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Coinbase from YC to DPO

blog.ycombinator.com

561–570 of 883 posts

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#561

Compare Coinbase to say a major exchange like the NYSE. Realize that crypto is a space that could be damaged by gov intervention at any time. Realize that there is very little lock in effect on these markets, and fees are becoming less and less over time. How does Coinbase ever manage to justify a valuation this high? 100B.... Ping me when the stock price is under $100.

> How does Coinbase ever manage to justify a valuation this high? 100B....

How is Doordash "worth" ~$50B?

We're all in a delusion when it comes to public markets.

We're not ALL in a delusion, but market movers certainly seem to be.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

it wouldn't even take a global internet shortage, just your country to go offline, how you gonna pay someone to get you out(keep you safe, etc) if you cant transfer your crypto to them? A few ounces of gold on the other hand will take you anywhere you want to go. Crypto is far from a safe hedge in any type of crazy event.

you see, gold can still be traded without power and internet, as could cash or really anything physical, as the value is assigned by those trading it at that time for whatever use they have but BTC is totally useless, toilet paper would literally have more value. brass/lead(killing people) isn't the only way to survive.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#563
post #391

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...

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.

Actually at one point Bitcoin had an equal fork, so that number should be double for Bitcoin.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably in their s1 or other sec docs

You're right, it is in the S1. Thank you dogman144!! In case anyone curious, S1 page 99: Historically, a significant portion of Trading Volume and transaction fee revenue has been driven by the purchase, sale, and trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and in 2019, Litecoin. For example, for the year ended December 31, 2019, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and other crypto assets represented approximately 58%, 14%, 10%, and 1…

Nice!

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#566

Compare Coinbase to say a major exchange like the NYSE. Realize that crypto is a space that could be damaged by gov intervention at any time. Realize that there is very little lock in effect on these markets, and fees are becoming less and less over time. How does Coinbase ever manage to justify a valuation this high? 100B.... Ping me when the stock price is under $100.

> could be damaged by gov intervention at any time

Less likely as time goes on, especially now with a $100B US company on the books.

> How does Coinbase ever manage to justify a valuation this high?

Millions of active users, strong financials.

https://investor.coinbase.com/news/news-details/2021/Coinbas...

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#567
Coinbase is not for crypto people. It is for people who only care about hodling some crypto for profit and want an easy on-ramp. It is not for traders either as it is incredibly expensive to deposit and trade. I'd take Binance over Coinbase any day of the week. If I use Coinbase I pay 2% only for depositing which is insane. If I use Binance for example deposit is free, withdraw is 0.75 EUR and I pay 0.2% (note the zero) for transactions.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#568
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoW is on it’s way out - Ethereum is moving away from it and there is no reason for other cryptos to not follow. The major player in PoW will remain Bitcoin, which won’t change. But as soon as solar/wind become cheaper than coal, it will switch to green without a blink of an eye. A random thought - I’m genuinely surprised Bitcoin folks didn’t yet crowdfund building a nuclear reactor for mining purposes ;) They crowdf…

it has been 5 years an ethereum is still a long way form any sort of POS adoption

The Beacon chain went live in December, 2020 and has been running without issues.

It now has about 4 Million ETH locked and staking which cannot be withdrawn - that's almost $8 billion worth of ETH locked until the move to PoS happens. Which means now there is some real pressure to make it happen soon enough (between 8-15 months).

The situation now with the Beaconchain live and running is very different from the past 4 years of research and planning.

https://beaconcha.in/

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#569

Compare Coinbase to say a major exchange like the NYSE. Realize that crypto is a space that could be damaged by gov intervention at any time. Realize that there is very little lock in effect on these markets, and fees are becoming less and less over time. How does Coinbase ever manage to justify a valuation this high? 100B.... Ping me when the stock price is under $100.

A few arguments to justify the valuation:

- Government intervention tends to benefit incumbents.

- Coinbase employs a lot of lawyers [1].

- Coinbase invests a lot in lobbying [2].

- While fees are lowering for international exchanges, those who serve US customers are still able to get away with very high fees.

- People are less sensitive to fees when the assets they are buying are very volatile.

- NYSE serves brokers, that then themselves serve the final clients. Coinbase is able to serve customers directly, thus it can keep all the fees for themselves.

[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/coinbase...

[2] https://seekingalpha.com/news/3679495-square-fidelity-coinba...

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#570

The NYSEs parent company Intercontinental Exchange Inc (ICE) is worth 66.40B. Today's IPO puts Coinbase at 100B+. The NYSE has been in operation since 1817. Coinbase has been in operation since 2012. The value of all crypto is Trading fees in the crypto-world are getting more competitive as more established players support crypto. I don't see a defensible market position here, let alone established track record or st…

Agreed. As I've pointed out elsewhere, Coinbase trading fees are about 60x those of NYSE, Nasdaq, etc.; and Coinbase siphons off about 0.4% of the entire crypto market cap per annum.

I don't see how that is sustainable at all.

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