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Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

bloomberg.com

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Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#141

Post by ravenstine »

Traster wrote: post #21

It is kind of funny that exchanges have become so successful for Bitcoin- since they lose 100% of the stuff that made BTC attractive in the first place. They’re centralised, regulated and transactions don’t even go on the blockchain. The result is that the number 1 way people get into Bitcoin is through a mechanism that has none of the attributes of Bitcoin.

> transactions don’t even go on the blockchain

What are you talking about? When you purchase coins on Coinbase, they go into a wallet that you can easily deposit to through another means or withdraw to another wallet. This is the same with Binance, Kraken, CashApp, and so on. Exceptions would be Paypal or Rob-in-'hood where they have total custody, which has advantages if the user doesn't care about actually owning the coins themselves.

Don't like the centralization of Coinbase? Then just don't use it. There's plenty of other options for purchasing bitcoins. Buying them P2P is easy as hell. Local Coin Swap and Local Bitcoins allow you to buy crypto directly from individuals with an escrow system.

By the way, not everyone is interested in the same advantages of Bitcoin. One of the reasons Bitcoin has been on he rise the last year is that it has far greater potential than a savings account to grow in value and, unlike gold or silver, doesn't take up physical space. Not everyone cares about decentralization or is averse to risk.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#142

Post by ravenstine »

mamon wrote: post #123
wtf_is_up wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>crashes to hell Zoom out.

"Past performance is not indicative of future results" EDIT: it might be a lawyerspeak, but it is still a good advice: there's a reason why Bitcoin has been down $14k this week and that reason is the settlement with NYAG in the Tether lawsuit. Situation has changed, there's one fewer scam company there to artificially inflate Bitcoin price, so expect downward trend for at least the next few months.

That phrase is lawyer-speak that only exists for the sake of mitigating liability. Of course every conceivable thing has a non-zero risk.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#143

Post by Grim-444 »

kemonocode wrote: post #101

I won't say much about the article as it's a topic that has been discussed plenty of times before (The merits and faults of Bitcoin) with often inflammatory results, but I will definitively say it's pretty easy and rather intellectually dishonest to attack it only whenever there's a dramatic price swing. Where were all these articles during all those price lull periods? Also, if we're pointing fingers, the influence…

What price lulls?

Before 2017 the price of Bitcoin was stable as it wasn't worth anything.

From 2017 to 2021 the price of bitcoin has changed every year by: 1,300%, 71%, 75%, 328%

Compared to the DJIA, which over the same years changed every year by: 25%, 8%, 21%, 11%

In the last four years, two of those years have had price changes in the hundreds of percent, and the other two years the change was still 300% the greatest change in the DJIA across any of those four years.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#144

Post by paulryanrogers »

ravenstine wrote: post #141
Traster wrote: post #21

It is kind of funny that exchanges have become so successful for Bitcoin- since they lose 100% of the stuff that made BTC attractive in the first place. They’re centralised, regulated and transactions don’t even go on the blockchain. The result is that the number 1 way people get into Bitcoin is through a mechanism that has none of the attributes of Bitcoin.

> transactions don’t even go on the blockchain What are you talking about? When you purchase coins on Coinbase, they go into a wallet that you can easily deposit to through another means or withdraw to another wallet. This is the same with Binance, Kraken, CashApp, and so on. Exceptions would be Paypal or Rob-in-'hood where they have total custody, which has advantages if the user doesn't care about actually owning t…

> One of the reasons Bitcoin has been on he rise the last year is that it has far greater potential than a savings account to grow in value and, unlike gold or silver, doesn't take up physical space.

Its potential may be offset by its environmental impact and lack of any fundamental value.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#145

Post by ravenstine »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #144
ravenstine wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> transactions don’t even go on the blockchain What are you talking about? When you purchase coins on Coinbase, they go into a wallet that you can easily deposit to through another means or withdraw to another wallet. This is the same with Binance, Kraken, CashApp, and so on. Exceptions would be Paypal or Rob-in-'hood where they have total custody, which has advantages if the user doesn't care about actually owning t…

> One of the reasons Bitcoin has been on he rise the last year is that it has far greater potential than a savings account to grow in value and, unlike gold or silver, doesn't take up physical space. Its potential may be offset by its environmental impact and lack of any fundamental value.

