The entire crypto space is going to eventually be worth $0.
Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
431–440 of 533 posts
Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
#432The 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 see this discussed in enough HN threads. Everyone is quick to talk about FTX, Tether being a scam, etc but I rarely hear people discuss how the heck BTC is pegged at $16k this whole time, through it all.
I mean, the primary theory about Tether being a scam is that Tether is allegedly a scam _which is used to prop up the price of delicious bitcoin_, so that more or less tracks.
Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see this discussed in enough HN threads. Everyone is quick to talk about FTX, Tether being a scam, etc but I rarely hear people discuss how the heck BTC is pegged at $16k this whole time, through it all.
You won't see this discussed on HN, there's an overall hostility toward Bitcoin. A few are interested or sometimes involved with it (whether with development or infrastructure) but don't bother enlightening the crowd since I think it's pretty hopeless here and they would be buried under downvotes. I wonder if that resentment would have been the same toward the Internet in 1997. You know, that useless thing for hacker…
HN userbase is older and more American than tech in general. It follows that they are more invested in the legacy financial system than most and don't even encounter the problems crypto tries to solve. Also sour grapes.
Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying this Coinbase layoff will likely kill people?
I'm saying any large layoff has a decent chance of making some people homeless—either because they weren't making enough before to save money, or because they were riding an unrealistic expectation of growth (that the company and entire industry are often actively selling you) and bet too much on it (the latter being what I'd guess more likely in this case, based on my assumptions about the kind of money Coinbase wou…
This seems highly exaggerated.
If someone really over leveraged themselves so much, at some point you can’t blame their employer.
Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were caught off-guard then you've been sitting in a massive bubble. There has been open distrust and hatred of cryptocurrencies since long before NFTs were a thing. I would argue that NFTs did more to spread the word that cryptocurrencies are a farce than they did to create "value" for those behind them.
it's not a question of you getting caught off-guard but a massive exchange being trapped now (what do they do?) I kinda feel for them because they tried to build a legit-looking exchange business unlike the famous scams, but now they are stuck and these losses are mind-bending
I feel the same about HOOD. I own some of their stock but every time I see them announce a new crypto product, investment, team, feature etc I cringe. They have coupled themselves and the success of their non crypto products tightly to the success of crypto and I wonder if there will come a time when they try to cut out crypto or if it's too late to do so. I'm holding because I'm hoping they can swing it, but it's been tough to watch because I'm a crypto bear and always have been. I love what they've done with their equity marketplace and their new retirement product seems interesting - but so long as crypto is still around stinking up the place it's hard for me to be a consumer of theirs.
Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the vast majority of crypto users only see it as a speculative vehicle and do not care about decentralized payments, I would guess.
But giving the tens of millions of Coinbase users a way to do cheap and fast microtransactions could change that. "Oh, you also have a lightning app? Cool, I'll send you the money this way."
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Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were caught off-guard then you've been sitting in a massive bubble. There has been open distrust and hatred of cryptocurrencies since long before NFTs were a thing. I would argue that NFTs did more to spread the word that cryptocurrencies are a farce than they did to create "value" for those behind them.
I've seen hatred of crypto, constant insistence that it's 100% fraud, and claims that it's worthless and will collapse for many years now. In 2019, no one was saying it would crash in 2022; they were saying it would crash in 2019 or just "it will crash eventually" In 2020, they weren't saying it would crash in 2022, they were saying it would crash in 2020 or just "it will crash eventually" In 2021, they weren't sayin…
You're being way too kind to the crypto haters, who were predicting crashes in 2014, too.
HN has predicted 10 of the last two crypto crashes.
Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is to say that if demand outpaces supply, price is going to go up. However, this is true of any asset. So why mention specifically 'crypto', as if there was something magical about 'crypto' that means it's bound to go up?
My point is yes, it is true of any asset. You might as well own cans of beans. But the purpose is to stave off the effects of monetary expansion while staying liquid. Cryptocurrency is in a special niche in that parameter space. While other assets are bound to provide long-term returns greater than inflation (for example, stocks and bonds [1]), cryptocurrency can not surpass inflation long-term, but it still does so…
I don't think I'm following you. You're using technical terms such as 'parameter space' in the wrong context. Maybe you want to sound clever, but you aren't making a lot of sense.
Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I would never hire the CTO of FTX to work at my company either, because he was complicit in a major fraud.
Please don’t argue in bad faith.
Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%
#440Coinbase may or may not be a good company. I have no idea. What I do know is that they have a lot of things working against them: - Money is not cheap anymoore - Their market is collapsing. I don't see how a company makes it through. Even if they navigate the present environment and manage to finance the company through the new few years, they may do so in to an ultimately collapsing market. There is no reason to ass…
I'm a huge crypto bear, and even if crypto collapses 99% - it's still a >$10B market, so there will still be people trading it. The sports trading card market is ~$7B - and plenty of people's entire life and income revolves around trading sports cards.
The only issue with the comparison of cryptocurrencies and sports trading cards is that trading cards will still provide some utility to the 1% of people trading them. The primary utility of cryptocurrencies is the anticipation of them going up in value. If 99% of people stop using crypto, it loses its utility for the last 1% of users.