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Coinbase from YC to DPO

blog.ycombinator.com

621–630 of 883 posts

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#621

And down bitcoin goes. $3k off the highs. If given a choice between 1 million to invest in in a large cap growth stock portfolio vs. Bitcoin, I would choose the stock portfolio every time. Crypto too volatile relative to upside. Airbnb and other big tech growth stocks have much smoother returns which can be magnified with some leverage strategies.

That's exactly why you don't even have 1 million, lol.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#622
post #604
post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is no way that Coinbase has a stronger lobbying base than the established financial players. They can get into this game, block it with tighter regs, and dig into their deep base of clients to offer similar products. I don’t see a moat here.

The second largest donor to the Biden campaign was SBF, the CEO of FTX, another crypto exchange. The crypto ecosystem is spending a lot of money on lobbying.

https://www.coindesk.com/cryptocurrency-ceo-donated-second-l...

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also airbnb is not dependent on the value of a speculative asset. There will always be demand for rentals.

>also airbnb is not dependent on the value of a speculative asset. What do you think US real estate is?

Wealth shelters.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#624

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…

Bitcoin alone is worth over 1T, so your statement that all of crypto is worth less than 1T is a bit silly. The goal posts keep moving for crypto...next year it'll be that crypto is worth less than 5T, etc. I looked at the NYSE daily volumes...unless I'm reading them wrong, they did $800m USD worth of trades today. Coinbase did $5b USD worth of trades today. So if you compare a company that's almost 200 years olds vol…

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Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#625
post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks rip off companies in IPOs by underpricing the stock so their investors get a kickback. That's the least charitable way to write it, but it's somewhat close to the truth (the other part of the truth is that pricing is hard which is why we have markets). DPOs allow companies to list at a reference price without losing out on money - they can sell at the true price later. Banks naturally make up a bunch of reasons…

DPO is the same though right? If you do the capital raise before the DPO or a capital raise in an IPO there isn't much difference.

If you're doing a capital raise privately before the public offering then you can set the terms you think are fair, but this isn't really required for a direct listing unless you need to raise money.

You can list and put up shares on the market later.

I think there's something new where you can list directly and then sell to the public too without the bank underwriting rip off thing, but that's the edge of my knowledge. I'm not super confident here, so definitely possible I'm wrong about specifics.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#626

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…

Bitcoin alone is worth over 1T, so your statement that all of crypto is worth less than 1T is a bit silly. The goal posts keep moving for crypto...next year it'll be that crypto is worth less than 5T, etc. I looked at the NYSE daily volumes...unless I'm reading them wrong, they did $800m USD worth of trades today. Coinbase did $5b USD worth of trades today. So if you compare a company that's almost 200 years olds vol…

"I looked at the NYSE daily volumes...unless I'm reading them wrong, they did $800m USD worth of trades today"

You are orders of magnitude off here. If you really think the stock market is that small you probably shouldn't be here commenting about it

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#627
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in Brian had simply bought bitcoins with his $10.000 in 2012, when the price was $4-$12 per piece? He could have bought 833-2500 bitcoins, with a current value of $5.2500.000 - $157.500.000. He choose to do more than "HODL" and go through the hard work of building a product and a company, which in my book, makes him a true hero. Even though he went the casino/shitcoin rout later...

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

Because Coinbase succeeded others didn't pop up. If they didn't exist others would exist.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airbnb doesn't have network effects, the value to users increases pretty linearly with the number of hosts, and doesn't really increase at all with the number of other users.

Also ignoring most cities now are banning or highly regulating these illegal hotels in residential neighborhoods Coinbase seems less threatened by regulations

It's more than that in my mind. Coinbase is embracing regulation and leveraging it as a differentiator. They are going to be in a better position than anyone to close the loop to regulatory capture.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Guns, ammo, and gold aren’t bad choices to hoard for an end of the world situation, but if you want to make out like a bandit when the shit hits the fan just stockpile spices - when people start having to eat squirrels they’re going to want some pepper :-)
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