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Coinbase from YC to DPO

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#531

Post by rawtxapp »

tootie wrote: post #516
rawtxapp wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing is, crypto is at the intersection of many disciplines at once, tech/finance/economy/psychology/game theory, etc. I'd if you try to start with a clean slate and no biases against it from the get go, spend some time researching and understanding it alonside what money is and it's history, etc. You'll probably start to see some usefulness to it.

I understand a lot of that stuff. I think the last 10 years have very thoroughly vindicated fiat currencies and central banking. The fact that we powered through the last financial crisis without inflation and the biggest pain was inflicted by austerity policies in Europe made it all pretty unequivocal. Crypto is powering close to zero of the mainstream economy. Nobody got a bitcoin bailout. The "money" isn't flowing…

> The fact that we powered through the last financial crisis without inflation...

If you trust those metrics, yes everything is perfect. Prices at grocery might not have inflated, but assets certainly have, real estate is crazy expensive, stock market P/E ratios have also exploded. For the working class whose income has relatively stayed stable, it means life is a lot harder.

The money is very much flowing in the crypto world, just look at DeFi, it has more or less the equivalent services available elsewhere, but everyone has access, you don't need trust, it has large volumes and billions of dollars in capital in these protocols.

It's great if you want a predictable global monetary system not controlled by any single entity. If you don't see any value in that (as in you really trust your gov and the politicians/bankers), I don't think there's anything I could tell you to convince you otherwise.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#532

Post by dogman144 »

tootie wrote: post #320
thinkingkong wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know lots of really smart software people who avoided crypto because it didnt and still doesnt “make sense”. But we all didnt invest on the merit of the technology. We forgot the whole “how will people behave” part and lost out on millions.

It still makes no sense to me. It makes sense in the sense that if people believe in it it becomes real. But I don't get why people believe in it. And frankly I'm still pretty skeptical that it's being floated by more than money laundering.

From something I wrote above, this was my ah-ha moment:

Not all cryptos are like this, but for bitcoin and other ones that have the incentives right: bitcoin's massive breakthrough is a protocol that can send verifiably discrete entities across a network, without a central party needing to verify the discrete-ness. This is a huge breakthrough in a lot of ways, but basically consider if you network could send payments as exactly as easily as it does HTTP packets, and w/o a client-server model, just p2p. HTTP changed the world, and that's the idea behind bitcoin's value. If you could somehow buy a slice of HTTP in 1997, or TCP/UDP, now knowing how important and valuable those became (valued by the size of the internet economy), would you?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#533

Post by galactus »

jeremyjh wrote: post #505
dylkil wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the salt on this board when it comes to crypto only gets worse as time goes on

Yes, perhaps this is correlated with the fact that the successive number of years that crypto has been hyped and failed to deliver anything of value only grows as time goes on.

And also that people are starting to seriously worry for the energy consumption of something that provides no useful value.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#534

Post by anonporridge »

mtnGoat wrote: post #502
anonporridge wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you also can't take your house with you stored in your brain if you have to flee the country. Bitcoin as chaos insurance (or schmuck insurance as Chamath calls it) is the use case that makes the most sense to me.

do you really think if the sh*t hit the fan? the entire BTC network and the internet at large would still be working for you to transfer these units around? this to me is where the comparison to gold falls off. i can hold physical gold and silver and trade it at will even without power, pricing updates, etc. this does not apply to crypto. considering cutting internet access is now a normal thing during unrest, being…

It depends on the scale of shit hitting the fan.

If the global internet goes down and stays down, then I think it's safe to say that global civilization is permanently collapsing, in which case billions of people are going to die in the resulting famine and the survivors probably won't be able to maintain enough technology to survive long term as climate change continues to snowball.

