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Coinbase S-1

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Re: Coinbase S-1

#511

Post by jdoliner »

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 why you shouldn't leave your crypto in Coinbase. If my money is in a bank there's no real way I can transfer all of my money out of it and have it remain usable. I can transfer it to a different bank, or I can get it all in cash and hide it in my mattress. On the other hand, the banking part of Coinbase is a complete commodity, I can transfer my assets to my own wallet and they're just as usable. The existence of an escape hatch is a big difference. Even if CB itself is basically a central bank.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#512

Post by [deleted] »

dd36 wrote: post #403
kolinko wrote: post #215

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.

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase S-1

#513

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

remolacha wrote: post #500
uncletammy wrote: post #430

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.

Choose an L2 and send me $1. I dare you.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#514

Post by [deleted] »

thinkmassive wrote: post #501
RestlessMind wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 recomm…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase S-1

#515

Post by jacurtis »

realradicalwash wrote: post #493
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…

Bitcoin was created with the use case currency in mind and it was used like that by the earlier adopters. I think this is what OP was pointing at with "Many have forgotten why we used cryptocurrencies in the first place" and certainly with the qualifier "many", I think OP is correct: That's how we initially used Bitcoin and other cryptos. _Now_ many (most?) people use bitcoin as a store of value. But I think this is…

I don't think any westerners want the current money system to collapse either. So it is interesting to hear the perspective we give to other countries that think we want that. Trust me, no one in the US wants to see the current economic system collapse.

We have already seen it. We know how it goes.

We saw it in the 1920s. It was horrible. It permanently scarred many of our great grandparents, and even left scars on our grandparents (because they grew up learning vivid horror stories of it). Seriously it was so bad that it took multiple generations to recover from.

Then we saw it again to a portion of our financial system just a decade ago. Luckily we learned from our mistakes and prevented total collapse, but we still saw how vulnerable the system is. Everyone here remembers that, it was only a decade ago.

No one wants to see the system collapse. I think what people are really thinking is they want to create a system that theoretically can't collapse. We are aware of how fragile our current banking system is. Crypto originally sought to create a system that removed the two main wildcards in the financial system (the Fed and the Banks).

Now we replaced Wells Fargo with Coinbase. So we aren't much closer to our goal. We replaced NASDAQ with Bittrex. We replaced the Fed with unregulated ICOs and Miners (if that's even a thing anymore).

Re: Coinbase S-1

#516

Post by qyv »

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…

Scarcity itself does not imply value, something can be scarce but if no one wants it it still has no value. So the question needs to be what really drives the value of something like Bitcoin?

In my opinion, I think that Bitcoin derives its value from the idea that one day it will become a widely used currency that can be exchanged universally for real-world goods and services. This has what has driven it to become a speculation tool; because at the end of the day when Bitcoin finally becomes a "universal" currency, everyone wants to be left holding a lot of it. But what if Bitcoin never becomes a currency, what happens to it's value then?

Re: Coinbase S-1

#517

Post by hilbertseries »

qyv wrote: post #516
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…

Scarcity itself does not imply value, something can be scarce but if no one wants it it still has no value. So the question needs to be what really drives the value of something like Bitcoin? In my opinion, I think that Bitcoin derives its value from the idea that one day it will become a widely used currency that can be exchanged universally for real-world goods and services. This has what has driven it to become a…

This doesn’t really make any sense. Bitcoins wild fluctuations make it terrible for a currency and its fluctuations have only gotten worse over time. It’s just a speculators game. If it became a universal currency, you would just convert whatever you have to it. There’s really no path for bitcoin to become a universal currency, because that would require stability. And there’s no path to stability with the current speculation interest. If the speculation interest dries up it would plummet, but that would just continue the cycle. It won’t ever stabilize unless it crashes and people stop caring about it.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#518

Post by vinay_ys »

RestlessMind wrote: post #473
lynx234 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is where decentralized exchanges like Uniswap come into play, no KYC, no account

And how do you move your money to/from a DEX? It still needs a regulated exchange like Coinbase to interface with Fiat money, no?

Yes, that's correct. Basically, bitcoin doesn't have privacy and is losing self-sovereignty through regulation.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#519

Post by elif »

temp8964 wrote: post #288
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…

Can you "physically own" Bitcoin? Or what does "physically own" mean exactly? I kind of understand what "physically own" gold means, but not sure it means the same as "physically own" Bitcoin. Getting downvoted on this. I am not complaining about the downvotes, but seriously, please enlighten me...

Fair question.

It would be more accurate to say that you can own "mathematically guaranteed exclusive control over" bitcoins.

and you that can store that mathematical guarantee on any number of cheap, readily available physical devices.

You can also elect to destroy the possibility of outside knowledge of the secret, leaving the "physical memory chip" as the sole means of humanity interacting with those coins.

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