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Coinbase from YC to DPO

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#391

Post by Kiro »

janandonly wrote: post #340
maxlamb wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He actually put in $300k, so his shares are worth around 2.4 billion now

Did he? If he simply bought bitcoins with his $300.000 in 2012 (average bitcoin price of $8) then his net worth now would be .... 37500 bitcoins or $2.362.500.000 ... 2 point 3 billion frigging dollars...

What do you mean? How is that any better than the 2.4 billion worth of Coinbase shares he has now?

You phrase it like he made a mistake and lost out on a huge profit but the ROI is exactly the same so really don't understand your comment.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#392

Post by jude- »

sibeliuss wrote: post #349
jude- wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try reading the paper: https://people.csail.mit.edu/nickolai/papers/gilad-algorand-... You have to own coins to produce blocks.

> If the means of coin production require owning coins, you have these problems that PoW does not have Producing blocks != coin production

If you're producing blocks, you're getting paid (otherwise what's the point). If the probability you get picked to produce a block is proportional to how many coins you own, then you're getting paid proportional to how many coins you own.

I don't care for Algorand's shell game of trying to say that all tokens have been minted already, and are just being distributed. If it's the case that nodes who stake more coins are getting paid more coins, then all of my analysis holds.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#393

Post by paulpauper »

lpapez wrote: post #347
janandonly wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did he? If he simply bought bitcoins with his $300.000 in 2012 (average bitcoin price of $8) then his net worth now would be .... 37500 bitcoins or $2.362.500.000 ... 2 point 3 billion frigging dollars...

In theory yes. In practice, cashing out billions of dollars worth of stocks is easier than cashing out billions of dollars worth of crypto.

OTC private block trade

it's not like the btc must be sold on an exchange

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#394

Post by Consultant32452 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #130
dehrmann wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the supposed point of crypto is to reducing the reliance on, and grifting from, companies like Coinbase That was the pitch of crypto. In practice, people are buying it as a bet that it will go up. I suspect most people are only buying it because the value is going up. If bitcoin actually worked like a currency and traded between $8k and $12 for the past 5 years, no one would care.

Global wealth is $400T. All crypto currency combined is worth about ~$2T at this point. So to store 0.5% of the world's wealth, we are using 0.6% of the world's energy. Banks obviously don't use anywhere near this much energy. Bitcoin is estimated to use more energy than all other server farms put together. So we are using 0.6% of the world's energy to store 0.5% of the world's wealth. And Doesn't seem like the ideal…

What's the total energy cost, including human capital, of keeping the petrodollar afloat via global wars/hegemony?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#395

Post by paulpauper »

koonsolo wrote: post #379
dnr wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would bitcoin be worth nearly as much as it now if Coinbase didn't exist?

Plenty of exchanges out there, so I would say yes.

but Gemini is the only other regulated US one. Coinbase is huge, even bigger than binance. Something like 50 million ppl have an account. Ppl wondered why the July 2020 Twitter hacker made so little. The reason is, coinabse blocked withdrawals to the hacker address, which if they hadn't, the hackers would have made 3x more..so let that sink in..

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#396

Post by You-Are-Right »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #156

This is pretty amazing. Gary Tan made a YT video about his experience backing them very early and getting a 6000x return: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5YApjnTG10 It's remarkable that Brian Armstrong gave up what would have been very valuable options in Airbnb—the most valuable YC company at the time—to found a new company that surpassed it.

How does this help with climate change?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#397

Post by MuffinFlavored »

smolder wrote: post #389
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Coinbase brought a true sense of legitimacy and trustworthiness to Bitcoin exchanging. I could be wrong but to me this makes every shill for crypto that says "it's anonymous!" a joke. I had to provide a driver's license and do checking account verification to be approved on Coinbase. Does that not remove the anonymity or am I missing something?

It does remove any question of who you are for coinbase, but bitcoin was only ever pseudonymous transactions, not fully anonymous. We can all see how each wallet behaves.

and in an "audit" or "government" scenario, your Coinbase wallet is linked to your driver's license + checking account, right?

Do we know if Coinbase would cooperate with US government in such a situation? I would imagine they would.

I'd imagine they are also going to be sending IRS 1099-like forms for all crypto transactions, right?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#398

Post by dang »

sekai wrote: post #336
pinkybanana wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airbnb market cap is at 105 billion and Coinbase is currently at 86. Personally I'm very sceptical that current valuation for Coinbase is justified. It is a great company for sure but there definitely arent similar network effects as with Airbnb. There's plenty of competition in the crypto exchange space.

oh boy, wait until you hear about Tesla

Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. It causes threads to go to repetitive (and often inflammatory) places, which is a failure mode for HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#399

Post by paulpauper »

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…

Early on coinbase made it very easy to buy, even if it meant taking losses. They allowed people to trade with funds that were not yet cleared. This was a long time ago. Some ppl could withdrawal the coins and then cancel the deposit by contacting the bank. that did not last long.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#400

Post by Black101 »

kleer001 wrote: post #390
Black101 wrote: post #326

my $250 order didn't go through...

Try again without a time limit, unless you're joking

I don't have access to a broker that allows orders with no time limit... unless you're joking

And of course I was not joking... you should have tried it yourself... only bankers get the best price.

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