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Coinbase from YC to DPO

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#271

Post by sleepygardener »

loceng wrote: post #145
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…

And I still have yet to understand why should the rest of society who hasn't bought into Bitcoin shoulder higher energy costs because Bitcoin are driving up demand?

This could be said about any commodity. Like because of gold hoarding banks/individuals driving up the demand rest of the society has to pay high price of gold for jewelry.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#272

Post by marrone12 »

px43 wrote: post #248
throwawaybbqed wrote: post #51

I was an early user of coinbase. I only bought a fraction of a coin because of Paul Graham and YC's reputation. Well .. I was wrong. I was not an active trader. It seems they have closed by account and liquidated the btc within (if there were actually btc in my name). I am deeply disappointed that they don't have a telephone number I can call to help figure out the situation. Pretty disappointed.

Eh, maybe a month ago I found a Coinbase account from 2013 that I had forgotten about, and it still had everything in it. Your story makes no sense. Coinbase support has always been pretty good for every problem I've ever had. Why talk to someone on the phone when you can click a button and have a live chat with a support agent instantly? https://help.coinbase.com/en/contact-us

Is this a plant? coinbase support is notoriously horrible, even my friend who works at the company thinks it's bad.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#273

Post by Tenoke »

arcticbull wrote: post #108
Tenoke wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt they are inflating them and it's trivial to check by going on both CB and Binance, looking at the order books and executing a few orders against them.

Right, you know in a completely unregulated market, you can just put fake things on the books yeah? Remember that ETF that was trying to list a few years ago said 95% of all volume in the crypto space was fake. [1] Now, at the time, they included Binance as a legitimate exchange but you know nobody's looking and they can do literally whatever they want. That designation is especially suspect as: > Of the 10 exchanges…

I mean, how can what's on the book be be fake if my trades are executed faster, the spread is smaller and I can take advantage of the higher liquidity??

Those things aren't just arbitrary numbers with no effect, if you are trading it's pretty noticable where the volume is higher even if you don't look at the order book.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#274

Post by Hnrobert42 »

“Additionally, it’s worth celebrating that Coinbase was always a good business, i.e. it always made money.”

Why is that worth celebrating? A company made money. That is what companies are created to do. I suppose if you invested in Coinbase, you could celebrate it. Otherwise, who cares?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#275

Post by wmf »

russellbeattie wrote: post #147

I'm not sure what I'm more amazed at: The foresight of Coinbase's founder starting the company so early on, or my personal total lack of foresight having read with interest about Bitcoin from the beginning and yet not bothering to buy a single coin at any point over the past decade.

TradeHill was founded a year earlier and failed due to lack of demand. Gemini was founded after Coinbase and never caught up. It really looks like Coinbase got the timing right.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#276

Post by meowkit »

danimal88 wrote: post #240
cwkoss wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dollar hegemony has many horrendous externalities as well.

While that -might- be true, the question is whether the dollar, the RMB, the CAD, and every other currency have anything like the -direct- pollution cost of bitcoin, which my understanding is that they do not

Can you share how Bitcoin has a direct pollution cost?

Last I checked BTC primarily uses excess electricity in the cheapest regions of the world. What if BTC only ran on solar power?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#277

Post by jcims »

sombremesa wrote: post #221
jcims wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

lol Yes! I feel like a member of the economy now. A guid in a database somewhere...i have value.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#278

Post by bglusman »

It's a tiny bit pedantic, but the Coinbase offering today was not actually an IPO, I learned, but a DPO (Direct Public Offering). It was not a fundraising event for Coinbase, only a liquidity event for shareholders, and unlike an IPO no explicit valuation process occurred to select an offering price.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#280

Post by gt565k »

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…

Cardano is PoS and has been live for a while now.

It's slowly chipping away at Ethereum's use case and with smart contracts coming soon that are backwards compatible with Ethereum solidity code, it will overtake Ethereum over time.

There's other PoS blockchains that work and solve the concerns you have outlined.

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