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Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

coindesk.com

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Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#621

Post by greggsy »

hintymad wrote: post #194
greggsy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a few different service offerings, ranging from compliance to web3 infrastructure: https://www.coinbase.com/cloud/blockchain-infrastructure They also presumably have hefty cyber, legal and financial audit teams to protect their assets, and position themselves in preparation for any changes in the landscape (which has been pretty rocky to say the least).

Still, why thousands of engineers?

Didn’t see any mention of engineers, or any specific part of their workforce. Could have been regional regulatory experts, marketing, admin, gardeners…

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#622

Post by saurik »

SoftTalker wrote: post #564
RHSeeger wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by this statement. If I buy shares from a company, that company has more money to spend on growth/bonuses/whatever. If I buy shares from another person, that person has money to do things with. I don't see how there is even a thing such as "parked in shares of a company"; it doesn't park there, it is immediately available for investing in other things. Now, the money could sit in the bank, sure. But even…

Yes, so many people seem to think that billionaires are some living version of Scrooge McDuck, and their wealth is vaults full of gold coins under their houses, and they swim around in the coins before breakfast every morning.

Even then: if you take money and squirrel it away long enough in a vault then the market is essentially going to price in whether it thinks you are likely to spend it in the near future and effectively deflate the currency a bit to give everyone more buying power... like, imagine if you instead took money and literally burned it in a fire, and then try to figure out the statistical difference on supply and demand over the next five to ten years between money burned in a fire and money whose primary purpose is as a trophy swimming pool for an aging duck.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#623

Post by elbigbad »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #613
Johnny555 wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you mean like the property tax I pay on my unrealized house value? I don't get that tax back if I end up selling my house for half what it was taxed for last year. But I can appeal the evaluation for this year.

Depending on the jurisdiction, property taxes are usually a function of the property valuation. So at least if the property value goes down, theoretically so do your annual property taxes. The problem with a theoretical wealth tax, is that when the asset value goes down, too late you've already paid your wealth tax.

Your point seems a little orthogonal. If I pay tax on X value in year 1, value goes up and now I pay X*1.1 in year 2, then back to X in year 3 because the home value lowers again, I don’t get a refund for the extra 10% paid in year 2 despite the fact that I never realized any value in the fact that my home appreciated for a year.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#624

Post by daenz »

SahAssar wrote: post #549
daenz wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this[0], the absolute most generous package is the Netherlands, which offers 1/3 of your monthly salary for each year of employment. To receive 14 weeks of salary, you'd need to work at a company for 10 years. Coinbase was founded in 2012. Other "European" countries have much worse severance packages. So what Coinbase offered seems to be better than even the best country in Europe. 0. https://www.claimsa…

Different countries have different laws, but at least in sweden it is common to be part of an income guarantee program (a-kassa, usually via a union but can also be outside of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_funds_in_Sweden ). You get around 80% of your income for the first two thirds-ish of a year (200 days) and 70% for the rest of the year. It's obviously good that this is handled outside the employe…

>Please give me a source.

The source is in my post. They cover France, Luxembourg, UK, and the Netherlands, and the first three are worse than the Netherlands.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#625

Post by Domenic_S »

nemothekid wrote: post #531
smsm42 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When one becomes rich because of one IPO that went right - ok, let's say it's luck. When one creates several successful businesses in a row - no, sorry, I can't say "it's just dumb luck" anymore, it's more realistic to assume there's something else involved.

Taleb has a more succint way of putting it[1], but no it can still be luck just like hitting black in roulette several times in a row can also be luck. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/nntaleb/status/153417277358051328...

Hitting black multiple times in roulette is always luck (barring cheating).

What the tweet is saying, and it seems right, is that looking at a probability graph the only way to get the billionaire-like outcome/outlier is to dramatically increase volatility, i.e. bet on long odds. If everyone went to work, maxed out their 401k, bought blue-chip stocks, and called it a day, basically nobody would have outlier net worth. But some people choose to increase the volatility of their money (buying crypto, starting a company, options trading, whatever) and as you'd expect 99.9999% of them don't get rich and the rest of them get uber-rich.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#626

Post by fleddr »

Johnny555 wrote: post #45
sillysaurusx wrote: post #15

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

I think the wealth question is phrased wrongly: how much wealth is somebody allowed to have? Rather the question should be: how is such excessive wealth generated in the first place?

