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Coinbase from YC to DPO

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#221

Post by sombremesa »

jcims wrote: post #139
purple_ferret wrote: post #23

Coinbase is definitely a success story in how to appeal to the masses. There were always alternatives, but coinbase always came out on top despite the high fees and poor customer service. I think Coinbase as a publicly traded company will be very interesting to follow. Not only is it a massively cyclical industry, but the supposed point of crypto is to reducing the reliance on, and grifting from, companies like Coinb…

One factor of that appeal in the US is that you have to provide your SSN to the exchange you're using. There's a lot of intangibles that Coinbase brings that overcomes the activation energy required to punch in those numbers on a web form. Just an anecdote but, much to my chagrin, I've had a largely dormant Coinbase account since 2013 and haven't received any notable spam or evidence that my contact info has been han…

> much to my chagrin, I've had a largely dormant Coinbase account since 2013 and haven't received any notable spam or evidence that my contact info has been handled sloppily.

> Recently I started the enrollment process for a couple other popular exchanges and almost immediately start getting some gnarly spam of topical relevance.

So...you're happy now, right?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#222

Post by iso1210 »

gdubs wrote: post #218
Fede_V wrote: post #35

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be sig…

There’s an article in the NYTimes today on the environmental impact of NFTs and I personally find the whole thing deeply upsetting. I care a lot about the climate. It’s maybe my number one concern long-term, especially as my kids are concerned. I saw the buzz around NFTs, and thought - “hey, cool! A new way for artists to make some money directly from their fans.” Sounds great. Minted a few NFTs to learn how it all w…

The problem is those emissions aren't being properly accounted for. Those causing them aren't paying the true cost.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#223

Post by sibeliuss »

jude- wrote: post #166
jtsiskin wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the uninformed, what mathematical guarantees does POW have that POS doesn’t?

PoW is open-membership, because the means of coin production are not tied to owning coins already. All you need to contribute is computing power, and you can start earning coins at a profit. PoS is closed-membership with a veneer of open-membership, because the means of coin production are tied to owning a coin already. What this means in practice is that no rational coin-owner is going to sell you coins at a fast en…

It's worth investigating Algorand's Pure Proof-of-Stake model and seeing how it compares to other POS implementations: https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/about-algorand...

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#224

Post by plokiju »

gonehome wrote: post #189
jtsiskin wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the uninformed, what mathematical guarantees does POW have that POS doesn’t?

This is the best (and also approachable well-written) book on the topic that I've found: https://bitcoinbook.cs.princeton.edu/ My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that POW is computationally expensive because that large investment of computation is what creates a chain of successive blocks (the blockchain). This prevents someone from rewriting history of transactions on the public chain (which would allow them t…

> POW currencies are guaranteed to prevent this kind of abuse unless any individual entity is able to get more than 51%. There's an incentive in addition to this because corrupting the integrity of the network would also devalue the currency. Larger networks (like BTC) are harder to do a hostile take over of because it's harder to get that much compute (though mining centralization is a risk).

Couldn't this be re-written as:

> POS currencies are guaranteed to prevent this kind of abuse unless any individual entity is able to get more than 51% of the staked currency. There's an incentive in addition to this because corrupting the integrity of the network would also devalue the currency. Larger networks (like ETH) are harder to do a hostile take over of because it's harder to get that much stake (though validator centralization is a risk).

My (non-expert) interpretation is that staking is just an abstraction of mining, and they are secured by the same incentive system

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#225

Post by lysecret »

cbhl wrote: post #207
Fede_V wrote: post #35

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be sig…

If Coinbase gets sufficiently mainstream, I suspect it will mitigate a lot of this. A transfer of BTC between two Coinbase users can happen off-chain, which means skipping the work necessary to mine a block including the given transaction.

So..... a bank?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#226

Post by cwkoss »

stormbeta wrote: post #190
gonehome wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical of proof-of-stake, proof-of-work seems like the main innovation of cryptocurrencies that differentiates them from the standard financial industry? If you swap out POW for POS (or worse clearing house type trust orgs like Stellar) then aren't you just putting trust into some incentive based system no different than existing financial systems? Just instead a government you're trusting some other entity. Y…

And this is exactly why I'm so skeptical of cryptocurrencies in general. There doesn't appear any viable way to make them work as currencies that doesn't either have horrendous externalities, simply replicate what existing currencies already do (often poorly and with many downsides), or often both. I don't think it's a coincidence that even a decade plus later, the primary use cases for crypto still seem to be grey/b…

Dollar hegemony has many horrendous externalities as well.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#227

Post by nscalf »

dd36 wrote: post #158

I still don’t see what the upside is to their valuation? It’s all baked in AFAICT.

This is assuming valuations are based off fundamentals. The market is absolutely disconnected from what companies can actually deliver, and instead has become a place to park the surplus of money in the system.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#228

Post by jude- »

sibeliuss wrote: post #223
jude- wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoW is open-membership, because the means of coin production are not tied to owning coins already. All you need to contribute is computing power, and you can start earning coins at a profit. PoS is closed-membership with a veneer of open-membership, because the means of coin production are tied to owning a coin already. What this means in practice is that no rational coin-owner is going to sell you coins at a fast en…

It's worth investigating Algorand's Pure Proof-of-Stake model and seeing how it compares to other POS implementations: https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/about-algorand...

If the means of coin production require owning coins, you have these problems that PoW does not have. Definitely true for Algorand.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#229

Post by deckard1 »

fumblebee wrote: post #93
Fede_V wrote: post #35

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be sig…

Couldn't agree more. I struggle to comprehend how an energy obliterating and (relatively speaking) primitive technology like Bitcoin is the top dog in this space. Sure, first mover advantage counts for something, but come on - how has superior tech not yet left it in the rearview. In a space that moves at such rapid pace with heavy investment and buckets of innovation, at some point the crowd surely will migrate en m…

I've often thought that, maybe, PoW crypto could be the Great Filter.

I feel like there is a good sci-fi book here. Bitcoin continues to gain speculators, continues to rise in "value", and humans are largely powerless to stop it. It ends up forcing humans to produce more and more electricity, thus heating up the planet in a horrible feedback loop. A crypto twist on the nanontech "gray goo" threat.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#230

Post by [deleted] »

Fede_V wrote: post #35

I'm horrendously worried about crypto gaining more marketshare as long as proof of work crypto remains mainstream. It has significantly worse externalities than just about any company I can think of (including defense contractors/vaping companies), and, if it grows larger before we have clean energy, then we virtually guarantee we won't be able to tackle global warming. We are going to bestow a world that will be sig…

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