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Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

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Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#501

Post by pcthrowaway »

RestlessMind wrote: post #494
pcthrowaway wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

So you also think that The Starry Night in MOMA is worthless because you can buy a very similar one on Etsy for $65? https://www.etsy.com/listing/1317189452/starry-night-by-vinc...

I didn't say they were similar value, this is a strawman.

But if we're looking at art, and you show me the original Starry night, a print, and then a picture of the kool-aid man busting through a wall, and ask me which 2 are most similar, I'm going to pick the starry nights

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#502

Post by sudosysgen »

KrakenEng wrote: post #490
ushakov wrote: 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.

This is not true. There are State and Federal restrictions on mass layoffs, which generally require a few months of notice. Giving severance is understood to count as notice. In any case you'd get the money, and you probably wouldn't be useful anyways.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#503

Post by Kukumber »

KrakenEng wrote: post #486
Kukumber wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's true, but that's easy to track, as everything in the blockchain is transparent, that's how people found out about the insider trading at Coinbase

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#504

Post by sobkas »

jasode wrote: post #221
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…

>Coinbase is a weird company, because it's got such an obvious comparable: CME Group. CME Group has about 3500 employees, [...] Firstly, I don't see how Coinbase needs as many people as CME. Coinbase isn't a direct comparable to CME because CME only does the exchange function. Coinbase combines several different types of financial institutions in the crypto space: + exchange : order matching engine of buy & sell -- a…

> >Coinbase is a weird company, because it's got such an obvious comparable: CME Group. CME Group has about 3500 employees, [...] Firstly, I don't see how Coinbase needs as many people as CME.

> Coinbase isn't a direct comparable to CME because CME only does the exchange function.

> Coinbase combines several different types of financial institutions in the crypto space:

> + exchange : order matching engine of buy & sell -- analogous to NYSE/NASDAQ/CME

> + broker : custodian of customers' margin accounts -- like Schwab, Vanguard, Fidelity, etc

> + bank : digital wallet and loans with customers' crypto as collateral -- like JP Morgan, Bank of America

> + ecommerce payments : analogous to PayPal/VISA/MC

> Even though CME deals with trading corn commodities, it is not a bank for people to use corn as collateral. Therefore a corn farmer can't go to the CME and get a loan and pay it back when he sells his crop harvest.

> Regardless of all the various financial areas they're in, Coinbase got overstaffed (like many other tech companies overhired) and so they're making aggressive cuts.

So maybe Coinbase should only keep profitable parts and cut/restructure/sell parts that aren't, instead of burning all their revenue in hope of capturing the market?

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#505

Post by hardwaresofton »

rsynnott wrote: post #432
hardwaresofton wrote: post #289

Earlier 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.

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.

Well looks like we'll get a chance to find out!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34333210

The universe has delivered with impeccable timing.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#506

Post by danielheath »

robertlagrant wrote: post #461
danielheath wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's a little bit harder to see the difference between pump & dump vs getting born rich.

That's neither fair nor obvious. Inheritance makes providing value worth doing past the point of one's own comfort. Many people's work becomes most valuable in their latter years, and so we would want them to keep working and pass on wealth, as opposed to either stopping working or just splashing their money out on nonsense. The principle of being able to own things and work to one's own good, and the good of those w…

From the perspective of those born poor with little prospect of improving their station, I don’t see how it’s obvious that the people who inherited wealth are more deserving of the money than the people who got it by scamming.

The legitimacy of the social contract that respects private ownership depends on the prospect of a good life for those who work for it.

When people lose belief in that prospect, they have no reason to respect the rules of that social contract.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#507

Post by RestlessMind »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #501
RestlessMind wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you also think that The Starry Night in MOMA is worthless because you can buy a very similar one on Etsy for $65? https://www.etsy.com/listing/1317189452/starry-night-by-vinc...

I didn't say they were similar value, this is a strawman. But if we're looking at art, and you show me the original Starry night, a print, and then a picture of the kool-aid man busting through a wall, and ask me which 2 are most similar, I'm going to pick the starry nights

> I didn't say they were similar value, this is a strawman.

You actually said that - "Interesting you say that, because it's actually very similar to Doge". Especially when the context was about the value of crypto in relation to supply and demand. Given that you are familiar with SHIB being an ERC20, I am fairly certain you are aware of DOGE's supply being nothing like BTC. And yet you conflate the two. Just for FUD?

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#508

Post by x-complexity »

bart_spoon wrote: post #493
jsnell wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They spend $2 for every $1 of revenue. That means they lose $1 for every $1 of revenue.

Spend is loss. If they lost $1 for every $1 of revenue, they’d be breaking even. But they aren’t. They‘d have to double their revenue just to break even. So yes, they lose $2 for every $1 earned.

> Spend is loss.

Incorrect from a definition perspective:

spend = expenditure

loss = revenue - expenditure, where expenditure > revenue

If I spent $10 to make & market a fancy x-mas box, but only sold it for $5, I didn't lose $10. I lost $5 ($5 - $10 = -$5).

To get to a net income loss of $550 mil from a revenue of $590 mil:

Net income = Revenue - expenditure

-550 mil = 590 mil - expenditure

expenditure = 590 mil + 550 mil = 1.14 bil

The initial ratio from jsnell is correct: They spent $2 to bring in $1. They lost $1 to expenses to bring in $1.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#509

Post by govg »

badestrand wrote: post #197
bfeynman wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exchanges have been around for almost a century now, so coinbase actually has a huge disadvantage in that they have no institutional stickiness or users, exchanges are built on trust and I would not want my money being routed through them if I was a client.

Just curious, which kind of exchanges do you mean that are 100 years young? The first stock exchange came to be >400 years ago and I guess there are currency or other exchanges that were there before. (Sorry if I just seem to want to point out a mistake - your first sentence just sounds so specific that it just got me interested in what you mean.)

There is a wide variety in ages of prominent exchanges. NYSE is one of the older ones at around 250 years, LSE is not as old but roughly 220. Some Asian exchanges are younger, Hong Kong and the Indian ones are 100-150 years old. Chinese exchanges are younger still, so is the Japanese and NASDAQ was founded in the 1970s. I am also curious as to which specific one they meant, perhaps they meant the set that were all setup around 1890s as a hundred years old.

Of course, being electronic is a later thing, as far as I know the NASDAQ was one of the first.

Re: Coinbase cuts staff by a further 20%

#510

Post by AYBABTME »

robin_reala wrote: post #151
AYBABTME wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Candidly, how do you review this prior of yours against the realities brought forward by the war in Ukraine?

The same as I did with the realities of Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria, or any of the other wars that have happened since I’ve been professionally developing software. War is a reality, but it’s also something I can choose to not engage in. It’s down to you to pick the things you feel are important to you, and if that’s (for example) gambling instead of defence then you do you.

Makes sense. Thanks for answering.
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