Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>Especially with billions of tether issued without any fiat Do you have any proof of this? Tether is over collateralized by $164M. https://wallet.tether.to/transparency
Coinbase S-1
171–180 of 736 posts
Re: Coinbase S-1
#172Good for them. But am I the only one who finds it slightly ironic that the brainchild of distributed ledger tech and crypto currency capitalism is now filing for IPO in what is the hallmark of old capitalism (regulated markets)?
Coinbase is the brainchild behind cryptocurrencies? How? They were not the first, they are not the biggest, they don't have the most cryptocurrencies/platforms, they are not the fastest/cheapest/best support and so on. In fact, I can't figure out a single thing that Coinbase is the best at in the cryptocurrency industry. So what do you mean with brainchild here?
Note that GP stated they are "brainchild of cryptocurrencies". I don't think that the meaning you imply is what they had in mind.
Re: Coinbase S-1
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's not just knowing who he is -- if he's identified he might decide to move those coins. If he did that, it could affect the price. I'm not sure anyone knows what the exact impact of that would be.
I don't personally believe Satoshi was an actual person, and don't believe he'll ever be identified. Most likely the keys to those early blocks have been destroyed, and most people wouldn't do that unless there was an institutional reason for it.
Re: Coinbase S-1
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
in reverse. the evolution of the modern financial system is less and less friction for each transaction, lower costs. crypto: more friction, slower transactions, higher transaction costs. And wicked exchange volatility. Plus no way to expand or contract the supply to prevent economic shocks. I like my fiat and central banks, thank you very much.
>more friction, slower transactions, higher transaction costs. And wicked exchange volatility. You are taking a look at the start of the speedrun and claiming that it's already over. All of those issues will eventually be solved. >Plus no way to expand or contract the supply This is simply not true. It is entirely possible to make it possible to mint new coins. You can burn coins by buying them back and sending them…
> All of those issues will eventually be solved.
When does "eventually" arrive? For 12 years I've been hearing that all of the problems of cryptocurrency will be solved very soon. But merchant adoption peaked years ago and has notably declined. Most of the problems are still problems. At this point, I'm pretty sure "eventually" means what I mean by "soon" as a teen when my parents asked me to clean my room. That is, "not now and I'd like to keep ignoring the topic please".
Re: Coinbase S-1
#17543 million users yet the narrative is cryptocurrency is still in its 'infancy.' I wouldn't be surprised if at least 10% of all Americans have dabbled in buying crypto.
given how big the world is, _yes_, still infancy
Re: Coinbase S-1
#176Many 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.
Don’t speak for everyone there, “we” don’t all have the same reason. I like Bitcoin as a diversification for being a “better version of gold” - it has the scarcity and you can physically own it but it is much easier to store and send anywhere in the world if needed.
These properties also mean that in a pinch, if you live in an unstable society or one facing high inflation it can work as an alternative financial system.
But I’ll never understand the westerners that seem to be almost rooting for their own society to collapse just to have another reason to use Bitcoin. I don’t have any real need to be independent from banks, and I am lucky that I live in a pretty stable society where that’s true.
Re: Coinbase S-1
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
in reverse. the evolution of the modern financial system is less and less friction for each transaction, lower costs. crypto: more friction, slower transactions, higher transaction costs. And wicked exchange volatility. Plus no way to expand or contract the supply to prevent economic shocks. I like my fiat and central banks, thank you very much.
> the evolution of the modern financial system is less and less friction for each transaction Still, buying shares of a company is much more "friction" than buying coins. > crypto: more friction Can you elaborate? > slower transactions Huh, even bitcoin will settle with 6 confirmations in an hour. Settlement to buy a share or FX is 2/3 days. > higher transaction costs Hmm, no. > And wicked exchange volatility. Volati…
You are comparing crypto currencies to stocks. In that case what you said is true. But I think the fairer comparison is crypto currency to a fiat currency. There is more friction involved in using crypto currency to make a purchase. It does take longer to processes a bitcoin transaction than it would for visa to processes a transaction in usd. And the transaction costs for a typical transaction are usually higher for bitcoin (maybe not all crypto currencies though). I think the fact that a lot of people compare crypto currencies to stocks is telling that they are not being used for their intended purpose.
Re: Coinbase S-1
#178Created a coinbase account recently and found that there's no way to verify your identity if you have an expired ID. Because of covid, Maryland let expired drivers licenses still be valid for the forseeable future, but Coinbase automatically declines them.
I had the same issue trying to buy Sudafed at CVS. Can you use a passport?
I don't have a passport. The expired ID hasn't been an issue until now, because the state government sent out a letter you are supposed to keep with you that explains the situation, and says the ID is still valid. I ended up scheduling an appointment to get a new ID, but it's a ~3 month wait.
Re: Coinbase S-1
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but that's only possible because of the underlying monetary policy, which is controlled by the Fed. In contrast, there is no way you can do this with (most) cryptocurrencies. The monetary policy of Bitcoin is dictated by the physical bounds of the proof-of-work algorithm. There is absolutely nothing that Coinbase can do to "create" more Bitcoin outside of just mining it like everyone else.
You can't create more bitcoin but you can create more USDT and exchange it for bitcoin.
When banks use bitcoin instead of fiat, they could in fact create more 'bitcoin' in the same way.
You wouldn't own the bitcoin, just as now you don't own the real fiat. There would just be a number on your bank account that says how many bitcoin you own, but it's multiplied the same way as they do now.
It all comes down to the % of reserve they need to hold.
Re: Coinbase S-1
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
To be clear, ADA doesn't have a smart contract platform yet. I believe that's part of the update that is coming in a couple of days. They've been building towards that for several years and have done a lot of great work in the space. Tezos is quite a bit ahead of ADA in that particular respect as they have smart contracts already. I don't believe ETH2 will ever show up, but who knows. Full disclosure, I've got holdin…
Well, if Ethereum 2.0 "never shows up", that's $5.3B locked in a contract[0] that "will never do anything". I think $5.3B is sufficient motivation to get it released.
[0]: https://etherscan.io/address/0x00000000219ab540356cbb839cbe0...