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1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

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Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#631

Post by ac29 »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #74
joshuamorton wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COIN has lost 25% since IPO (in that time, GOOG, FB, MSFT, AAPL, HOOD are up, PP is even, and SQ is down marginally), and their offers aren't particularly better than , so it doesn't seem like this is true. Like, even if you think crypto is going to be super relevant, there's tons of other cryto startups. Coinbase has or had first mover advantage, but that's no longer an enormous advantage.

Coinbase’s stock is currently approximately equal to the IPO price and the IPO was six months ago. Coinbase and Robinhood (another rocketship) both experienced a pop after their respective IPOs and later dropped back down near IPO price. This isn’t a particularly relevant metric, in my view. At the IPO, the rocketship factor is already priced in. Look at the company’s trajectory over the decade it has existed.

> Coinbase’s stock is currently approximately equal to the IPO price

Coinbase is down a little over 27% since IPO, at a time when the wider US stock market is up around 10%. That's not "approximately equal" in any meaningful way.

> At the IPO, the rocketship factor is already priced in.

I'll agree with you here - there was a ton of hype and the IPO price was largely based on an expected rocketship trajectory that failed to materialize. Its extremely telling that many of their executives have cashed out 100% or nearly 100% of their available stock options.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#632

Post by plorg »

remarkEon wrote: post #564
plorg wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Insane" is a pretty charged word for a person deeply concerned about jumping to the most caustic framing possible. I can't say that I know how every person means the things they say, but "my existence is political" is a relatively common statement, and I have never understood it to strictly mean that "I am alive subject to political whims." Every time I've encountered it the person saying it described how the mere a…

> I can't say that I know how every person means the things they say, but "my existence is political" is a relatively common statement… This is in fact not a common statement, and is only found in select coastal cities with high populations of people who have elite educations. More than half of the country has no idea what you’re talking about.

So have you encountered this phrase before or not? If not, why are you so confident that the person you are talking to is the exemplar of some hyperbolic, overreactive activist and not, say, someone talking about an experience you are unfamiliar with? Why do you assume there is a fixed, single meaning to a word or phrase when, simultaneously, you understand that other people may have no idea what it means?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#633

Post by pcthrowaway »

doopy1 wrote: post #629
refenestrator wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefits are unrealized fanatasies about freedom from government that will never, ever happen. The government, tax, justice systems and regulatory bodies are made out of people, you can't fool them with some "haha it's not USD" technicality like a sovereign citizen. It's all the same at the end except for a bunch of wasted energy.

Cryptocurrency is programmable money. People interact with each other using money all day, and this is a technology that augments human interaction. Just because the most vocal narrative are the unrealized fantasies you mention, doesn't mean there's not a benefit to this technology. Frankly, I'm shocked how the supposedly future thinking tech crowd on HN lacks so much creativity when it comes to cryptocurrency. Anywa…

Thank you, my response would have been along the same lines. Regulation will come, but it's not going to be a united global front. From an economic perspective, stifling innovation is problematic, and countries that embrace the potential of cryptocurrency are going to reap rewards.

Even though there are a fair share of 'sovereign citizens' among cryptocurrency types, there are many who just see the potential for integration with existing infrastructure. Personally I'm more socialist-leaning, and want governments to embrace technology that will also empower them to provide sweeping social benefits for their citizens in a transparent way.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#634

Post by pcthrowaway »

refenestrator wrote: post #626
pcthrowaway wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are cryptocurrencies where transaction fees (I'm assuming that's what you meant by 'costs') are actually very low, if not zero (see Nano). The 'costs' of proof of work are indeed high though. The amount of energy consumed for one bitcoin transaction to happen is astounding. My point above is that there are numerous alternatives (which in my opinion are poised to topple bitcoin), which don't have these costs. I…

The benefits are unrealized fanatasies about freedom from government that will never, ever happen. The government, tax, justice systems and regulatory bodies are made out of people, you can't fool them with some "haha it's not USD" technicality like a sovereign citizen. It's all the same at the end except for a bunch of wasted energy.

I'm not sure what you're responding to, but I wasn't merely suggesting that a benefit of cryptocurrency is the ability to fool the government, though privacy-coins certainly are an important tool in areas with oppressive governments.

At the same time, the leading crypto platforms enable an amount of transparency that isn't possible with traditional financial institutions.

The wasted energy argument has already been addressed, and is specific to proof of work platforms which are the minority of the top 50. After the ETH2 transition is complete, it's likely proof of stake crypto will have a larger market cap than proof of work crypto.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#635

Post by woodruffw »

philwelch wrote: post #625
woodruffw wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's actually no point in time where the opinions of the actual proprietors of lunch counters mattered either way. The Jim Crow laws legally mandated segregation until the Civil Rights Act legally prohibited it. I’m sorry, but what do you think provided the political impetus for the Civil Rights Act? It was years of concerted protesting and civil disobedience, one form of which was sit-ins at lunch counters.