I'm not here to debate that, but my point is that not everyone is obsessed with decentraliztion... they just want their money to grow fast, just as most people don't buy stocks with the primary intention to own a piece of a business; they buy stocks because they want to make money.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#146

Post by Judgmentality »

Grim-444 wrote: post #143
kemonocode wrote: post #101

I won't say much about the article as it's a topic that has been discussed plenty of times before (The merits and faults of Bitcoin) with often inflammatory results, but I will definitively say it's pretty easy and rather intellectually dishonest to attack it only whenever there's a dramatic price swing. Where were all these articles during all those price lull periods? Also, if we're pointing fingers, the influence…

What price lulls? Before 2017 the price of Bitcoin was stable as it wasn't worth anything. From 2017 to 2021 the price of bitcoin has changed every year by: 1,300%, 71%, 75%, 328% Compared to the DJIA, which over the same years changed every year by: 25%, 8%, 21%, 11% In the last four years, two of those years have had price changes in the hundreds of percent, and the other two years the change was still 300% the gre…

> Before 2017 the price of Bitcoin was stable as it wasn't worth anything.

You live in an alternate reality.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#147

Post by ALittleLight »

jariel wrote: post #50
ALittleLight wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Would you feel differently about coinbase if it's leadership were evenly divided between men and women, or largely women?

No. Your attempt to project hyperbole into what I 'feel' is not rhetoric. If it's a small group of heretofore unknown people with a major stake in a new, exotic and opaque, 1 Trillion dollar asset pool, then describing them as 'all men' is perfectly reasonable if they are. Just as if they were all American. It's relevant because they are obvious characteristics of the group and not a random outcome. If there was some…

It seems to me that if a fact is informative then the opposite of that fact would be too. For example, the article says that verified users jumped 34%. That fact tells us coinbase is growing and at what pace. If the opposite were true, and users were declining, that would tell us coinbase and maybe bitcoin were in trouble.

I don't see what the most common gender among the leadership team tells us. What does it matter if they are mostly, partly, or entirely men or women? This article is written in Bloomberg, the four founders of Bloomberg plus their chairmen are all men[1] - does that matter? If I were to put on my "just journalism" hat, maybe I'd think it says something when organizations led entirely by men criticize organizations partly led by women for their social justice bona fides... Or, maybe I'd think that most executives are men, most people in tech are men, most people in crypto are men, so it's really not that surprising or informative that most of coinbase's leadership are men. Or, maybe it does matter for some reason, but the journalist should explain that reason rather than just drop the fact and imply it means something without explanation.

1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#148

Post by 1996 »

aphextron wrote: post #126

Say what you will about the technology, but the Bitcoin community attracts the most unsavory, scandalous people imaginable. It truly is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Everything even tangentially related to it instantly becomes a source of scams, illegal activity, and just general shadiness. It's what has always turned me off of blockchain technology in general. I'm sure these same people exist in the fiat fin…

> I'm sure these same people exist in the fiat financial world as well, but it just has a lawless, wild west, dog eat dog atmosphere that is so off putting.

Actually, it's far worse in the fiat financial world.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#149

Post by Rapzid »

Perhaps the idea of "pure decentralization" doesn't exist; only partial realizations of it.

If you look at Bitcoin and Ethereum you find concentrations of power, information, and etc at many levels; centralization. Even at the technical level the solution to controlling change is often to have minority steering groups whose membership necessarily suggests a concentration of power enabling them to exert influence.

Re: Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin

#150

Post by mcguire »

iso1210 wrote: post #72
WJW wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets back to the "gambling vs investing" debate we had on the front page yesterday. What is the fair value of bitcoin? It will never provide dividends or other types of future cashflows, so that aspect of its fair value is zero. The remaining part is purely speculative in that it is based on what other people will pay for it. It is not at all clear to me that having more (relatively uninformed) speculators will…

> What is the fair value of bitcoin? It will never provide dividends or other types of future cashflows, so that aspect of its fair value is zero. The remaining part is purely speculative in that it is based on what other people will pay for it. Do Swiss Franks pay dividends or other types of cashflows? If I have 50,000 CHF in a box in my cupboard, what value is it beyond a small amount of fuel to burn? At some point…

One hopes that you do not regard 50,000 CHF in a box in your cupboard an investment. I've got about $200 in a drawer in the other room for unexpected events---ones that don't involve any infrastructure at all.

My actual investments are in economically productive assets.

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