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Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

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Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An equally as irrational position as, "Crypto is the best thing ever!"

I mean the end state of crypto isn’t a very positive one. Either it will crash catastrophically or it will slowly fizzle out until the majority of people just forget about it. Either way, at some point virtually nobody will be using it.

Speculative assets rarely crash, despite people wanting the drama of it all. If ETH went to $100, enough people would buy it in the hopes it would skyrocket again and make them fabulously wealthy, pushing the price up, but lower than last time, until it cycled back and so on until it fizzles out.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#262
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to sell the business to pay the tax. That is why wealth taxes are pretty dumb without carve outs for many kinds of assets.

Why not sell 49% of the business?

The percentage doesn't matter. You have to pay taxes on the stock you own (ie, your startup). You do that by selling the stock. As the value of the company increases, you are forced to sell off increasingly large chunks of your stake to pay the bill thereby loosing ownership (control) in the process.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#263

Genuine question: At what point do we actually declare that we are in recession. Do we wait for GDP figures out these signs are enough to assume we are in bear markets now.

It's a legitimate question, although I wouldn't use stories about Coinbase as any indication about the answer.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

> there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire Why does everyone want to tax the billionaires? What are you going to get out of it? Do you think taxing the billionaires is actually going to help the poor people? If so, riddle me this: Name one efficiently-run government organization.

The postal service is a marvel of efficiency

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

We need more billionaires to exist. They create wealth through enterprise. It is astounding how many people naively just think "Too much money = bad". Billionaires don't really have cash sitting in their houses. They created companies, often from scratch, that wouldn't otherwise exist. https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth GDP per capita grew because the wealth was created, not stolen. The entire pie got larger.…

Has there ever been a study on how many "productive" billionaires there are, as compared to those who are simply rent-seekers?

Or a study that has shown that billionaires ("job creators") are those who are the primary driving force for wealth creation?

Or are the much-bandied Gates/Musk entrepreneur-industrialist types just a minority of billionaires, many of whom are just wealthy heirs or hedge fund owners or whatever

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#266
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billionaires are highly correlated with millionaires, which don't seem to be beyond the pale for critics of wealth inequality. Countries with billionaires rank much higher on quality of life than those without. It hurts to see Bezos and Musk in yachts but the side effect of their wealth is companies like Amazon and Tesla that have a net positive effect on society in terms of products and employment.

Not to mention little old ladies, 50 year old ex fire fighters and retired unionized school teachers get full generous pensions because of stock market value of companies created by billionaires

Very little stock market wealth is held by pension funds on behalf of workers, as opposed to the already wealthy. See https://www.pensionsage.com/pa/Pension-scheme-holding-less-t..., for example. And the value on these schemes are disproportionately held by those who own and/or run companies rather than those who work in them: the Small Self-Administered Scheme is a popular means of UK tax avoidance for business owners who would like their capital gains tax free, and assets held in these schemes (on trust for the owner) will also be included in these figures.

Returns on capital flow, unsurprisingly, to those with capital. And the concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands is precisely the issue that people are objecting to.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire Why does everyone want to tax the billionaires? What are you going to get out of it? Do you think taxing the billionaires is actually going to help the poor people? If so, riddle me this: Name one efficiently-run government organization.

> Why does everyone want to tax the billionaires? Because they take a lot of value out of a shared society and concentrate too much power on their hands. > What are you going to get out of it? Reduce the power discrepancies, mostly, and money too. > Do you think taxing the billionaires is actually going to help the poor people? Yep. You are asking about government efficiency, but one of the reasons for the lack of ef…

To what extent do you think that billionaires earn the wealth that they have?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#268
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of people in the world who would think that anything over $500/month is way more than enough for one person. Should your compensation be reduced to that amount? Disclaimer: I live in a 3rd world country and my salary is 1/3 of what the standard US salary is. YES, I do believe that everybody's compensation (including mine) who are in the top 10% of the population should be decreased/limited. Provide…

The problem isn't the 91% to the 99% in my opinion. In the United States, the 99th percentile for income is ~$300,000, which is a ton of money in a low cost of living (rural) area and a decent amount of money in a high cost of living (urban) area. But these are not the "capitalist class". They don't own significant portions of a company unless they started a small business (a lawyer or doctor running their own practi…

The same limits can be applied to organizations and constellations of organizations.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#269

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

If they start hiring around christmas they saved no money and would have been better off keeping the employees. It looks like we are in store for a long down period.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#270

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

The state of California requires that Employees are paid for 60 work days (8 weeks) if there is a layoff at this scale. I assume that's where the majority of these employees are located. They're offering an extra month/month and a half likely on the condition they sign some sort of NDA/Right to sue the company for wrongful termination.
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