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Coinbase S-1

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111–120 of 736 posts

Re: Coinbase S-1

#111
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't even remotely necessary for Coinbase to do well - the only thing they need is for crypto currencies to be more widely used in 25 years.

Absolutely, the only thing they need. Because the barriers to entry are so high!

Well regulation of this stuff is a kind of nightmare. Building an exchange is a nightmare - I tried once and scaling the thing is really complicated.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#112
post #37

Love reading the risk factors section. First thought: how can a lay person possibly understood the risks as laid out here? Also they view this as a major risk: •the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins; Second thought, what an incredible business and growth. 1.14bn in revenue on 193bn in trading volume: thats 60bps on every…

I don't quite understand what the risk to coinbase is if Satoshi is alive/identified? Do they think he has a hack or something?!

They understand how little inflow actually moves the market. The bigger the market gets, the more likely Satoshi could cripple it.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#113
Someone on here once said decentralized systems tend to end up centralized, this will be my goto example. A p2p system of exchanging digital tokens end up centralized around the a bank.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#114
post #37

Love reading the risk factors section. First thought: how can a lay person possibly understood the risks as laid out here? Also they view this as a major risk: •the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins; Second thought, what an incredible business and growth. 1.14bn in revenue on 193bn in trading volume: thats 60bps on every…

Satoshi is dead. It was Hal Finney. The coins aren't moving.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#115
post #3

I use coinbase as it was the easiest and least sketchy way to buy a couple of years ago. I feel though that a lot of the big gains for a particular coin are made before coinbase authorizes that coin for trade on their platform. Can anyone provide some insight/ ELI5 as to why the coin selection is curated vs a free for all?

> a lot of the big gains for a particular coin are made before coinbase authorizes that coin interesting observation. it seems to be the case for binance as well. i see coins gaining 20-30x before or right when it gets listed. perhaps “insider” trading right before a coin listing? As for coin curation i suppose thats as a means to filter out scams.

A lot of listing is preceded by extensive campaigns to build support to get a coin listed. It's unsurprising that this leads to prices going up. "Insider" is extremely vague here given that a lot of this will be activity surrounding the dev teams that may or may not have anything to do with the people who started the coin.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#116
post #97

Many have forgotten why we used cryptocurrencies in the first place. The original promise of cryptocurrency was to become independent from banks. In the end CoinBase (like every exchange) is a great product, but just a bank. It's centralized, hackable, has economies of scale, etc.

We hate the central banks! We're going to take away the power from them and the government! slight inconveniences, fraud happens We need a place to store our coin and help securely move it! recreates central banks with even less regulation and security Profit!

This conflates "Central Banks" with ordinary "banks" that hold assets in vaults. The two are comparable in the same way that Java is comparable to JavaScript.

The steel-man argument is that the monetary policy of central banks can cause hyper-inflation of a fiat currency, and holding onto an asset that is immune to that, and potentially even being able to transact with that asset is a reliable way to break free from the monetary policy of the central bank. The fact that one may place this transferable asset into a centralized institution that we may call a (lower case b) "bank" isn't at odds with the aforementioned principle.

Put another way, the dollar doesn't depreciate because of my credit union, it depreciates because of the Fed.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have forgotten why we used cryptocurrencies in the first place. The original promise of cryptocurrency was to become independent from banks. Lots of things evolve and change and their original intent is twisted. It’s ok. Life goes on.

How does that decentralized fiat on ramp look?

Fiat on ramps are already decentralized. Anyone can sell cryptocurrency for fiat. There is no centralized list of people who are allowed to sell cryptocurrency for fiat.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#118
post #89
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These are insane fees ripe for disruption. The disruption is already well underway. The only thing that slowed down DEX's eating of a bigger part of the market share is the current high fees on Ethereum.

Is there a plan to deal with the high gas prices?

Yes, ETH 2.0 is coming in 2022 (unless it gets delayed). There's one proposal for July that might help a little and more transactions are moving to L2 chains (LRC, Matic) where you pay the high fees only on exit/entering the L2 but can do transactions there for cheap.

Outside of ETH, BSC (Binance's smart chain, the exchange with 9x Coinbase's volume) already has lower fees but the chain is controlled by binance (its 'stock' is the token BNB valued at 40b currently, possibly a good investment) and has an influx of projects due to low fees and easy ETH-BSC migration. There are some other competitors with active smart chains but less projects and many are waiting on ADA's smart chain in early Q2 as well as on some other competitors that (might) solve that and other problems.

ADA (built by an ETH co-founder) specifically solves some of smart contract's current gripes by allowing you to build them in functional languages like Haskell, while being the most decentralized option which might be of interest here.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand what the risk to coinbase is if Satoshi is alive/identified? Do they think he has a hack or something?!

Satoshi's wallets have 1.1 million bitcoins, which are worth $56.4 billion at today's price. That would place Satoshi Nakamoto among the 25 wealthiest people on the planet.

The question is why that fact alone would affect the value of this company's shares. Just identifying him doesn't mean he'd liquidate.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#120

Many have forgotten why we used cryptocurrencies in the first place. The original promise of cryptocurrency was to become independent from banks. In the end CoinBase (like every exchange) is a great product, but just a bank. It's centralized, hackable, has economies of scale, etc.

Decentralization of a currency is great in theory but adoption has been abysmal.

At least as an investment asset BTC has found a niche.

Especially with billions of tether issued without any fiat behind it to keep the market extra liquid.

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