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Coinbase S-1

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Re: Coinbase S-1

#351

Post by fauigerzigerk »

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.

I don't think that would necessarily work with bitcoin. Fractional reserve banking works because bank deposits are fungible legal tender, regardless of what they are backed with at any particular moment.

With bitcoin, the only "authority" that confirms who owns what is the blockchain. Nobody would have to accept that you have made a bitcoin payment just because you transferred some bitcoin based credit that is not actually bitcoin.

Of course bitcoin derived credit/securities/IOUs can work. But it's not the same as bitcoin unless there are laws that ban making that distinction in some context.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#352

Post by silentsea90 »

goat_whisperer wrote: post #338

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…

At what point either in years or market cap or price per coin will you start to question your mental model of Bitcoin?

Re: Coinbase S-1

#353

Post by scsilver »

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.

You still have your solutions, now the vast majority of other users have solutions they can trust and hold within a legal system they have to trust.

Banks provide professional money movement, I dont see a problem having an insurance backed entitity managing my lively hood, I call an insured plumber instead of plumbing myself.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#354

Post by beaner »

ignoramous wrote: post #160
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. To think that coinbase started with a no-fee model: Coinbase will make money more like an exchange down the road, 0.5% to convert money into our out of bitcoin, but once you have your money in bitcoin there are no transaction fees (it mentions this on the homepage, but admittedly it's still a bit confusing)... It would be much easier to just say "no fees" - this is simple…

You're conflating things. When they say "transaction fees" here, they're referring to blockchain network fees (which they previously covered for users, before network congestion), not buy/sell fees, which they have always charged.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#355

Post by skrebbel »

tristanj wrote: post #85
dabeeeenster wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand what the risk to coinbase is if Satoshi is alive/identified? Do they think he has a hack or something?!

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.

My pet theory is that all those bitcoins are lost forever, just Satoshi performance tuning the miner he'd hacked together with perl one night and letting it run for a few hours. Close terminal, poof, everything gone. Who cares, can mine more later. Bedtime!

(disclaimer, I know nothing about bitcoin, there's likely 100 reasons why this makes no technical sense)

Re: Coinbase S-1

#356

Post by simias »

swiley wrote: post #143
simias wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is the catch 22 though. With a limited supply it seems like bitcoin may never successfully become a currency due to deflation, but at the same time without the carrot of massive gains you probably wouldn't have had any adoption at all. Most people owning bitcoin these days do it as a speculative investment, hoping that it'll be worth (a lot) more one day. It's not for nothing that the rallying cry of crypto…

There are some services that are just easier to use crypto currency to pay for because the maintainers don't want to deal with payment providers. The paid version of cheogram is a good example. This really was the original idea behind bitcoin: dynamically selecting payment providers every ten minutes so they become a commodity.

Bitcoin is pretty nice for vendors: no need to integrate with third party services with complicated terms and regulations, no chargeback etc...

But from the client's perspective it's pretty crappy for basically the same reasons. In general if you want to impose a new payment system it's really the buying side that needs convincing. If tomorrow a significant portion of the population wants to buy good and services preferably with Bitcoins, that would drive adoption massively. Thing is, from a user experience standpoint cash and Visa and still vastly more convenient, so the vast amount of buyers won't want to bother with cryptocurrency at the moment.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#357

Post by [deleted] »

tyre wrote: post #292
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. "

People keep making this parallel to “well they said this about the internet.” People also said that about pets.com, about bloodletting, about horoscopes and communism and hydroxyclorquine and Lizardpeople. It doesn’t replace mail, it isn’t used mainstream for anything but illegal activity and casino speculation, and I’m not sure what productivity boost we are talking about here. At some point you don’t get to make th…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase S-1

#358

Post by mettamage »

ppierald wrote: post #349

Argentina is a great example. I am an American and have been there many times. They have extreme inflation and regressive policies against USD or foreign currency. Take a look at https://bluedollar.net . Official rates are buy at 89.98 and sell at 94.98 (ARS). Unofficial rates are buy at 138 and sell at 143. That's a massive spread saying that the people on the street are willing to spend 35% more because they know t…

Awesome comment!

Can you elaborate on this? If you can't do so in public, then I'd like to have a conversation about this. I'd like to know more about inflation issues and unbanked issues with regards to cryptocurrencies. To me, it always feels like "crypto marketing" (for lack of a better term), but I am also realizing that I'm living in a far removed bubble and find it hard to get out of it.

My email is in my profile if you feel it's handier to have a private conversation instead.

I think crypto is fulfilling one need at the moment which is: if you happen to have a super crazy inflationary national currency and you don't have access to actual dollars, then there's always cryptocurrencies that are most likely less crazy (in the inflationary sense).

Re: Coinbase S-1

#359

Post by kgwgk »

colinmhayes wrote: post #348
kgwgk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have a reasonable sized moat then no? Do they? I'd rather own a couple of major exchanges in today's financial system for the same price. ICE net income $2.1bn market cap $63bn NDAQ net income $0.5bn market cap $23bn CME net income $2.1bn market cap $72bn CBOE net income $0.4bn market cap $11bn

Coinbase's real value seems like it'll be its ability to use deposits to provide loans. Big money in banking.

Most banks do not have a $100bn valuation though.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#360

Post by throwaway_kufu »

lottin wrote: post #262
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…

Gold is commodity. The financial system is an industry that provides goods and services. Gold is not an alternative to the financial system. How could it be? It's a completely different thing.

>Gold is not an alternative to the financial system.

The modern financial system itself is in fact an alternative to gold

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