff and receiving payment in them. That's my personal philosophical favorite.

No one wants to pay you for legal above-board work in bitcoin[0] because bitcoin is not a useful currency (for reasons that have been rehashed plenty of times in HN comments.

[0] within margin of error

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#75
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does a decentralized exchange give me that beats that? Owning the actual asset and not just an IOU

You can transfer from Coinbase to your own wallet.

Yes, but while you have it on Coinbase you just own a marker.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#76
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The biggest threat to Coinbase are decentralized exchanges like Uniswap & Sushiswap. This is like saying the biggest threat to Microsoft is Linux.

Are you agreeing or disagreeing that it is a threat? Linux did take a ton of market share from Microsoft on the server side. Linux is also not a good analogy IMO, because Uniswap has a lot of direct retail/consumer usage whereas Linux isnt used directly by the average person.

They are more mutually beneficial to each other than existential competitors.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#78
post #18
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the biggest threat to coinbase is another crypto winter where volumes fall by 90%! And eventually the asset class becoming mature, so fees also fall by another 90%

That’s what we call a strong correction. Or even a « capitulation ». It’s pretty healthy if u ask me. Market cycles. It will happen again. The question is when? After what BTCUSD price? We’ll probably run the bull a few more months and then crash. And then start all again.

Kraken Intelligence predicts a top at 102-300K and a capitulation at 32k.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#80
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why will those factors not be applicable to crypto? (People taking custody of their own cryptoassets may mean that the exchange can't lend them out, but as exchanges continue to pass the test of time more and more people may be willing to leave assets on exchanges.)

AFAIK the only reason why there's a market for lending stocks is because the SEC prohibits naked short-selling. If you want to short-sell, you need to locate a share somewhere and "borrow" it, which leads to brokerages offering to do that for a price. For crypto this isn't required because you can short using CME bitcoin futures, which is cash settled and therefore doesn't require you to locate/borrow anything.

For non-cash-settled transactions there is still a desire to borrow crypto. For example, pledging bitcoin to borrow ETH to purchase a NFT.
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