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Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

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Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#471

Post by luckylion »

robertlagrant wrote: post #460
luckylion wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone starts a company in their garage, and a decade later that company is worth few billions of dollars then that's the value this person brought to society - because people willingly paid them those billions of dollars for their product/service. What was the value FTX or Theranos brought to society?

You'll note that when it goes wrong in each of those cases, we lock the perpetrators up in a box. And their company's value drops according to the new information.

Totally, because the _expected future value_ changes with the new information. If they had actually created something of value, that wouldn't change because of new information. But they hadn't, and yet their companies were worth billions.

"Provides value" is loosely connected to "expected future value", but it's certainly not the same thing.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#472

Post by tqi »

TekMol wrote: post #228
danrocks wrote: post #224

Earlier 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."

I think for most folks, this is akin to paying for everyday expenses with fractions of your stock portfolio.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#473

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#474

Post by Kukumber »

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…

Coinbase reputation got hit when people found out about their insider trading [1], on top of them hiring ex-wall street people

Coinbase also is 10x less volume than Binance [2]

You have all of this, then the press who keep advertise them despite the poor metrics, something doesn't sound right

I think it's fair to say people made their choice and the choice is Binance

The narative can't be forced like with other industries, unless you get help from the press and push some FUD, hmm

Or with the help of the CIA with FTX as a poison aimed at Binance, hmm

[1] - https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/three-charged-first-eve...

[2] - https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#475

Post by jacquesm »

usrusr wrote: post #248
danuker wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Bitcoin has "exploded" in the past, crashing 70%+ several times, yet each time it had a higher and higher floor. How do you explain this?

Just like amongst stamp collectors, a certain group will simply never sell. They'd rather never get a cent for they collectibles than sell at a price lower than what they feel would be "appropriate". Trade activies in irrational markets like that lie somewhere on the spectrum between the extremes of rational trade and belief affirmation ritual.

And some collectors just collect and don't really care about the money.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#476

Post by johnvanommen »

monetus wrote: post #412
johnvanommen wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. I interviewed at a place where 75% of the interviewers didn't show up. The only dude who did, had started the day before...

This sounds fascinating. What kind of software/industry?

It was at Puppet Labs.

I am a former employee of BladeLogic, and the founder of Puppet used to work there. In 2008, BladeLogic's largest customer hired me (Bank of America.)

BofA outsourced my job, so I needed somewhere to work, and I reached out to Puppet.

I had an interview schedule with four Puppet employees. 75% of them didn't show up. The one person who DID show up had started the day before my interview.

You can find me on LinkedIn, all the history is there.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#477

Post by jacquesm »

danuker wrote: post #174
jacquesm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely, it will just get weirder and more extreme until it explodes. These are all spasms of a dying organism. The addiction is so massive though that there will be some kind of backlash or a shift to something else. It's like when the authorities cracked down on money laundering through banks, for every one they killed four new ones sprang up.

But Bitcoin has "exploded" in the past, crashing 70%+ several times, yet each time it had a higher and higher floor. How do you explain this?

Lots of people go base jumping. I can't explain it, and yet they do, in spite of multiple terrible crashes.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#478

Post by noelsusman »

za3faran wrote: post #459
noelsusman wrote: post #458

>This is the first time we've seen a crypto cycle coincide with a broader economic downturn. Unemployment in the US is currently at its lowest level in 50 years. What economic downturn are they referring to?

High inflation, stock market, etc.

Neither of which has caused an economic downturn yet. The economy is doing just fine. Tech companies laying people off because money isn't free anymore is not an economic downturn.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#479

Post by Jasper_ »

finolex1 wrote: post #173
acdha wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That little experience makes it hard to judge applicant quality well and means they probably aren’t answering questions accurately. It’s a dead tell of a company which has a shortage of experienced staff and is growing too quickly — very strongly reminiscent of the dotcom bubble where people had the same “number go up!” mentality & some would openly say they were just looking busy until the IPO.

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

The only consistent thing yet hear about the FAANG interview process is how universally bad it is, but also how you should just play along to get your $300k/yr salary.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#480

Post by MrRadar »

def_true_false wrote: post #433
rahen wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are you talking about? America's financial system is the worst of the world's major economies from the perspective of people wanting to send money (to the point that the easiest way to send money between individuals is with paper checks, something that has virtually disappeared everywhere else). If anything, Bitcoin's promises of frictionless money transfer should have the most appeal to Americans since that's already a "solved problem" in the EU, Canada, Australia, etc.
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