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Coinbase S-1

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461–470 of 736 posts

Re: Coinbase S-1

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but also a skeptic and here are my thoughts: - Market cap is sort of a misleading stat. Microsoft's market cap is ~1.75 trillion, but it's p/e ratio is 34. So if they stopped reinvesting in their business, I'd be making 3% yearly on that investment with a hedge against inflation since they can just raise prices. A lot more goes into their valuation than that, but my point is that even if you are a huge skepti…

wow you have so many conflicting views, irrelevant comparisons between two types of markets and asset class, and don't seem to realize it? equities markets cant be compared to a commodity. so that invalidates your entire first paragraph, the longest one. as a corollary to that, don't derive your confidence from equities investors opining about commodities for the first time in their lives. you have equities investors…

> commodity

It's not really a commodity. More of a currency.

> you want high price for a longer period of time, but are turned off by the exact and only mechanism in which it gets there - large % and large $ amount price increases. fascinating.

I'm not saying it's worth nothing. If bitcoin stays above 5k for a long time, i'm willing to say it's worth at least 5k. If it stays above 50k for a long time, i'll come around and say it's worth at least 50k.

> I’d like to leave you with an alternative tool for valuing, and its just scarcity.

Scarcity alone doesn't mean anything. I can create a cryptocurrency any time that's scarce. Doesn't make it valuable.

> Bitcoin’s not a company so dont use company comparisons.

The only commodity that it is comparable to is gold and maybe a few other precious metals that serve as value stores. And gold, for one, has held high value for thousands of years. Maybe it doesn't have intrinsic value in the way that canned beans do, but the chances of it being near worthless tomorrow are very very low since it has a 5000+ year track record. On the other hand, yes, there's seasonality and volatility in things like oil and pigs, but there are also real world use cases for those.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ac…

> Fractional reserve banking works because bank deposits are fungible legal tender

Actually bank deposits at commercial banks are not legal tender. Only banknotes, coins and deposits at the central bank are. In most (all?) countries, individuals are not able to open accounts with the central bank. Interestingly this is not a rule set in stone. Some central banks like the Swedish Riksbank [1] are investigating the possibility to issue virtual currency to individuals which would be a legal tender and an alternative to bank deposits.

[1] https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/payments--cash/e-krona/

Re: Coinbase S-1

#463
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once saw crytpocurrency described as "speedrunning the evolution of the modern financial system".

Ha! Sounds like an interesting perspective: do you perhaps have a link to the source?

Either Reddit or Twitter, years ago. I'm fairly sure they were cribbing off someone else at the time.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, then send me a $0.001 micro transaction. Same deal.

How are you going to convert $0.001 to Euros? Why is receiving $0.001 a matter of urgency that can't wait until tomorrow?

> Why is receiving $0.001 a matter of urgency that can't wait until tomorrow?

I'm not making a value judgement whether this is utopian or dystopian but imagine streaming money. Instead of paying for the use of something in advance and in coarse-grained chunks (driving through a tunnel, running on a treadmill in a gym, watching netflix, parking somewhere, etc...) you'd instead stream money throughout usage. On-demand with continuous settlement for the duration.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From "Use of Proceeds" on p78: "To the extent any registered stockholder chooses to sell shares of our Class A common stock covered by this prospectus, we will not receive any proceeds from any such sales of our Class A common stock." This is a direct listing, so I think its primarily a liquidity event for investors and employees.

That's standard surely? They will be issuing new stock which they will receive sales?

In a Direct Listing, the company does not issue new shares. This doesn't mean they can't in the future, but it's just not part of the company's initial listing on the public markets.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#466

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…

> 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. At the time of writing this comment, if you want your BTC transaction confirmed in the next hour it would cost you ~ 10USD ( https://bitcoiner.live/ ) . What planet do you live on where you think a non-negligible percentage of people in ANY country, let alone a…

regarding the transaction cost, wells fargo charges me $15 to receive a wired payment.

If the use case is only large gold like transactions, the BTC use case makes more sense. Tbd.. shake it out.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#467

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…

I like bitcoin cause the price keeps going up. When that stops I won't like it so much.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#468
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin can actually be quite resilient to that. Also the USD failing, doesn't necessarily mean a global world war. The US can go the way of the Soviet Union or the British Empire.

Can you elaborate on that please

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase S-1

#469
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't create more bitcoin but you can create more USDT and exchange it for bitcoin.

That doesn't impact the value of Bitcoin. When you exchange USDT for Bitcoin, the loser isn't holders of Bitcoin, the loser is (potentially) holders of USDT. Exchanging USDT for Bitcoin doesn't create new Bitcoin. Coinbase, as a marketplace, engages in the exchange of (potentially) bad tokens like USDT, as well as tokens like BTC that are provably finite. All of this is orthogonal to the fact that there is nothing hy…

Coinbase doesn't trade USDT. They have their own USD pegged stablecoin called USDC and also trade Dai, which is pegged to the USD and is over collateralized
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