Fun trivia: Brian Armstrong was looking for a co-founder on HN back in 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754664
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Coinbase from YC to DPO
771–780 of 883 posts
Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO
#772Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scott Sumner has an interesting argument that it's not a bubble. Similar for the so called 'tech bubble' around the start of the millennium: if you bought all the tech stocks back then and held them until today, you would have made an OK return. (Of course, many companies have gone out of business, but there were a few outsized winners to make up for it. Any individual tech stock was extremely risky, but the overall…
Except 75% or so of this bubble is mined in China and more American firms keep buying into it... This story doesn’t likely have a happy ending.
Plus all the Tether shady stuff.
Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO
#773Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scott Sumner has an interesting argument that it's not a bubble. Similar for the so called 'tech bubble' around the start of the millennium: if you bought all the tech stocks back then and held them until today, you would have made an OK return. (Of course, many companies have gone out of business, but there were a few outsized winners to make up for it. Any individual tech stock was extremely risky, but the overall…
Except 75% or so of this bubble is mined in China and more American firms keep buying into it... This story doesn’t likely have a happy ending.
"China" isn't one people either.
Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO
#774Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also ignoring most cities now are banning or highly regulating these illegal hotels in residential neighborhoods Coinbase seems less threatened by regulations
Coinbase is directly and indirectly threatened by regulations. The direct threat is that the SEC, China, European regulators, etc. impose much stricter regulations on cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase, raising compliance costs until the business fails; indirectly, if the regulations are applied "downstream" to payment processors dealing in cryptocurrencies or to businesses accepting cryptocurrency payments. Anot…
Generally speaking, regulation is most easily dealt with by the market leader. They have capital that can be used to meet requirements, and can engage with regulators to make sure the regulation can be achieved by them.
That actually improves the situation for them. (Similar to how GPDR improved Google and Facebook's position in the ad market against competitors)
Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO
#775Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scott Sumner has an interesting argument that it's not a bubble. Similar for the so called 'tech bubble' around the start of the millennium: if you bought all the tech stocks back then and held them until today, you would have made an OK return. (Of course, many companies have gone out of business, but there were a few outsized winners to make up for it. Any individual tech stock was extremely risky, but the overall…
Except 75% or so of this bubble is mined in China and more American firms keep buying into it... This story doesn’t likely have a happy ending.
Why doesn't it have a happy ending?
Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO
#776Earlier quoted context omitted.
Credit to him for following through with his vision, and standing his ground in his replies to all the comments in that thread. Looking back now, it's certainly evidence of a group bias and the "If the opportunity was that great, X company would be doing it by now" way of thinking. Props are owed for bringing some true innovation to the space. I'd love to know how this turned out. Did he eventually find a co-founder?…
How did he follow thru with his vision? Read his other comments to get better picture - he was angry at the system of Credit Cards, PayPals etc that charge outraged fees just to be able to use their network. He wanted to build network that performs exchange at zero fee. Instead, he ended up building and owning one of the most expensive crypto exchanges in the USA. Sure props to him to pull it off, you don't get net w…
A lot of the US crypto exchanges have high fees. They can get away with it due to US laws preventing US citizens from legally trading on asian exchanges, which have much more competitive fees (i.e. Binance.com, not Binance.US). Gemini has even more ridiculous fees than Coinbase. Also if you use Coinbase Pro, which is more like a stock brokerage account for crypto, you get a lot better fees than Coinbase.com. Gemini also has an equivalent to Coinbase Pro, except they call it ActiveTrader. Kraken, another reputable US crypto exchange, has decent fees in general. US securities laws are preventing US citizens from getting the best deal and US crypto exchanges are getting away with higher fees based on that.
Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO
#777Earlier quoted context omitted.
Credit to him for following through with his vision, and standing his ground in his replies to all the comments in that thread. Looking back now, it's certainly evidence of a group bias and the "If the opportunity was that great, X company would be doing it by now" way of thinking. Props are owed for bringing some true innovation to the space. I'd love to know how this turned out. Did he eventually find a co-founder?…
> Did he eventually find a co-founder? Or did he continue in his YC application as a sole-founder? IIRC, he did - they met on Reddit.
They met through a reddit post or some other way?
Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO
#778Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazing to see. But what I find interesting is that his vision was way off- crypto is nowhere near replacing credit cards, now or in the future. But he did build a huge company because crypto became a speculative asset bubble instead.
> crypto is nowhere near replacing credit cards, now or in the future. Bitcoin - not. On the other hand, modern altcoins who are faster, PoS-based, low fees, etc are on the path to exactly this.
Proof of Stake has yet to demonstrate as much resistence to adversarial attacks as Proof of Work.
An expert in the space, Andreas Antonopoulos, speaks to this topic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0T49duRt74&t=2720s
Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO
#779Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> but in terms of his vision of the world more united where it is easier to send and receive money without paying outrages fees, he definitely failed on that promise. It was Bitcoin that failed to deliver that promise, not him.
Or both. Bitcoin and Coinbase each have outrageous fees.
Depends on the kind of transaction you are doing. For bigger transactions it is actually nice not having to pay percentual fee as with Bitcoin. However with coinbase I believe they are high percentually.
Re: Coinbase from YC to DPO
#780Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> but in terms of his vision of the world more united where it is easier to send and receive money without paying outrages fees, he definitely failed on that promise. It was Bitcoin that failed to deliver that promise, not him.
Or both. Bitcoin and Coinbase each have outrageous fees.
You can easily buy fee free on coinbase if you use buy orders instead of market buys.