Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Understanding Coinbase

diff.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 157 posts

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#101

Post by ro-_-b »

granzymes wrote: post #17
eruleman wrote: 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...

Correct me if I am wrong, but those decentralized exchanges don't seem to allow converting a token to dollars/euros/other currencies or vice versa. At some point the ecosystem needs to interact with banks for on and off ramps, and that is where Coinbase excels.

That is precisely where Coinbase doesn't excel. I know several people who bought crypto on Coinbase in 2017 and forgot about it. They are now trying to restore their account but Coinbase support takes¡months! to complete this step. The best days for Coinbase are already behind them. I recommend looking into other exchanges & not to rely on exchanges for storing your crypto.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#102

Post by faeyanpiraat »

ca98am79 wrote: post #89
mdoms wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don’t understand why people think this is true. I use it often with my business and it works great.

What is the benefit for you or your customers?

My assumptions:

You may save a miniscule amount on transaction fees.

For your customers It’s just a new hoop they have to jump.

Does it worth it?

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#103

Post by faeyanpiraat »

howdydoo wrote: post #84
helsinki wrote: post #67

Too tired to read the article, but please, everyone, buy your crypto via Coinbase Pro. The fees are only a fraction of what Coinbase charges.

Also, don't link your bank account using Plaid. Use deposit verification (or old fashioned bank wire) instead.

Why?

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#104

Post by helloworld11 »

mdoms wrote: post #74
noman-land wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nonsense. I have been getting paid in BTC or (when BTC fees ramp up temporarily) in other coins like Ethereum and XRP for years for completely legal, non-criminal, not even grey work and know of many jobs, job forums and other compensation sources that happily pay in crypto for perfectly legal work, either by default or if you request it as your method of payment. You basically just invented a fact and casually stated it as if true.

I also should note that for work done for clients outside my country of residence, I preferred crypto payments because local exchanges allowed me to have the payment in my bank account, in local currency in minutes 24 hours a day, any day of the week, as opposed to waiting 24 hours or even days by any other non-crypto payment method

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#105

Post by nlitened »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #102
ca98am79 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why people think this is true. I use it often with my business and it works great.

What is the benefit for you or your customers? My assumptions: You may save a miniscule amount on transaction fees. For your customers It’s just a new hoop they have to jump. Does it worth it?

If your customer is willing to spend BTC they own for your services, and you’re willing to exchange your services for some amount of BTC — then it’s very straightforward, zero extra hoops to jump.

Imagine now your customer is in a non-US country, and you are in another non-US country with another currency. Using USD wire transfer is jumping through hoops in this context, and might not always be fast, cheap, or possible at all with some pairs of countries.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#108

Post by anonymoushn »

porknubbins wrote: post #71
opportune wrote: post #39

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.

They have a feature called "instant deposit" that's the default and takes like a week to settle deposits. If you instead use a (non-instant) wire transfer then your deposit will be settled the same day.

They lack the ability to save destination addresses and hide the destination address while you input your 2FA code, so you can always enjoy wondering if you will actually get your crypto.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#109

Post by anonymoushn »

gruez wrote: post #26
mquander wrote: post #22

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.

On crypto venues you can spot borrow crypto but there you're right that there is not much demand for this, and as a result lenders don't get paid much.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#110

Post by logifail »

nlitened wrote: post #105
faeyanpiraat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the benefit for you or your customers? My assumptions: You may save a miniscule amount on transaction fees. For your customers It’s just a new hoop they have to jump. Does it worth it?

If your customer is willing to spend BTC they own for your services, and you’re willing to exchange your services for some amount of BTC — then it’s very straightforward, zero extra hoops to jump. Imagine now your customer is in a non-US country, and you are in another non-US country with another currency. Using USD wire transfer is jumping through hoops in this context, and might not always be fast, cheap, or possib…

> If your customer is willing to spend BTC they own for your services[..]

In this scenario, would one's rate be set in BTC, or fiat?

I'm struggling to understand how a (non-crypto) business could want to hire a contractor at - let's say - 0.016 BTC/day, then watch the real (fiat) cost of that rate change value as the crypto markets move.

"We hired a contractor at what was $100/day but right now it's costing us $1000/day because we agreed to fix her rate in BTC" ?

Isn't this essentially like agreeing to pay someone in gold, or any other random commodity?

Post reply on HN