581–590 of 736 posts
Subscription and services revenue increased $25.0 million, or 126%, for the year ended December 31, 2020 as compared to the year ended December 31, 2019.
Wow, $1B transaction revenue and $44M subscription revenue. These guys are making a lot of money for a pure digital product.
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.
So almost all of the comments here are about bitcoin generally. While that’s not totally surprising, does anyone have any insight on whether or not this S1 reveals interesting data that might inform the public about investing in coin base (eg why they filed an S1)?
Their growth rate is staggering, and they are enormously profitable. I was most stunned by the gross margins. They spend so little to make so much. It illustrates how feverish the crypto investing world is.
Very few people outside the US trade on Coinbase because they have monopoly margins.
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…
How does that differ to investing in fine art, scarce wine, old/rare stamps and coins, limited edition/novelty items, historical artefacts, or even gold?
There's loads of things that have kept value for centuries despite having no intrinsic value.
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.
Coinbase does allow people to store their funds with them, but it's common for people to buy bitcoins on Coinbase and then immediately transfer them to their own wallet, or to a service with far better security like Kraken(which will happen less once Kraken supports ACH and immediate funds).
Biggest surprise on the S1: CPO who joined exactly 1 year ago was given 2M shares, currently valued at $750M.
Snowflake’s CEO, Frank Slootman, made a similarly insane amount of money on IPO after being at the company for 18 months. I think he got given what became over $1 billion worth.
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Do I still own the BTC if the whole BTC network shuts down?
If you have a $100 currency note in your hand, you can spend it as long as there exist someone who believes there is a market for $100 bills. Same as with a gold coin. But if you have a $100 in your bank account, there is an additional constraint – you can spend it only if your bank is alive and functioning correctly and lets you specifically (you are not sanctioned/banned) to spend it. Same is the case with bitcoin…
Given my bank is on the list of "systemically important banks", if it goes under/down there's probably more going on in the world such that I probably won't be worrying about my proverbial $100 too much:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_systemically_important...
(And I do have accounts at multiple banks in case of IT problems at one bank.)
> If all exchanges you have access to in your country decide to ban you (because your govt told them to) then you cannot spend your bitcoin.
Of all the things that I could worry about going wrong in my life, these doomsday scenarios are not even in the Top 1000. I'm more worried about stubbing my toe than some of these currency collapse scenarios that some Bitcoin fans come up with.
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> 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.
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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…
So when the power goes out or someone looses a hard drive, how easy is your bitcoin to transact?