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Understanding Coinbase

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141–150 of 157 posts

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

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

You set the rate in USD, and do the currency conversion upon sending.

> I'm struggling to understand how a (non-crypto) business could want to hire a contractor at - let's say - 0.016 BTC/day

You’re right, BTC is too volatile to set the price in it in advance. But it is a perfectly good payment method.

It’s true that if you need the money you receive in BTC to feed your family tomorrow or they starve, then BTC is not convenient and too risky due to price fluctuations. But if you’re a reasonably compensated professional or a business with healthy margins, there’s very little downside in receiving 10—20% of money as crypto, and potentially very high upside.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#144
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a "Coinbase Wallet," though, which is somewhat confusingly a separate app where you actually do hold your own private keys.[0] You can seamlessly link your exchange account and your Wallet account so you can move the money right into your own Coinbase Wallet with your own private keys as soon as you're done with the exchange. I'm not sure the parent comment meant that wallet, but Coinbase does "give you a wa…

You need to transfer the funds from your Coinbase account to Coinbase wallet. You’ll never have access to the private keys on Coinbase. At that point, Coinbase wallet is the equivalent of Metamask et al

It would be, except that you can easily link the two accounts. Sure, that's roughly equivalent to making sure you have the Coinbase exchange address assigned to your wallet loaded into Metamask and your Metamask address loaded into the Coinbase exchange, but that takes a level of understanding that linking Coinbase Wallet to Coinbase exchange doesn't require.

Coinbase does "provide you a wallet." It just isn't part of the exchange.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#145
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long-term capital gains rate is 0% for single people whose income and short-term capital gains are under $40k per year, or married people under $80k.[0] "People who pay no income tax" absolutely can apply to people using cryptocurrencies. [0] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/capital-gains-tax-r...

I stand corrected. I can be absolutely fiat-free if I choose to beggar myself.

Given that the median family income in the U.S. is almost 15% less than $80k[0], the majority of U.S. households don't have to worry about this problem.

You can try to make it out to sound really widespread if you want, but the facts don't support you.

And the fact that people with lower incomes stand to benefit more from crypto than people of higher means who already have access to reliable banking systems is part of the point.[1]

[0] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27... [1] Bitcoin's genesis block, which cites the bailout of banks at the expense of sound money.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#146

A posh front end interface to the world's largest decentralised Ponzi scheme enabled by the idiotic authorities of the USA.

Ponzi/pyramid schemes require you to pay the nodes above you. At some point you cannot find new victims to add under you. On the contrary, networks like Bitcoin do not work like that. Buying Bitcoin doesn't affect the Bitcoin balances of any other node in the network.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#147
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...

Sushiswap is mostly a joke / ripoff. The Uniswap team has been able to consistently deliver good stuff, while Sushiswap has been trying to selfishly extract value from the trend.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#148
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

This doesn't really address the comment it replies to though. Paying someone for work in a dollar stablecoin still obviates their need for a crypto onramp.

1) Not everyone has a job where they can be paid in crypto. 2) Some people want to invest larger amounts into crypto. Both these cases require an onramp.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#149
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different types of networking still appear "randomly chaotic" to lay people. To people who know how they work, they're no more complex than cryptocurrencies are to people who know how they work. The fact that something requires specialist understanding at its most basic levels does not in any way prevent building upon it and simplifying it until it reaches such a level of abstraction that any layperson can use it eve…

but uniswap is already presented as something for the people, it's not experts talking to experts or infrastructure

I don't know what exactly you were trying to do, but the steps are pretty simple

1. Download Metamask.

2. Deposit your tokens, or purchase them from metamask.

3. Go to Uniswap.

4. Swap.

Re: Understanding Coinbase

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. To a bank. After passing KYC. On an exchange like Coinbase. That's my point: Coinbase is well positioned to be the on and off ramp for crypto by being legitimate enough to interface with the US financial system.

My take is that needing on/offramps proves crypto (and coinbase) is nothing but a huge casino at this point. I've been involved for 7 years and i still can't spend my crpto directly or without some serious gymnastics involved. So tired of people saying the tech is new, 'we are early adopters', etc. I'm personally steering clear of coinbase if they go public.

You can't spend crypto directly?

I've been using a bitcoin debit card for years.

I've also purchased thousands of dollars of stuff, from NameCheap renewals, Vultr hosting, to Amazon gift cards.

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