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Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

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Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#481
post #398
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…

"Crypto Industry" only has investors. I have not seen an actual cryptocurrency user that says "I'm here to use this thing"

The kind of things that crypto actually buys (besides NFTs and stablecoins) necessitate a certain level of discretion.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#482
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a lot of hype and an expectation (IMO wishful thinking) that NFTs would have a very broad penetration in the society, for example replace physical collectibles. If that did turn out to be true, most people would require a lot of handholding for taxes, complex global regulation, etc. which the Coinbase would provide, as well as collecting the exchange fees. Under this premise it is reasonable to hire up to b…

> for example replace physical collectibles But that is crazy. It is not that hard to understand the collectibles business is emotion based. You tickle the soul of the customers just the right way so they want to own a hoard of your crap. Then you create an artificial scarcity to profit from, and a thin veneer of "but-it-is-not-a-waste-of-money-because-i-can-sell-it-later" feeling to make your customers not instantly…

>Are rich businessman going to parade around wearing NFTs on their wrists?

I know several people (some of whom could even be considered businessmen) who do exactly that.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#483
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The supply of crypto isn't limited because people can just mint new chains. It is silly to lump all crypto coins in a single bucket. BTC is very different than DOGE or SHIB. I guess your parent post was about BTC supply being limited.

Interesting you say that, because it's actually very similar to Doge (though of course, dissimilar to Shib, because shib is an ERC20 token on Ethereum)

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of valuations show it's very cheap. Maybe hardcore believers start buying below this price. https://hcburger.com/blog/powerlaw/index.html https://twitter.com/DeFi_initiate/status/1576543256627724288... Of course, being historically consistent is not mandatory. The models may break, especially now that we have higher interest rates.

Betting against feds are fun! /s

Against? Is the role of the Fed not to dilute the national currency?

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#485

They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. They were on an unhinged hiring spree before they ipo’d, so this was coming no matter what.

> They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. What's the problem with that?

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#486
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 indus…

Binance can create its own volume out of thin air. This would be harder for Coinbase, due to their nature as a public company. The truth is, it's hard to know what is happening inside Binance.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#487
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parasitic rents and many other market distortions/extortions exist.

Saying that something exists isn't a complete thought.

Statements in a conversations do not stand alone. Thoughts flow from one to another.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#488
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…

Yet, I have an issue with my business account and their support has ghosted me. They kept responding with form letters and I kept telling them they weren't reading my emails, then they stopped. I'm just trying to add a business debit card to a business account. I get an error message that says "business cards are not supported" and their support tells me I have a personal account. What a mess. It's been 3 weeks now.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#489

They literally had people with 1-2 years of experience conducting interviews last I remember. They were on an unhinged hiring spree before they ipo’d, so this was coming no matter what.

I spent most of the last two years working on an NFT anti-fraud solution[0]. My two prior startups were (essentially) in telecom and healthcare. Coming from these well established, highly regulated, somewhat legacy industries to "crypto"/NFTs/web3 was a very interesting experience, to say the least. Users/potential customers for our solution ranged from creators to marketplaces to collectors/investors. Several very g…

> 1) The anonymous/pseudo anonymous nature of the space is bizarre. I would have multiple voice-only meetings with people using aliases and avatars for all communications. To this day I only know some people as "Mango Man" or whatever. Meeting people who could just burn down an entire identity and start fresh when things go sideways is an indicator of the nature of the space.

Most employees at Kraken don't know what the CTO looks like. He never turns the camera on during meetings and as far as I'm aware hasn't showed up to the in person events. He wrote most of the legacy backend.

This was mostly a curiosity though. None of the other points apply to him. He was professional.

> 6) VC in the space is even more wild than what has been reported in the media. I'll just leave this one at that.

I know a guy who went to a crypto hackathon (which is a chance for devs and start ups to show off for VCs.). He said a disturbing number of VCs, mostly creepy old guys who got rich off crypto, showed up with obvious asian/eastern European prostitutes or sugar babies.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#490
post #83

> I've made the difficult decision to reduce our operating expense(1) by about 25% Q/Q, which includes letting go of about 950 people read that again you're not an individual to corporations, just an expendable can only imagine the joy shareholders get out of "cutting expenses", they get richer and you peasants lose jobs

Employees got 14 weeks severance. They didn't have to do that.
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