Coinbase had over 5k employees?!!! WTF. What were they all doing?
I'm shocked they had 1100.
Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
791–800 of 1001 posts
Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
#792Earlier quoted context omitted.
Breaking into a hundred million is an absurdity given the criteria GP set.
No it’s not. Given the house prices in places like Palo Alto, Malibu, London, or Moscow, the house alone could easily be $50 million.
Postulating that anyone needs 100M is simply absurd. Just because there is insanity in house pricing doesn't mean that this needs to reflect into incomes.
Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
#793Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has nothing to do with motivation, If you start a company and that company becomes succesfull you will end up rich. > Being a CEO/leader doesn't require some skill set that's given to you from some mythical watery being just because you're special. Controlling a company requires shares, and shares are networth, it is good that companies are controlled by people who most understand them, and those are the people…
>Controlling a company requires shares, and shares are networth, it is good that companies are controlled by people who most understand them, and those are the people who started/built them. Yes, indeed this is how things work in this particular system , so you are kind of making a circular argument. For instance, I disagree with the whole concept of joint-stock companies.
Cool! Let’s have that argument in a world where joint stock companies don’t exist…
Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
#794Earlier quoted context omitted.
100M in net worth would motivate me, but one of the differences between me and a talented CEO is that I don't already have 100M in net worth. Gates had well over 100M when Microsoft went public in 1986, Bezos had more than a billion when Amazon went public in 1998, Musk made 150M on Ebay's Paypal acquisition in 2002. We may disagree on whether we're better off that they continued working, but I don't think they would…
So you're saying all of those figures were more motivated by money rather than building something of value. Do you truly think they were more motivated by money than by glory, a competitive spirit, a desire for legacy?
Money is how they measure glory, its how the competition is scored, and it’s how they buy legacy.
There are people who are not motivated by money, but they’re not billionaires. They’re professors, priests, politicians, etc. Pope Francis has achieved more glory and fame than nearly any billionaire CEO.
Yes, the billions is hugely motivational to those who have them.
Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
#795Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean the end state of crypto isn’t a very positive one. Either it will crash catastrophically or it will slowly fizzle out until the majority of people just forget about it. Either way, at some point virtually nobody will be using it.
The end state of crypto is the currency of illegal transactions, which are never going away.
If that's the case, that end state will also coincide with government bans, and non-criminals leaving the space. Which will be catastrophic to both crypto's valuations, and to anyone doing business around it.
There wasn't exactly a huge amount of interest in the startup/Wall Street space for building speculative financial instruments around, say, ISIS-issued 5-year bonds.
Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
#796Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a big fan of 100% taxation on anything above 999M, but my continuation here is that anyone that earns more than that gets a trophy for every additional 1B they earn put on display in a big museum in a city of their choice (Museums selectively scattered around the US).
What's your current net worth? How about we set the level to be somewhere less than what you personally are worth? There are a universe of people who earn and have a net worth much less than you who would be very happy with that ceiling figure. But would you? Western politicians who float this idea are hilarious too - they're all multi-millionaires themselves, but a wealth tax is always proposed at a level that is "s…
What's your current net worth? How about we set the level to be somewhere less than what you personally are worth?
If you set the limit much lower than my net worth, the government is going to have to support me.
But I'd think that someone with "only" $100M of net worth could scrape by on their own.
But most of my net worth came from taxable ordinary income that was invested into retirement accounts that are tax advantaged and untouchable until I retire. If Bezos was drawing a salary of 3 billion dollars for the past 30 years, paying 37% income tax on that income, then we probably wouldn't be talking about a "wealth tax"
Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
#797Earlier quoted context omitted.
100M in net worth would motivate me, but one of the differences between me and a talented CEO is that I don't already have 100M in net worth. Gates had well over 100M when Microsoft went public in 1986, Bezos had more than a billion when Amazon went public in 1998, Musk made 150M on Ebay's Paypal acquisition in 2002. We may disagree on whether we're better off that they continued working, but I don't think they would…
> I don't think they would have done so as a public service after they capped out lifetime income. That is definitely the big question. Given that Gates is busy donating most of his cash to charity, there are counterexamples. But even biting the bullet and accepting the premise, it’s not immediately obvious that losing all of the work from current billionaires would be a bad trade in exchange for substantially reduce…
Isn’t Gates richer now than he was 10 years ago (including the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation)? If he’s going to give away his wealth, he should probably get started.
Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
#798Earlier quoted context omitted.
100M in net worth would motivate me, but one of the differences between me and a talented CEO is that I don't already have 100M in net worth. Gates had well over 100M when Microsoft went public in 1986, Bezos had more than a billion when Amazon went public in 1998, Musk made 150M on Ebay's Paypal acquisition in 2002. We may disagree on whether we're better off that they continued working, but I don't think they would…
> I don't think they would have done so as a public service after they capped out lifetime income. That is definitely the big question. Given that Gates is busy donating most of his cash to charity, there are counterexamples. But even biting the bullet and accepting the premise, it’s not immediately obvious that losing all of the work from current billionaires would be a bad trade in exchange for substantially reduce…
Ask any competitive person how much fun they have competing when nothing is on the line (e.g. playing simulated poker or cash poker) and I think you have your answer.
Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
#799Earlier quoted context omitted.
100M in net worth would motivate me, but one of the differences between me and a talented CEO is that I don't already have 100M in net worth. Gates had well over 100M when Microsoft went public in 1986, Bezos had more than a billion when Amazon went public in 1998, Musk made 150M on Ebay's Paypal acquisition in 2002. We may disagree on whether we're better off that they continued working, but I don't think they would…
> I don't think they would have done so as a public service after they capped out lifetime income. That is definitely the big question. Given that Gates is busy donating most of his cash to charity, there are counterexamples. But even biting the bullet and accepting the premise, it’s not immediately obvious that losing all of the work from current billionaires would be a bad trade in exchange for substantially reduce…
> Given that Gates is busy donating most of his cash to charity, there are counterexamples.
A charity of your choice vs being taxed more. If you had a few billion dollars to spare, which option would you choose?
Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees
#800Earlier quoted context omitted.
A wealth tax implies a tax on unrealized appreciated assets, which is beyond bizarre IMHO. So you buy a house for $500k somewhere. It surges in value to $1.2 million. You therefore have an unrealized capital gain of $700k. You are NEVER going to get that money until you sell it, and when you do you are going to pay a whopping amount of capital gain tax. But a wealth tax implies you pay that capital gain tax now. Okay…
Maybe you're not aware how these "unrealized" capital gains (at scale) are indirectly realized in the form of loans taken against value of the asset. Massive wealth doesn't operate in income or even in typical capital gains advantages you're referring to. It operates at a scale where the value of the assets are so great, banks compete to give loans to them, which are not taxed like income. It's totally absurd to argu…
It is absurd to argue a loan is income. You get to keep income, you have to return the value of a loan, eventually. The process of unwinding the loan generates tax revenue.
Constant borrowing isn’t a free money machine, eventually you have to earn more to service the debt (income tax) or sell assets to pay it back (capital gains).
Have you ever taken a loan?