But they weren't protesting the proprietors of those businesses for complying with the law. They were protesting the law itself.

> But they weren't protesting the proprietors of those businesses for complying with the law.

Yes, they were. The Greensboro sit-ins began at Woolworth stores because they had explicit policies that went above and beyond those required by Jim Crow laws. They even sent a letter to Woolworth’s, not the state[1].

Edit: And, you’ll note: the Greensboro sit-ins didn’t provoke asymmetric police retaliation. What the students did wasn’t even illegal, it was merely against Woolworth’s store policies.

[1]: https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/greensboro-nc-stud...

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#636

Post by plorg »

1123581321 wrote: post #560
plorg wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Insane" is a pretty charged word for a person deeply concerned about jumping to the most caustic framing possible. I can't say that I know how every person means the things they say, but "my existence is political" is a relatively common statement, and I have never understood it to strictly mean that "I am alive subject to political whims." Every time I've encountered it the person saying it described how the mere a…

The issue is that it’s possible for that person to not “be political”, even typical in large parts of the world, so if the person thinks they always are, they’re not seeing correctly. Insane is way too strong a term but such a person does risk their misperception harming relationships and wasting good opportunities.

Sure. A person's existence may "be political" in certain spaces and not others, and it is helpful and necessary to be able to sort out where your existence challenges other people, whether it should, and whether you are projecting undue fears onto other people based on a biased history or an unexamined worldview. It is further useful to examine your worldview to understand what is fundamental to your self-understanding and to your beliefs. Sometimes you write a sign or a headline and it doesn't include the nuance that you exhibit in the world around you.

If you "are not political" in a space it is because you do not challenge it, either because you agree with the existing culture or norms or have decided that it is not worth the cost of doing anything about it. If someone else does challenge those norms or that culture, they become political, but if that comes from something that is fundamental to their identity their choices are to either suppress that part of themselves to fit in or to stick out, "be political", and experience whatever reactions to that challenge.

My claim, here, is that creating workplaces that "are not political" is a way of enforcing the authority of people who already have it, and encouraging people not to challenge what they may see as unethical or inequitable practices in a business or other organization. It is a form of authoritarianism, soft-sold under the guise of civility.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#637

Post by silexia »

gorwell wrote: post #32

Every company that continues to let itself get embroiled in Twitter's Political Topic of the Week is at such a distinct disadvantage it will ultimately fail. It's inevitable if you extrapolate. They won't survive the evolutionary process and will get selected out, only earning themselves a Darwin Award. Imagine a rowing team where half the team rows in one direction and the other half rows another direction. They nev…

Basecamp did this too and they were 100% right to focus on their mission. If people are constantly having Twitter cancel culture virtue signaling wars, your company will surely fail.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#638

Post by sneak »

solveit wrote: post #503
sneak wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love cryptocurrency and don't care much for american progressivism. It's still pretty obvious to me that Coinbase is run by scumbags, like Uber and Google are.

Can you name a company in, say, the top 50 largest companies by market cap that isn't run by scumbags? The intent of the question is to divine whether you think Coinbase in particular is a problem, or whether you have a problem with big companies in general.

From what I know as an outsider:

Tesla, TSMC, Netflix, Adobe, Toyota.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#639

Post by alentist »

tims33 wrote: post #68

I think it is great the company went the direction they did and I'm glad Brian is happy with it. The commentary that I find frustrating is about the "retaliatory and intellectually dishonest hit pieces." The press does suck in many ways, but when you're own a massive chunk of a $65B company you should expect some negative press and be prepared. It makes him sound like he isn't open to dissent which is an incredibly p…

> Criticizing retaliatory and intellectually dishonest hit pieces makes him sound like he isn't open to dissent

Non-sequitur.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#640

Post by alentist »

plorg wrote: post #532
ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in South Korea. We don't have many trans people here, the mainstream feminist movement is anti-trans, and most of the mainstream Christian movements are anti-LGBT. (My boss is Catholic.) Despite this, when we had a trans person visit my workplace ... absolutely nothing happened. They had lunch with us, nobody said anything about their gender, sexuality, or appearance, and they never mentioned it. Conversation was…

I work for a company run by evangelical Christians, and this extends to probably 80% of the company. Certainly the only people taking about religion are the evangelicals. Management attends explicitly Christian "leadership retreats". Among other things, I would not be comfortable attending these events. Officially discussion of religion and and politics is discouraged. In practice that means the conservative culture…

Your second paragraph is a word salad and non-sequitur. Treating a human who claims they're a deer as a human isn't denying their existence.
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