791–800 of 883 posts
Fun trivia: Brian Armstrong was looking for a co-founder on HN back in 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754664
Ah the good old days, when people talked about Bitcoin solving too high credit card fees. It’s now $15+ per transaction in fees but it’s now a store of value so it doesn’t matter!
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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.
And energy is cheap where it is subsidised or in abundance. The first is often 'China'. The second, currently often hydro.
A lot of mining is now moving to Iceland, Canada etc. Where energy is becoming cheaper than CPC funded energy.
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If compromising the permissionlessness of Bitcoin is the only way for Bitcoin to come to a certain market, then perhaps it would be better for companies like Coinbase not to exist, and people who want to use Bitcoin should have to take the steps involved in self-custody. To me, it's a shame to see. Now that Gmail and Coinbase have captured so much of their markets, they (or anyone who can coerce them) are now free to…
The coins stored on Coinbase (and other crypto exchanges for that matter) are at all time lows, people are self-custodying their coins and using them on decentralized protocols where they don't have to trust centralized 3rd parties. Coinbase is just one player in the whole space.
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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.
Arbitration, insurance, etc. can also be recreated on-chain and already exist to some extent although it is quite early days still.
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No retail investor has accounts directly with the NYSE. Coinbase directly holds the customer relationship and if more government regulation comes down on crypto it will be a better moat for them against competitors. I think Coinbase may still be overvalued but don't think it is directly comparable to NYSE or other major exchanges.
« No retail investor has accounts directly with the NYSE » That's a good point. So a fairer comparison would be to compare Coinbase to the market cap of NYSE ($66B) + a stock broker who has roughly the same userbase as Coinbase. For example Schwab ($127B) has about half as many accounts as Coinbase. So NYSE+Schwab = $193B. Suddenly Coinbase valued at $100B while having twice as many accounts and trading fees per doll…
If Coinbase has network effects, they're incredibly weak. I'll drop my Coinbase account tomorrow if I find a cheaper, safe place to buy coins. Schwab on the other hand has inarguably the best checking account out there, incredible customer service, and a great brokerage.
Coinbase is in a race to the bottom and they're gonna get smashed against the floor by established, defensible financial services. Grandma ain't making a Coinbase checking account. That's my thinking anyways.
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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…
Fun trivia: Brian Armstrong was looking for a co-founder on HN back in 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754664
Ah the good old days, when people talked about Bitcoin solving too high credit card fees. It’s now $15+ per transaction in fees but it’s now a store of value so it doesn’t matter!
Bitcoin has low transaction fees compared to US domestic wire transfers or compared to using a credit card on a purchase of $1000 or more.
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Coinbase is hugely threatened by regulations.
They are, but at the same maybe they’ll get big enough to get small fines for big crimes like HSBC helping out the cartels.
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kinda ironic how in his post he's trying to compete on fees
Coinbase doesnt have 2.5% fees so it is ironic that it is extremely competitive Their retail platform has a 1% withdrawal fee unless you are using USDC in which case it is 0% And their trading platforms have 20 basis points and less commissions
We also charge a Coinbase Fee (in addition to the spread), which is the greater of (a) a flat fee or (b) a variable percentage fee determined by region, product feature, and payment type. The flat fees are set forth below:
If the total transaction amount is less than or equal to $10, the fee is $0.99 If the total transaction amount is more than $10 but less than or equal to $25, the fee is $1.49 If the total transaction amount is more than $25 but less than or equal to $50, the fee is $1.99 If the total transaction amount is more than $50 but less than or equal to $200, the fee is $2.99
Edit: There's another section about how they charge 4% to deposit dollars unless you use ACH (and wait 1 week) or wire transfer (then they charge you $10 to deposit or $25 to withdraw)