Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20% • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#291

Post by cs702 » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

Despite numerous wrong turns and silly mistakes, Coinbase is looking more and more as the lonely survivor positioned to dominate crypto trading in the West.

The company has lots of cash on hand in excess of corporate debt, almost no short-term corporate debt, customer assets backing all customer deposits, and as far as I can tell from a quick read of the latest quarterly report, a clean balance sheet with no red flags.

If the crypto market recovers from the latest crash, which is what has happened after all previous crashes in the past, Coinbase stands to win big.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#292

Post by 4ggr0 » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

irl_chad wrote: post #162

Karsteski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an odd and close minded way to discriminate against people... I guess people such as yourself always find a way to justify such things

Discrimination based on life choices is called consequences. The Unabomber, while a genius mathematician, will never be offered a position in my company.

You're comparing someone having worked in crypto with a terrorist? If you have to go that far to make your argument make sense, maybe your argument is not all that solid.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#293

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:21 PM UTC

danuker wrote: post #215

nxmnxm99 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how you equate "speculative value" with "valid projects". Bitcoin has value because people are long on crypto. "Long" has an end date - just because it's 50 years instead of 10 years doesn't mean it's not coming.

If there's less crypto being issued than fiat, and demand were constant as a % of people's wealth (which I admit is a big if), then crypto is bound to go up. There is no end date to government currency debasement.

The supply of crypto isn't limited because people can just mint new chains. And of course, the more the number goes up on a chain the less attractive it is to actual users as opposed to holders.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#294

Post by LatteLazy » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

SilverBirch wrote: post #87

Coinbase is a weird company, because it's got such an obvious comparable: CME Group. CME Group has about 3500 employees, did 1.2bn in revenue last quarter with 680m net income. Then you have coinbase now trimmming to about the same number 3500, 590m revenue and a net income loss of 550m. That's right, as far as I can see, Coinbase loses $1 for every $1 of revenue. Firstly, I don't see how Coinbase needs as many peopl…

FYI, CME outsources 101 functions, from technical connections to account management to custody and settlements that Coinbase (has to) do itself.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#295

Post by irl_chad » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #41

irl_chad wrote: post #11

[flagged]

> therefore not smart enough to do well in a big boy company. You should put that in your job listings to allow people to avoid even sending a resume to you

That would be inappropriate.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#296

Post by mrtksn » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

_hcuq wrote: post #274

The one thing that surprises me in all this is that the BTC price has stayed at a stable 16k since mid October.

I don’t know but I don’t like that stability in a gambling market. This is not the case of asset being stable because the business is stable - there is no business beyond betting on the price of the asset. For me this is an indication of loss of interest in the casino.

Even if there seems to be a trading volume, i’m skeptical of that trading. Maybe it’s just painting the tape?

What are those people achieving by trading the thing at about the same price? Are we churning believers? Why would the price be stable?

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#297

Post by iLoveOncall » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:25 PM UTC

John23832 wrote: post #284

finolex1 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of wildly successful companies (Google, FB, etc.) have all had junior engineers interviewing people.

In the emerging points of their business. Or “juniors” with some kind of valuable expertise to the interview. Not, “just graduated web dev boot camp and have a fleeting interest in web3” junior.

Which is not at all what we're talking about here since the original comment talks about people with one or two years of experience.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#298

Post by subradios » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:25 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #254

robertlagrant wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be that people are just holding on. The question is: why is it worth anything at all?

There's a fundamental floor of value where "in the bad old days" I once bought a specialty swiss army knife (a very custom gift; details utterly irrelevant) and I wanted the knife enough to pay middlemen about 20% overall to turn by USD into ... whatever the swiss were using at the time. It used to cost twice as much money to move money around the world than to move a small consumer good around the world. That's just…

Don't forget crime and startup business.

I ordered equipment for a company from a European seller , and because I wasn't a VC backed technology startup, instead focused on physical goods- there was no army of people to help me set up an international bank for my company. So what I did was drop them some bitcoin. Just getting the wire approvals would've taken longer.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#299

Post by charlieyu1 » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:25 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #291

Despite numerous wrong turns and silly mistakes, Coinbase is looking more and more as the lonely survivor positioned to dominate crypto trading in the West. The company has lots of cash on hand in excess of corporate debt, almost no short-term corporate debt, customer assets backing all customer deposits, and as far as I can tell from a quick read of the latest quarterly report, a clean balance sheet with no red flag…

We should go fully decentralised for the future, with fiat/crypto done at retail scale. Unfortunately there is a huge lobby of banks and government that want to monitor people spending money to make it happen.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#300

Post by irl_chad » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

pettycashstash2 wrote: post #82

irl_chad wrote: post #11

[flagged]

Thomas Edison interviewed candidates for research assistant positions, he offered them a bowl of soup. Why? He wanted to see whether they would add salt or pepper to the soup before they tasted it. Those who did were automatically ruled out. Edison wanted people who didn't make assumptions, since assumptions tend to be innovation killers.

Cool anecdote, but ultimately unrealistic. If I make a job posting on LinkedIn for a front end developer for example, I will get up to 500 (USA) applicants. Filters (such as absolutely no cryptobros) are a tool for finding the best applicant.