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Coinbase S-1

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Re: Coinbase S-1

#331

Post by fastball »

anonymousab wrote: post #271
hanniabu wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because they view crypto like people viewed the internet/computers back in the day. "It'll never work it's too complicated. No need for it, mail workers just fine. It's just used for illegal activity. Why do I need a productivity boost when I have my assistant to do everything. "

> It'll never work it's too complicated It usually seems far more nuanced to me. People seem somewhat skeptical on some finer points of cryptocurrencies, blockchains and distributed ledger ideas. But then they see supporters trumpeting 'this is good for Xcoin' on every piece of news, good or bad, and can't help but get a snake-oil-salesman-y feeling from that. Everything in life has many ways in which it can or does…

I love HN but I think you're giving it too much credit on this one.

Many (most?) of the conversations I see on here around crypto are copiously littered with straight FUD. Very little arguing on the actual nuances and intricacies of crypto. Seemingly low understanding / imagination of the possibilities allowed by the underlying concepts. Histrionics about power consumption in every thread.

Disclosure: I liquidated my crypto positions last year, and currently hold $0 worth of cryptocurrency.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#332

Post by pontus »

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…

This is my thought as well. There's too much crypto-purity going around in these discussions and not enough bitcoin-pragmatism, I think. Reminds me a lot of the purity games that are being played elsewhere online, just instantiated in a different context.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#333

Post by electriclove »

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.

This is the main fiat to crypto onramp in the US. The success of CoinBase will increase crypto adoption. I don't see this as preventing DEX growth but actually increasing it by growing the pond.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#334

Post by Tenoke »

Bedon292 wrote: post #316
Tenoke wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mai…

I was more comparing it to Binance.com which has 9x more volume than Coinbase, not the Binance.us gimped version. For what is worth, Kraken (available in the US) also has smaller fees, more parings at 55% of Coinbase's volume.

Hopefully the US loosens up and doesn't continue paving everything for Coinbase while the major options available elsewhere are closed off.

>And same with Ripple

They had XRP, they just removed it, presumably because they wanted everything to be as clean as possible for the IPO.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#335

Post by PragmaticPulp »

thinkmassive wrote: post #304
jmcqk6 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an unstable society or one facing high inflation What are the chances that in an environment where the USD is not usable, there is an available network and electricity that makes bitcoin usable?

Like yesterday, when Fedwire and ACH were offline for hours? https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/government/federal-res...

How many people would have noticed, if not for the headlines?

Re: Coinbase S-1

#336

Post by lambda »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #264
cactus2093 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> an unstable society or one facing high inflation What are the chances that in an environment where the USD is not usable, there is an available network and electricity that makes bitcoin usable?

Argentina?

Re: Coinbase S-1

#337

Post by thebean11 »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #264
cactus2093 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> an unstable society or one facing high inflation What are the chances that in an environment where the USD is not usable, there is an available network and electricity that makes bitcoin usable?

> What are the chances that in an environment where the USD is not usable, there is an available network and electricity that makes bitcoin usable?

The post you replied to said unstable or high inflation, not unusable. An unstable dollar will not instantly bring about the apocalypse, there are plenty of real life examples of unstable, high inflation currencies. The currencies took years to fully fail.

Not to mention, a few years of hyper-inflation don't even imply that the currency will fail.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#338

Post by goat_whisperer »

Bitcoin made a lot of sense when I first read about it in 2011. Back then I feel like it was primarily used as an anonymous payment method. Think dark web/silk road type stuff. I certainly don't endorse that behavior, but bitcoin as a payment method made a lot of sense.

Bitcoin makes 0 sense to me as an investment. It's pure speculation with no underlying intrinsic value. It's the Dutch Tulips 10.0 basically.

And now because the value of bitcoin is unbelievably volatile, it now makes 0 sense as a means of payment.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#339

Post by G3rn0ti »

temp8964 wrote: post #303
WD-42 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use a local wallet to store your BTC, let’s say on a HDD, the the magnetic pattern on the disk that makes up the bits that represent your coins would be physically owning then. They can’t be retrieved any other way.

Do I still own the BTC if the whole BTC network shuts down?

You own your Bitcoin as long as there is at least a single node out there storing its Blockchain. But it would be the only instance left that could confirm your ownership in that doomsday vision of yours.

You can think of Bitcoin as a kind of identity management system. The blockchain stores transactions mapping public keys to each other and monetary values. As long as you remember the private key matching your public key you can issue transactions on the blockchain.

Contrary to common belief Bitcoin is not stored on your hard drive, they contain only your private keys. The monetary units themselves, “UTXOs”, are stored on the network of Bitcoin nodes distributed all over the world.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#340

Post by colinmhayes »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #300
saberdancer wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike stocks where price is usually influenced by future dividend you can extract from the stock (profit), Bitcoin is more like gold. Imagine if suddenly someone found 100 000 metric tons of gold and wanted to sell fast. It would saturate the market and the price would plummet. Same would happen if Satoshi wanted to quickly sell 50 billion of coins.

Yeah, but if Satoshi - or anyone - finds the keys again (I'm fairly sure the keys are lost tbh), I doubt they would try and move it in one go. Also, again I'm no expert but, I think the mere news of the BTC moving from that wallet would have much more of an impact on the BTC price than the BTC ending up on the market. The crypto market is highly irrational and influenced more by memes than straight supply and demand.…

Bitcoin is on a public ledger. If any of the coins in Satoshi's wallet moved the market would get spoked of the possibility that they could all move.
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