Billionaire level wealth comes into existence by means of a concept that is alien and bizarre when you think more deeply about it:

"Percentage-based future-facing ownership".

Also known as "shares". Emphasis on the word "percentage". You're the 30% majority shareholder and founder of a startup worth some 1 million USD in total.

10 years later, it's turned into an empire. You're still the 30% shareholder but now of something worth 1 trillion.

Superficially this looks reasonable to people but it is in fact bizarre. You scale up wealth from 300K to 300B just by the societal agreement that there is such a thing as percentage-based ownership of a variable thing. Which is a concept that is entirely made up and does not exist in physical reality. In a way it is future-capitalism. You lay claim on value that doesn't even exist yet nor will it actually be produced by you typically.

This jump from 300K to 300B can't be justified or explained by "hard work", risk or any other personal attribute.

Imagine you go fishing with friends. It's your boat. You paid for it and need to maintain it. So the friends agree to give 50% of fish caught that day to you, to cover costs and as a reward.

The next day you meet your friends again and declare: by the way, actually 50% of all fish in the pacific ocean are mine.

How so?

I got "fish shares".

But you wouldn't do any of the fishing???

Fish shares don't care.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#627

Post by Johnny555 »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #613
Johnny555 wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you mean like the property tax I pay on my unrealized house value? I don't get that tax back if I end up selling my house for half what it was taxed for last year. But I can appeal the evaluation for this year.

Depending on the jurisdiction, property taxes are usually a function of the property valuation. So at least if the property value goes down, theoretically so do your annual property taxes. The problem with a theoretical wealth tax, is that when the asset value goes down, too late you've already paid your wealth tax.

Isn't that the same?

If my house is worth $1M in 2022, I pay tax on that $1M of value. If it goes down in value to $500K in 2023 (and is reassessed), I'd pay tax on $500K value in 2023.

If I own $1B of AMZN in 2022, I'd pay wealth tax on my $1B holdings in 2022, if the market tanks and AMZN is worth $50M in 2023, then I'd pay the wealth tax on $50M in 2023.

Just as with property taxes, a wealth tax is generally annual based on current assets.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#628

Post by bradly »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #604
Johnny555 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

A wealth tax implies a tax on unrealized appreciated assets, which is beyond bizarre IMHO. So you buy a house for $500k somewhere. It surges in value to $1.2 million. You therefore have an unrealized capital gain of $700k. You are NEVER going to get that money until you sell it, and when you do you are going to pay a whopping amount of capital gain tax. But a wealth tax implies you pay that capital gain tax now. Okay…

The capital gains tax may never get paid. You can 1031 exchange the property over and over again and then the gains are zeroed out when passed down generationally.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#629

Post by aerosmile »

Johnny555 wrote: post #45
sillysaurusx wrote: post #15

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

> Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealth tax on assets kicks in?

I empathize with the quick back-of-the-napkin math ("if we could just take Bezos' money and give it to the poor..."). But I think there's an important nuance here.

You're making it sound like the only group of people that would be affected by this are the folks with $0 in net worth, so that the upside is $100m. In reality, anyone who's ever earned the first $100m (not inherited or won in a lottery), only ended up accelerating their ambition and likelihood of doing a lot more. Case in point - all of the Paypal mafia - they are all working their asses off every single day, and none of them would have had the upside that you're talking about.

In short, your proposal would basically mean that you're going to force into retirement anyone who demonstrates to be a 1000x doer. In the worst case scenario, the opportunities those people would have created would be lost for a long amount of time (eg: creating a domestic automaker that turns the ICE industry upside down). At best, you would be expecting from unproven people who have not yet validated their abilities to execute on those opportunities with the same level of success as the 1000x doers.

So it seems to me that the question is not so much "what could we do with Bezos' money," but more "how much of Bezos' money are we comfortable with not being generated at all to ensure that he never has more than $100m."

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#630

Post by Johnny555 »

lovecg wrote: post #616
Johnny555 wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you mean like the property tax I pay on my unrealized house value? I don't get that tax back if I end up selling my house for half what it was taxed for last year. But I can appeal the evaluation for this year.

We don’t have to be absolutist about it. Houses are not nearly as volatile as stock, so evaluating and taxing them as wealth is pretty feasible.

I live in a "hot" real estate market, my house has appreciated nearly 50% in 2 years. It's entirely possible that it will depreciate 20% or more over the next year.
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