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“You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

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Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#51

Post by opportune »

andutu wrote: post #48
saurik wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> True, Monero doesn't have smart contract support... This is way more central to why people aren't building on it than you seem to give credit to: people simply can't build on it... I mean, even Bitcoin is programmable (which is how people have been able to build stuff like Lightning and bridges to contract side chains like rsk). Not being programmable--which sadly is kind of a trade-off for their core premise of be…

I probably am massively understating it yes, but I see no reason why an ecosystem around Monero can't flourish that enables sort-of smart contract capabilities. But like you said, it would take a huge amount of effort to enable smart contracts on Monero while not compromising privacy guarantees. It does seem to be a tradeoff. Solana has smart contract support with low fees, but its network is very centralized compare…

Solana has a company behind it, Monero has a couple foundations I think but it's mostly a bunch of independent devs behind it (some of which, like Fluffy Pony, definitely have enough money to spend on marketing if they wanted to). It's the difference between something that is pseudo-decentralized and actually decentralized.

I don't see how you can implement smart-contracts in general on Monero because it's not programmable. You can write small arbitrary messages via tx_extra and in theory some other chain that looks at the Monero chain could read that, but because tx_extra messages are direct-writes and aren't automatically encrypted using the wallet keys or anything, there is nothing special about them besides them being immutable. In fact in some ways tx_extras could contribute to deanonymizing the chain if it created correlations between ring signatures, and Monero devs have discussed removing it several times.

There's a question of whether Monero itself could be extended to be programmable and actually do things with those messages, but I'm guessing the answer is probably no because it would bloat the chain and have questionable value (right now Monero is "unixy" in that it does one thing and does it well), even if it were possible to do.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#52

Post by [deleted] »

nikanj wrote: post #7
blintz wrote: post #5

> Those insiders include venture capital firms like a16z and, incredibly, Coinbase’s own venture arm, which has a number of investments listed on Coinbase. As someone who is not as familiar with the day-to-day machinations of this field, this really surprised me. Does anyone at Coinbase care that there might be this massive conflict of interest? How can this be legal/ethical? At a more basic level, don't they at leas…

Basically all of crypto is strategems that would be illegal in conventional finance, but all participants pretend they’re legal due to crypto

[deleted]

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#54

Post by batman-farts »

I largely agree with the writer’s skepticism, both of the coins and of the VCs, but shouldn’t it be straightforward if time-consuming to confirm insider selling? If these are public blockchains, one ought to be able to notice and correlate big outflows from addresses with large holdings, no?

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#55

Post by rvz »

Tenoke wrote: post #4
rvz wrote: post #2

> Is the game rigged. In a way, yes. the VCs know it is a scam, which is why they are doing it. > The never listed coin is the best; the listed, non-VC coin is better; and the listed, VC-backed coin is the worst. Precisely. It is exactly what happened to Internet Computer when that launched on Coinbase and Binance, as the author in this article describes, as well as I did [0][1]. The same happened especially with ENS…

In what way does an airdrop pump the price? If anything it should be the opposite. Now Coinbase voting at all and showing involvement with a project might pump it but that wouldn't be because there's an airdrop.

It happens before doing the actual airdrop. It creates another FOMO effect for late adopters who missed out to meet the airdrop requirements or to buy in before snapshotting the blockchain. That will pump the price.

After the actual airdrop happens, a mass sell off from many long term holders will happen to take advantage of the FOMO. Everyone knows that another airdrop will happen so I will expect the ENS price to initially to go up for a short while and then go down again.

That is a clear pump and dump.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#56

Post by goatsi »

waffle_maniac wrote: post #20
orthopodvt wrote: post #3

Seems like a pretty reasonable analysis of what is going on. I'd be interested in hearing any rebuttals.

He’s comparing a very narrow range after listing but you can buy crypto at anytime using DEXs. He compares it to an IPO but it’s easy to buy crypto before it’s listed on a centralized exchange and much harder to buy equity in a private company. So yes, retail had its shot before a major CEX listing. If you bought Solana or Cardano in the bear market you are outperforming Bitcoin. Solana was a few bucks in 2020 and cl…

The average Coinbase retail investor is not going to use a DEX. In fact I would be surprised if over 50% of their users have ever transmitted coins away from Coinbase a single time. Sure the first users were obtaining BTC for productive purposes like buying from darknet markets, but the majority of their users have come during the investment booms. From their S1 they are holding $90 billion in cash and fiat. $44 billion of that is for institutions, but the rest is from retail investors who are buying what Coinbase makes available to them and letting it sit in the app while they wait for it to go up.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#57

Post by b112 »

thebean11 wrote: post #42
b112 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any government with large stockpiles of unused, general compute resources, could snap its fingers, and make large stockpiles of any compute resources appear. The 'buy military gear' police budget of any medium sized US city, could be diverted for one year, and probably buy any specific compute resource you cite. This just isn't a defense against governmental or corporate attack. It's not even defense against a bored…

How long do you think it would take a government to develop ASICs that compete with what’s on the market, and build enough of them for an attack (would need to be >50 of the power of all existing ASICs!)? How much do you think it would cost? I think you massively underestimate what’s involved there..general compute resources are just not going to help.

Develop? Manufacture? They'd just buy them.

The cost is trivial.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#58

Post by jack_pp »

b112 wrote: post #57
thebean11 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think it would take a government to develop ASICs that compete with what’s on the market, and build enough of them for an attack (would need to be >50 of the power of all existing ASICs!)? How much do you think it would cost? I think you massively underestimate what’s involved there..general compute resources are just not going to help.

Develop? Manufacture? They'd just buy them. The cost is trivial.

That's easy to say in theory, in practice supply of these ASICs is much more limited than you might think. Maybe if they throw enough money at the problem they could buy from existing miners..

Even so, they would have to spend a very large sum of money on this, money which will simply be "burnt". If you would want to attack a coin that works on general compute then you can use that general compute for whatever you want thus that would be "free"

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#59

Post by nuclx »

thebean11 wrote: post #42
b112 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any government with large stockpiles of unused, general compute resources, could snap its fingers, and make large stockpiles of any compute resources appear. The 'buy military gear' police budget of any medium sized US city, could be diverted for one year, and probably buy any specific compute resource you cite. This just isn't a defense against governmental or corporate attack. It's not even defense against a bored…

How long do you think it would take a government to develop ASICs that compete with what’s on the market, and build enough of them for an attack (would need to be >50 of the power of all existing ASICs!)? How much do you think it would cost? I think you massively underestimate what’s involved there..general compute resources are just not going to help.

Declare them illegal and confiscate them from the miners.

Re: “You Don't Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

#60

Post by thebean11 »

nuclx wrote: post #59
thebean11 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think it would take a government to develop ASICs that compete with what’s on the market, and build enough of them for an attack (would need to be >50 of the power of all existing ASICs!)? How much do you think it would cost? I think you massively underestimate what’s involved there..general compute resources are just not going to help.

Declare them illegal and confiscate them from the miners.

Not even China did that. You think it’s likely?
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