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Coinbase from YC to DPO

blog.ycombinator.com

701–710 of 883 posts

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#701

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…

> dotcom bubble

where can I buy things with my beenz and flooz?

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#702

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.

it just went up $6600 in 7 days. and it’s only $2000 off the highs right now.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#703
post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. Western governments could had intervened and banned or heavily regulated crypto currencies at any time over the past several years. In particular, the Silk Road and Alpha Bay take-downs would have been the perfect opportunities - but they didn't take them. Now we have crypto currency companies floating as public companies, and others (e.g. Tesla) heavily invested, speculatively, in Bitcoin - maybe cr…

Bitcoin is perfect for mass surveillance and privacy invasion. It's as if all transactions, of any size, can be perpetually tracked, with a courtroom-ready digital signature reducing evidence doubt about who made a transaction.

Also, unlike traditional banks, there is absolutely nothing preventing someone from reviewing that transaction record. No need to ask a judge for permission, no need to ask the bank to reveal records, no need to let anyone -- anyone -- know what you are up to.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#704
post #593
post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, capital > labor as Thomas Piketty pointed out quite nicely.

Just FYI, that's just a theory, and in the decade since his book was published, there have been several rebuttals and refutations pointing out that this theoretical mechanism doesn't match the empirical data. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf > Using a sample of 19 advanced economies spanning over 30 years, I find no empirical evidence that dynamics move in the way Piketty suggests. Results are…

Thanks for sharing, I was unaware of that.

Capital > labor, still. But I guess not as badly as I thought.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#705
post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is worthless without dollars backing it. It’s because you can turn Bitcoin into dollars that anyone wants it.

You can make the same argument about any asset class. The path from Bitcoin/gold/real estate/crops to other goods or assets goes through dollars out of convenience (because your destination is purchasable in dollars). Don't confuse convenience with necessity.

The number of things I can exchange dollars for vastly outnumbers the number of things I can exchange Bitcoin for, by orders of magnitude.

In this case convenience is necessity, for practical, real-world definitions. Sure, in a theoretical sense, there is no reason why I couldn't use Bitcoin to buy food and clothing, make rent/mortgage payments, buy plane/train/bus tickets, buy furniture, tools, electronics, etc. But the reality is that I can't do it (with some narrow exceptions), and I don't see that materially changing within my lifetime, not to the point where using Bitcoin (or any other up-and-coming cryptocurrency) is more convenient that using fiat currency.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#706
post #579
post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wonder if this will become a trend. I always thought the underwriting agency in an IPO was a form institutional gate keeping / toll booth on the road to going public.

It will be a trend for heavy VC funded companies that are not really profitable (not speaking about Coinbase specifically). DPO's allow VC to recoup investments at around the 10 year mark for company's that do not make financial sense on paper.

Why does that matter here? Profitability is not a prerequisite for an IPO, and any IPO let's investors recoup their money.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Bold assertion immediately following a pandemic in which the demand for rentals fell to... zero. It took a significant pivot for AirBnB to recover and maintain revenues.

And yet the demand for rentals is recovering (I know someone whose Airbnb rental is already 85% booked through August), and will recover to previous levels. All that revenue will be back, and Airbnb will be more diversified in its revenue sources. Long-term (even medium-term) I think the pandemic will turn out to be a win for Airbnb.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#708
post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously both of those possibilities are priced in. Investors aren't stupid, Gamestop notwithstanding.

I think severe regulation is more likely than Coinbase becoming the next NYSE, but the valuation suggests investors think the opposite.

All that the valuation suggests is that Coinbase is a company with 1 bn in revenue last year, and 1.8 bn just last quarter. By virtue of upsides being unbounded while downsides are bounded by the money you invest, the downside case really doesn't matter with a good enough upside case. Coinbase going down in flames may be the most likely outcome. That doesn't matter as long as you're not YOLOing your entire portfolio into Coinbase. What matters is the average outcome. And the average outcome is pretty good despite Coinbase failing in 9 out of 10 scenarios.

Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO

#710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

people need shelter, they do not need crypto . There is huge demand for housing in metro areas even in spite of Covid, and regulation and other restrictions make it hard to increase supply, and landlords generally want to lock-in long-term rents with good credit scores due to difficulty of evicting, meaning more demand for short-term rentals. .

Bitcoin provides shelter for your wealth. Most people need that more than shelter for their person.
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