In this scenario, yeah bitcoin is worthless. But so is gold. The only thing worth stockpiling for this scenario is brass and lead (and a strong local community of other preppers who can organize into a new micro state after the collapse). And even then, you have to ask if the reward of surviving is even worth the cost of prepping.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#535

Post by Shacklz »

dylkil wrote: post #457
whatever1 wrote: post #433

For reference, BP the number five global oil behemoth with 200B in revenues in 2020, has a market cap of 85B. Coinbase that sells pumped speculation for a fee has a market cap of 100B. Markets are efficient.

the salt on this board when it comes to crypto only gets worse as time goes on

And I think there are good reasons for that:

1) The energy consumption of bitcoin mining alone is estimated to have reached the levels of entire countries (Argentina was the latest country I've heard it being compared to), while actual usage of bitcoin (except for speculation) is still a fringe niche thing

2) When shown that the coins do not scale, instead of moving on to an improved version, those coins continue to grow. Instead of 'okay, proof of concept done, it does not scale, let's move on to an improved version', the bonanza just continues.

There are probably more reasons like these, but I think it would be straight-up weird if the technically versed audience of HN would disregard the reasons above as much as the current crypto-markets do.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#536

Post by randomopining »

chrisco255 wrote: post #525
jeremyjh wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, perhaps this is correlated with the fact that the successive number of years that crypto has been hyped and failed to deliver anything of value only grows as time goes on.

I would reply to you and describe the burgeoning ecosystem of economic activity and the speed at which the entire sector is growing, but I have a feeling that convo will not go anywhere. Crypto is eating finance. It's going to eat everything else too. The longer you fight that, the harder the 21st century is going to be for you.

Yeah but how does Crypto make stuff happen in the real world? Like a bank can repossess people's houses and stuff and have the law applied. Crypto only has power over what's on that specific blockchains contracts.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#537

Post by Judgmentality »

chrisco255 wrote: post #525
jeremyjh wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, perhaps this is correlated with the fact that the successive number of years that crypto has been hyped and failed to deliver anything of value only grows as time goes on.

I would reply to you and describe the burgeoning ecosystem of economic activity and the speed at which the entire sector is growing, but I have a feeling that convo will not go anywhere. Crypto is eating finance. It's going to eat everything else too. The longer you fight that, the harder the 21st century is going to be for you.

What problem does crypto solve apart from being a digital alternative to gold? It's not anonymous (except Monero which is centralized), transaction fees and times tend to be high (depends on which currency and exchange you're using), there's zero recourse for stolen funds currently (which makes it ripe for fraud). And in addition to that, at least for Bitcoin, it's an environmental disaster.

What do you think makes crypto useful?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#538

Post by anonporridge »

Grustaf wrote: post #499
anonporridge wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you also can't take your house with you stored in your brain if you have to flee the country. Bitcoin as chaos insurance (or schmuck insurance as Chamath calls it) is the use case that makes the most sense to me.

People having to flee the country are not a big customer demographic for either of the companies.

In America, there may not be tons of people ready to flee, but we do have a culture of valuing the people having checks against government power (see second amendment).

So, that's what I think is more likely the mentality of western people holding long term. A check against incompetent government.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#539

Post by rgifford »

HNfriend234 wrote: post #438
whatever1 wrote: post #433

For reference, BP the number five global oil behemoth with 200B in revenues in 2020, has a market cap of 85B. Coinbase that sells pumped speculation for a fee has a market cap of 100B. Markets are efficient.

There is lots of speculation now but I think eventually real-world applications will be made with crypto. At the very least, it will be likely that the bigger cryptos will start to be accepted by major companies to buy goods/services.

Crypto doesn't make a good currency for average consumers due to its instability. Who would do day to day purchases w/ funds that fluctuate +/- 10 percent? This is why you want centralization.

Store of wealth? Aight, you got me. Solid arguments to be made for it as a new anti-fiat. Its recent divergence from gold concerns me though. That seems bubbly.

As a settlement protocol between nations and financial institutions? Already well proven out and in use. No argument to be made.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#540

Post by randomopining »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #498
Dopameaner wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Powell announced cryptocurrencies ‘vehicles for speculation’. It is mind blowing the cryptocurrencies are making bets and are valued without any sound reasoning behind them. How many companies actually use them at regular place? How hard is the barrier of entry?

USD doesn't have sound reasoning behind them either (anymore). It's based on faith in the system.

I mean realistically it's how you pay taxes to the US Government which represents the United States, probably the most innovative and industrial nation ever to exist.

If you want to operate with/within the US, you pay the dollar. That's fairly "sound" reasoning.

Btw im invested heavily in crypto but just saying.

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