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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

#871

Post by midhhhthrow »

UncleMeat wrote: post #777
Stupulous wrote: post #607

Earlier 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…

Zuckerberg has more money than God at this point, yet he still shows up every day. Is he really motivated by tacking on another bunch of billions? I suspect not.

And with all the sh*t he has to deal with, The fact that he still shows up Is pretty remarkable

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#872

Post by throwawaylinux »

UncleMeat wrote: post #780
imdsm wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Let's say I earn over the threshold, and I can now either choose to continue to try and innovate and add value to society, or retire to a private island and just become a carbon contributor, I mean, why work myself into the ground if I can no longer benefit? Most people have assets not liquidity too, so it's like saying, if you own too much, you have to stop. Well, what if Elon stopped and we reverted bac…

I'm not convinced that "make a lot of money" and "add value to society" are incredibly well correlated.

I'm not convinced that "increase government expenditure" and "add value to society" are correlated, at least not positively.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#873

Post by sam0x17 »

sharkweek wrote: post #618
alx__ wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christ on a skateboard!? All the temporarily displaced billionaires in this thread are something else. If you require more than 100M in net worth to be "motivated" to work. There's a larger problem with you. 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.

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).

That would be 614 museums in the U.S. alone

I agree though. Cap it at $1B

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#874

Post by sam0x17 »

sharkweek wrote: post #618
alx__ wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christ on a skateboard!? All the temporarily displaced billionaires in this thread are something else. If you require more than 100M in net worth to be "motivated" to work. There's a larger problem with you. 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.

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).

Anything is better than the 8% they pay now

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#875

Post by throwawaylinux »

Johnny555 wrote: post #796
forgingahead wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adva…

> If you set the limit much lower than my net worth, the government is going to have to support me.

Doesn't have to be much lower, just low enough to free you of the wealth you don't _need_.

> But I'd think that someone with "only" $100M of net worth could scrape by on their own.

Certainly. Someone with $10k of net worth and a minimum wage job could scrape by too. Nobody _needs_ more than that, surely?

> 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.

Sounds very wealthy and privileged, to be honest. Surely you don't _need_ that it could be much better spent now helping less advantaged people who have never worked and don't have any savings or retirement. If, when you retire, you need further assistance after selling your house and other possessions, the government would be glad to step in and provide you a subsistence income and housing thanks to this wonderful redistribution scheme.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#876

Post by matheusmoreira »

sytelus wrote: post #503

I don't understand why Coinbase is feeling such a crunch. They are just middleman in buying and selling. Their advantage is supposed to be that they make money whether crypto goes up or down. How can they screw this up?

Exchanges are fractional reserve banks now. They have cryptocurrency loans, savings accounts, the works. Customer funds are not simply stored at the exchange, much of it is actually tied up in their own investments which can fail, exposing customers to risk.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#877

Post by [deleted] »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #823
sdh wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#878

Post by kethinov »

eric_cc wrote: post #803
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…

Even if > billionaires should not exist at all Hell no to > a heavy wealth tax The federal government is the last organization on earth that deserves more money.

When the federal government taxes people, it's not collecting money, it's deleting money. That makes the money of people who are taxed less inherently more valuable. In this regard, if the federal government were to tax people — especially the rich — considerably more than it prints money, then that would be a very effective anti-inflationary measure and a hell of a lot more friendly to the poor than raising interest rates.

In other words, hell yes.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#879

Post by sifar »

space_fountain wrote: post #818
akira2501 wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An odd way to attack the problem would be to demean the personal liberties of someone else based on nothing other than your own personal feelings. I don't see how either of these lines of argument achieve any useful or realistic end state. It's a topic almost perfectly designed for a useless shouting match. Meanwhile. In the 1950's, citizens in the US were expected to pay around 50% of the cost of running the governm…

Corporations are made out of people. You can’t really tax corporations, maybe you can people with capital

corporations have personhood.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#880

Post by matt9j »

kortilla wrote: post #846
bmitc wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A wealth tax implies a tax on unrealized appreciated assets, which is beyond bizarre IMHO. No, it doesn't. For example, if I'm super rich and take out a loan using unrealized assets as collateral, then I could be taxed on the loan amount received. There are several such strategies that either force the sale of unrealized assets or tax other portions of the transactions when those unrealized assets are used as colla…

The loans have to be paid. No matter how many times you refi, there is a massive tax bill at the end.

This is actually not entirely true depending on how your structure your spending. In particular in the United States (the context for Coinbase's employees), the basis used to compute capital gains resets when the items are inherited when you die. So if you have enough wealth to take out loans on it until you die without ever needing to liquidate the wealth, your estate and heirs (again through some sophisticated accounting) reset the capital gains basis, and then can pay off the loans with the appreciated assets and completely avoid capital gains. ProPublica did a very detailed investigation on this in mid-2021 (https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...)
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