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Coinbase S-1

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501–510 of 736 posts

Re: Coinbase S-1

#501

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Anyone trying to send money using ACH. Maybe that doesn’t include you, but many regular people use it on an everyday basis.

In my lifetime, if I were to compare 3 numbers - no. of hours there was no electricity (X), no. of hours there was no mobile data coverage so that I could continue doing transactions without electricity (Y) and no. of hours Fedwie/ACH was down (Z) which prevented me from bank transfers, I'd say X and Y and at least 2 orders of magnitude bigger than Z. If Fed/ACH going down for a few hours bothers you a lot but electr…

My computers and network are powered by uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) which I highly recommend for every important system. I have a generator in case of extended outage, which I also highly recommend to everyone who is able to have one at home, regardless of whether you own a computer.

I personally have fiber, cable, and LTE feeding my home gateway. This might seem like overkill to non-tech folks, but I recommend it to anyone whose productivity/career is highly reliant on being online.

I realize this isn’t necessarily a typical home setup, but I also think most people are horribly unprepared for many potential situations.

This isn’t a claim that I have zero downtime at home. It’s only to say that if my Bitcoin node is offline then any hope of relying on fiat banking was abandoned much earlier.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the lightning network, the cost of a transaction is negligible.

You can't use lightning network without opening a channel. Opening a channel requires making an on-chain transaction which most of the world can't afford. Lightning network is absolutely useless on BTC. Add lightning network to a chain that isn't crippled then let's talk.

I use the lightning network almost daily and I’ve never done that. I just use a wallet that is lightning capable and that’s it.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use lightning network without opening a channel. Opening a channel requires making an on-chain transaction which most of the world can't afford. Lightning network is absolutely useless on BTC. Add lightning network to a chain that isn't crippled then let's talk.

I use the lightning network almost daily and I’ve never done that. I just use a wallet that is lightning capable and that’s it.

How exactly are you using the lightning network without an initial transaction to charge up your metaphorical gift card?

Re: Coinbase S-1

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing that BTC isn't better than Wells Fargo. I'm arguing that you can't build a "financial network" on it. BTC is a great alternative to Wells Fargo although almost ANY OTHER COIN is a better one.

Can you anchor a financial network on BTC stability? (If it achieves stability). IDK.. Total aside..I imagine this utopian energy-financial system future where we overbuild our renewable grid and instead of storing energy we discharge the (green energy) overproduction into crypto mining operations. There are some dudes already on it, it's a new angle to grid power flow modeling.

On your aside, I'm amazed that smaller energy producers have not already become crypto miners. It would be so easy and incredibly lucrative. They could simply flip a switch any time the sale price of their generated power is less than the price of the coins their mining facilities could produce. They would get an instant profit increase. Almost all the costs associated with mining are fixed.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#505
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That didn’t affect 99.9+% of people, and is a far cry from the USD being “unusable”.

Congratulations on not needing to send a wire transfer or ACH during the outage. For anyone who was expecting to do that, it was literally unusable.

Your take is like claiming a major AWS outage didn’t happen because you personally didn’t get on the Internet that day.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#506
post #440

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We're going to need some more detail on that argument.

Not sure what OP was specifically referring to, but the argument is true in the sense that pre-1971, gold was money and currency was backed by gold. Now money is whatever the Fed says it is, and currency is backed by faith.

Otherwise known as credit, which has been the prevailing valuation since the Stone Age.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#507
post #89
post #70

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>These are insane fees ripe for disruption. The disruption is already well underway. The only thing that slowed down DEX's eating of a bigger part of the market share is the current high fees on Ethereum.

Is there a plan to deal with the high gas prices?

Switch to Solana?

Re: Coinbase S-1

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There are L2s that solve this, in exchange for slower inclusion into the main chain. Or you can just trade wrapped BTC on another network. In that case, the Bitcoin main chain functions like a gold depository institution in traditional finance.

I'll make sure and tell my grandma that she can save money by wrapping her BTC and trading it on another network rather than making on-chain transactions /s

It blows my mind the amount of talent being wasted building "solutions" for an intentionally crippled chain. One can only polish a turd so much.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#509

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

I'm pretty sure this is 99% of the value of bitcoin for 99% of people that hold bitcoin.

I was watching CNBC the other day and they were doing a roundtable thing like the sports channels do. Each host was shitting on bitcoin about how terrible it is, and how millennials are stupid for liking it, and it'll go to zero one day, etc. You know the drill.

Then the main host asks who has a position in Bitcoin. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the investors that was just shitting on Bitcoin 5 seconds earlier admitted that they all have substantial stakes in it.

The first guy tried to come up with a technical justification for why he is doing it.

The next guy blamed his wife for wanting to get into it because all her friends were supposedly talking about it, so they bought 10 bitcoin back when it was $9k a share.

The third guy simple said "It keeps going up, so I keep putting money in it. As soon as it stops going up I will stop putting money in it".

The other 3 people after it basically just said "yeah, exactly what the third guy said."

I personally get nervous with Bitcoin. It isn't stable which makes it far from a currency. You can't have a currency that goes up and down 10% throughout the day. Transferring $100 could be $90 or $110 over the course of a few hours. That's significant and cannot be ignored. I understand the idealistic portion of it too and how it gets us closer to a perfect money system, but truthfully the only reason we continue to talk about Bitcoin is that it continues to go up. I don't have very much faith in Bitcoin. But I'll admit I have some and I have been riding it up. It makes no sense to me. I am just along for the ride.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#510
post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/10 or 1/4 doesn’t really matter if they manage to keep up 300% growth for a year or two. And there is still a lot of room for growth. As for where Coinbase can go - it can take the Wallstreet on in terms of trading securities (security tokens) and derivatives - the whole DeFi market which is what Internet was to publishing companies.

Except the internet made things easier. Trading stocks isn’t expensive or error prone. We’ll see. Is the premise that every mom and pop will list shares in their company somewhere? The problem with that isn’t technological. It’s regulatory. And the regulations were created for good reasons.

The problem is very much technological - traditional stock market is based on opacity and exclusivity. Blockchain is based on permissionlessness and transparency.

Internet didn’t succeed because it allowed illegal stuff to be published. It succeeded because anyone could begin publishing, and if it was illegal then it was their responsibility.

With blockchain it’s similar - you can create financial instruments without gatekeepers. It is your responsibility to uphold the laws.

Such approach leads to far greater innovation. Just look at what UniSwap is doing - they are pioneering a system to exchange low volume tokens without an order book. This is something that stock exchanges tried to solve for many years and failed. Or flash loans - a concept that is virtually impossible to do on the traditional markets, and makes the whole financial system way more resilient in the end.

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