Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coinbase S-1

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 736 posts

Re: Coinbase S-1

#311

Post by PragmaticPulp »

lucasverra wrote: post #22

I do ask myself if a 100B valuation on public listing is the start of mainstream crypto. Plus the direct listing is a giant middle finger to traditional banking and overall establishment, right? Like : Here are the new rules this new internet will be playing by. Direct, decentralized. Adapt or die?

> Plus the direct listing is a giant middle finger to traditional banking and overall establishment, right?

Despite the narrative, Bitcoin isn’t really competing with traditional banking at all. It's additive. It has become another asset for banks to sell to people, collecting relatively high exchange fees in both directions on the trade.

This is more of an indication that Coinbase is now a traditional establishment banking institution. They’re also very centralized, given that they’re on the short list of exchanges and most users prefer to have Coinbase keep their coins instead of withdrawing to the Blockchain (for additional fees, which go to increasingly centralized miners).

Coinbase took the risk by being the first big entrant, but other big banks would be more than happy to sell you Bitcoin (for a fee, naturally) if they didn’t think it posed a large legal risk to the rest of their business. Coinbase has the benefit of not having another banking business, so they can go all-in on it.

Coinbase is the institution now. If crypto buy/sell becomes mainstream and the legal risk becomes smaller over time, other institutions will gladly sell you Bitcoin as part of their product lineup. If history is any indication, this will drive trading fees to $0, destroying Coinbase's current source of profit and unique position in the market. It will be interesting to see what they do to stay relevant as exchange fees dwindle.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#312

Post by [deleted] »

thedudeabides5 wrote: post #301
PKop wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All it takes Oh just that huh? The market wouldn't value that new fork on par with finite BTC, so those miners would be hurting themselves, and burning energy for a worth-less coin. This action is trivial to consider, so what makes you think it has bearing on BTC value? When these miners leave old network, hash power & difficulty go down so other miners who prefer finite protocol can come in to mine. What's the actu…

Actually this isn’t the only way. If financial intermediaries like Coinbase start extending credit or engaging in fractional reserve banking, then yes, you can “create more Bitcoin.” Just like how in the gold standard, you could still create more gold backed dollars by making a mortgage loan... Kind of funny how all these new monetary wizards miss out on this simple fact.

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase S-1

#313

Post by notahacker »

koonsolo wrote: post #250
notahacker wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to send me as much nano as you like, but I'm pretty sure that since I can't actually buy things I want with nano, the process of linking a crypto gateway to my bank account wouldn't be quicker and cheaper than waiting for funds from Transferwise or similar to clear.

That's like saying email was bad since none of the people you know have an email address. Just wait and see which solution will come on top.

I'm sure people compared Cuecat to email too. Turned out the problem wasn't "lack of adoption yet".

I mean, you could also send me fee-free payments direct from your bank with rapid settlement if I had a Euro bank account. I don't, but the reason isn't because I can't but because I don't need or want to hold non-domestic currency - exactly the same reason why I and most of my fellow countrymen who do have Euro bank accounts don't hold nano. The hurdle is reluctance to adopt universal international currency, not a technical shortcoming of Target2 settlement.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#314

Post by Justin_K »

cactus2093 wrote: post #176
arnaudsm wrote: post #44

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.

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 syste…

So when the power goes out or someone looses a hard drive, how easy is your bitcoin to transact?

Re: Coinbase S-1

#315

Post by flyingfences »

personjerry wrote: post #289
arnaudsm wrote: post #44

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.

What's wrong with banks?

From the perspective of January 2009, quite a lot.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#316

Post by Bedon292 »

Tenoke wrote: post #253
Bedon292 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DEX's are certainly nice, but at least for the time being if you have any significant volume of trading the the actual swap fees on the DEX will eat more of your gains than a centralized exchange will. Before factoring in Ethereum gas prices. Somewhere like Uniswap (most popular DEX on Ethereum) takes 0.3% of every trade plus price impact issues. At $50k volume, maker fees on Coinbase Pro are 0.15%, and your limit or…

They are still in their early stage, but for smaller traders (if it wasn't for fees on ETH, but e.g. on BSC) it's already worth it more than normal Coinbase (3% + deposit/withdraw fees) or low-volume Coinbase Pro (0.5%). Of course, Binance gives you 0.075-0.1% which they don't beat. The bigger benefit for the time being is that it allows you to trade pairs that aren't even yet on exchanges (Coinbase is famously slow…

Yes Binance.us has better fees, but CB has the benefit of scale $1.3B in BTC/USD vs just $55M on Binance.us. And I think CB is riding on that a lot. There is still tons of room for disruption there, just think a large number of folks trust CB for now. More so than any other exchange available in the US. And its way simpler to use it then going a lot deeper, so at least its a gateway for people to get started.

The main ones they are missing right now, to my observation, are Cardano and Polkadot, which they seem to be very slow on the uptake of. I guess you could say Tether, but understand why they don't have it. And same with Ripple. But I don't think those are a "slow" thing, that's a conscious decision with reasoning behind it.

I think it will take quite some time to do any significant disruption though. At least until there is a good easy place to be. BSC is hard to get in to from the US, at least from what research I have done, and I am willing to put far mor research into it than a 'normal' person would be.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#317

Post by gruez »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #75
anonu wrote: 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…

> These are insane fees ripe for disruption. No other exchange today has my trust, I don’t care if they compete on fees. When your btc is at real risk of they by an exchange, trust is everything. There is no FDIC insurance for exchanges. Now if Chase were to do BTC exchange at better rates... i would probably switch.

>There is no FDIC insurance for exchanges.

https://support.gemini.com/hc/en-us/articles/205823016-Are-m...

>U.S. dollars in your Gemini Account are eligible for FDIC insurance, subject to applicable limitations. Please see the FDIC Insurance section of our User Agreement for more information.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#318

Post by [deleted] »

Galanwe wrote: post #238
spamalot159 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You are comparing crypto currencies to stocks. In that case what you said is true. > 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 purpos Absolutely not. If you take the top 10 crypto currencies sorted by marketcap, half of them are actually stock-like tokens. It is not a misinterpretation, or a deviation from the intended purpos…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase S-1

#320

Post by malaya_zemlya »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #293
temp8964 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think cactus2093 meant US / western world.

I get that I said USD, but the fundamental premise doesn't get that altered. Bitcoin is heavily resource intensive. In an environment that is already resource pressed either due to political instability/natural disaster/inflation/whatever, what are the chances that the resources are going to be found that can actually operate bitcoin, and won't be better utilizied elsewhere?

You don't need to do mining in the disaster affected area. You need _someone_ to mine and to confirm transactions, but that can happen anywhere the world.
Post reply on HN