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Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

coindesk.com

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Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#821

Post by bmitc »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #15

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

> If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable.

I highly disagree. The existence of these billionaires and their untold influence on the U.S. government and policies while being unelected persons is extremely dangerous to what little democracy is left and people at large. I view most billionaires as national security threats, and I think the government should as well.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#822

Post by zombiwoof »

the most ridiculous thing is: they tried to recruit me 8 months ago. it was all unicorn and rainbows and bullshit this is the future. so if just 8 months ago, the CEO who has a 110 MILLION DOLLARS house couldn't see 12 months into the future, and required 18% reduction in headcount because of some unforseen crypto winter, who really is at fault here?

what a fool that CEO is, and glad I turned the job down and feel bad for the people who were sold the cool aid.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#823

Post by Rebelgecko »

sdh wrote: post #683
stevenjgarner wrote: post #604

Earlier 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's totally absurd to argue that loans from assets isn't income

That seems kinda whack to me. If I get a $500k mortgage, it's not like I received $500k of income that year-- the house belongs to the bank, and I'll be making payments for 30 years. If I stop paying my mortgage, I'll lose "my" house and have nothing to show for it except an insane tax bill (just like Elon would have to give up some of his Tesla stock if he gets margin called)

The collateralized loans trick was really only semi-viable because of historically low interest rates. SOFR will climb up to the more standard rate of 5-15% APR, which we saw with LIBOR back in the day. At that point, the one-off 23.8% capital gains tax on selling stock becomes more competitive.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#824

Post by bmitc »

hstan4 wrote: post #820
Johnny555 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

As always, why is the magic number a billion dollars? And how do you draw the line in regards to stock ownership, prevent a founder from owning a certain amount of stock once its value exceeds a billion dollars?

As always, pick one and deal with it. This whole "billionaires are geniuses and figure out the world's hardest problems but simultaneously can't figure out how to be taxed" shtick has run its course. Of course, no solution will be perfect. That's life and how everyone else deals with things.

There are several ways to accomplish taxing the mega-rich that don't require rewriting the laws of the universe. It's just that nobody in charge, because they're either the mega-rich themselves or puppets of the mega-rich, wants to address it.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#825

Post by tomcam »

xvector wrote: post #792
tomcam wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn’t say they needed it. But those are the parameters given

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#826

Post by [deleted] »

shrimpx wrote: post #298
xur17 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other "fun" side effect of this is that the government is slowly going to become the majority owner of every business.

Yeah. I guess that model implies that the govt will take a percent ownership of whatever you own. I think it would destroy the prospect of high risk high reward ventures like Tesla. Maybe the tax rate can be divided by a volatility metric so investors in high risk ventures aren’t severely punished randomly.

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#827

Post by SkyAndSand »

Johnny555 wrote: post #45
sillysaurusx wrote: post #15

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

My two cents: Introduce a wealth tax that only kicks in after $1B or even $10B so people still have plenty of motivation to work and get rich.

You are allowed to keep control of a company, (e.g. Elon can keep control of Tesla), but then the stock has to be structured in a way that all financial gains are in a separate vehicle that will be taxed 100% as soon as the stock is sold.

Finally (and most crucially), the money raised by this “tax” will not go to a governments pot but directly be distributed as cash to all Americans to make sure that it can’t be wasted by bureaucrats nor used for partisan purposes.

Basically, if $500B is raised in wealth tax in 2022, by mid 2023 every American gets ~$1500 in cash to spend.

What do you think?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#828

Post by cgriswald »

_uy6i wrote: post #798
theptip wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You make a few errors here. First, your example is something most people don't find particularly fulfilling in the first place. Second, they could give away a portion of their wealth and then there would be money on the line. Third, the fact that there isn't money on the line doesn't mean there is nothing on the line.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#829

Post by grapehut »

ceres wrote: post #819
credit_guy wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Why should so few individuals have outsized social, political and economic power over the whole country? Why not tax them more and let elected officials representatives decide how best to spend the money?

Probably because most of us have first hand experience with how well our elected officials are with spending our money

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#830

Post by echelon »

Zaskoda wrote: post #782
azpa wrote: post #766

This prognosis was the final straw caused me to exit the market as it sounded like Brian wasn’t expecting a recovery in any reasonable time period. Furthermore, I felt that other asset classes were overvalued when I got into crypto and I hardly think that’s it’s currently the same. It also turned out to not be the inflation hedge I originally assumed it would be. Part of my current assertion is that cryptos value is…

> It also turned out to not be the inflation hedge I originally assumed it would be. This is a common misconception. I've never understood why people have had such unrealistic expectations of Bitcoin's price performance during the initial phase of inflation. There are two types of people who buy Bitcoin: one that holds it for the long term and the other that treats it as a speculative investment, perhaps even swing t…

> Now we will begin to see over-leveraged companies begin defaulting on their debt as they head into bankruptcy. This will be the real crash. The full scope of this is unknowable

Leverage and cash flow figures are available for all publicly traded companies. The market already knows and already has it priced in.

Decreasing cash flow might pose problems. We'll have to wait and see.

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