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Coinbase S-1

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Re: Coinbase S-1

#631

Post by wpietri »

bhupy wrote: post #616
wpietri wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am always entertained by the line of argument that goes, "Do we know for certain this new twist will be as hugely destructive? If not, what the heck, let's find out!" Personally, I think the burden of proof goes the other way. Especially when after 12 years of Bitcoin innovation in practice it's so far mainly useful for scams, ransomware, market manipulation, money laundering, and other kinds of light financial cri…

Well, I'm glad I could provide you some entertainment! > Personally, I think the burden of proof goes the other way. Well, it's not exactly a brand new experiment, we already know what happens when you have a deflationary store of value alongside fiat currency, and we see that in Gold today. The concept isn't strictly unheard of. I think what's debatable is if the last 70 or so years of gold alongside fiat currencies…

If Bitcoin is the same as gold, then we don't really need Bitcoin. But its point is being different. So you can't handwave away concerns based on it being exactly the same.

I'm not saying Bitcoin isn't perfect; nothing is. My point is that Bitcoin has not demonstrated any significant value certainly not in excess of its costs and harms, and it's had plenty of time. Bitcoin and Android are basically the same age. Bitcoin is still at best a niche, probably a shrinking one. Android is coming up on 3 billion users worldwide, providing clear daily value.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#632

Post by panarky »

dang wrote: post #621
panarky wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prevailing sentiment on HN has been wrong about cryptocurrency from Day 1. Source: Day 1 HN post -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 If you have a truly revolutionary idea, expect the conventional wisdom on this website to be extremely negative.

That's not an accurate description. I think you might be falling prey to the sample bias where people heavily weight the comments they dislike and don't so much notice the others [1]. In fact that 3-comment thread covered the spectrum: enthusiasm, skepticism, bewilderment. I'd say it set the stage nicely for the next 12 years. That thread wasn't the Day 1 post about cryptocurrency either. That would be https://news.y…

Perhaps you're right, maybe this illustrates my own cognitive bias.

Of course that Day 1 post doesn't reflect the HN discussion since then, and current comments don't either.

But more small-sample-size anecdata would be to look at recent comments:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Of the 20 most recent comments, I'd say 12 are negative, 4 are positive and 4 are neutral. (Your comment showed up in my search and I counted it as neutral.)

Re: Coinbase S-1

#633

Post by dang »

panarky wrote: post #632
dang wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an accurate description. I think you might be falling prey to the sample bias where people heavily weight the comments they dislike and don't so much notice the others [1]. In fact that 3-comment thread covered the spectrum: enthusiasm, skepticism, bewilderment. I'd say it set the stage nicely for the next 12 years. That thread wasn't the Day 1 post about cryptocurrency either. That would be https://news.y…

Perhaps you're right, maybe this illustrates my own cognitive bias. Of course that Day 1 post doesn't reflect the HN discussion since then, and current comments don't either. But more small-sample-size anecdata would be to look at recent comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Of the 20 most recent comments, I'd say 12 are negative, 4 are positive and 4 are neutral. (Your comment sho…

Oh yes, but that's a much different question and is strongly conditioned by where Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are in the hype cycle (I'm using that term empirically, not normatively). You'll find at least that much negativity about other technologies and startups that have gotten to similar stages of (let's call it) ultrasuccess. Just look at the threads on Airbnb or Uber, for example. They're so vitriolic and repetitive that thoughtful discussion is almost impossible. We can speculate about the reasons for this but it definitely doesn't have to do with sentiment against new tech; it's a later-stage phenomenon.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#634

Post by kristianp »

skrebbel wrote: post #355
tristanj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi's wallets have 1.1 million bitcoins, which are worth $56.4 billion at today's price. That would place Satoshi Nakamoto among the 25 wealthiest people on the planet.

My pet theory is that all those bitcoins are lost forever, just Satoshi performance tuning the miner he'd hacked together with perl one night and letting it run for a few hours. Close terminal, poof, everything gone. Who cares, can mine more later. Bedtime! (disclaimer, I know nothing about bitcoin, there's likely 100 reasons why this makes no technical sense)

By the time multiple people were mining, the software was mature enough to keep your coins (I suppose this is true anyway).

Re: Coinbase S-1

#635

Post by panarky »

vkou wrote: post #627
panarky wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like a tax on confirmation bias. It's easy to imagine having early awareness of cryptoassets but dismissing them as tulips when the total market value was $1m. It's also easy to imagine not admitting the mistake after the next 10x to $10m. In fact, that explosive growth helped confirm the skeptics' thesis that it's a Ponzi about to implode. So now that we've 10x'd five more times since then, it would be a tremen…

> So those who preferred the comfort of confirmation bias to the discomfort of admitting they've been wrong all these years have paid an enormous price for that comfort. Suppose I bought $10,000 of BTC 8 years ago. The only reason I would have done so would have been for speculation, because I don't need to buy drugs on the internet, I don't need to send remittances to, (to use a shorthand) some 'other' country[1], a…

If you had bought 8 years ago and sold after the first double or triple, you'd have the same confirmation bias problem as if you'd never bought at all.

Most people would find reasons why they were right to sell and forgo all the 10x's after they sold. They'd be on HN talking about speculation, tulips, buying drugs on the internet, terrorist financing, and wasteful energy usage.

I'm not immune from this. I bought Tesla and Netflix early, and sold after the first triple. Then I spent a lot of time finding fault with Tesla and Netflix as they continued to rise without limit while I watched from the sidelines.

I was wrong about Tesla and Netflix. I made tremendous errors in judgment by selling far too soon.

At least for me, it's much easier to pretend I've been right all along and the entire market is wrong, than to admit my own judgment and decisions were faulty.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#636

Post by dang »

vkou wrote: post #627
panarky wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like a tax on confirmation bias. It's easy to imagine having early awareness of cryptoassets but dismissing them as tulips when the total market value was $1m. It's also easy to imagine not admitting the mistake after the next 10x to $10m. In fact, that explosive growth helped confirm the skeptics' thesis that it's a Ponzi about to implode. So now that we've 10x'd five more times since then, it would be a tremen…

> So those who preferred the comfort of confirmation bias to the discomfort of admitting they've been wrong all these years have paid an enormous price for that comfort. Suppose I bought $10,000 of BTC 8 years ago. The only reason I would have done so would have been for speculation, because I don't need to buy drugs on the internet, I don't need to send remittances to, (to use a shorthand) some 'other' country[1], a…

You've got a good point but can you please make your substantive points without being snarky? This is in the site guidelines and is an important condition for curious conversation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Coinbase S-1

#637

Post by hrpnk »

The compensation table looks interesting. $1M in salary and $56M from stock options. 2-3x higher base salary and 10-25x higher than in the case of DigitalOcean.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#638

Post by dang »

Threads are paginated for performance reasons (yes we're working on it), so to see the rest of the comments you need to click More at the bottom of the page, or like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26262170&p=2

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26262170&p=3

(If you've already seen a bunch of these, I apologize for the annoying repetition.)

Re: Coinbase S-1

#639

Post by dang »

blhack wrote: post #213

It's so weird to me that here, on hacker news people have such a hatred of coinbase. Coinbase is a YC company, and if some of the predictions are accurate, will be the highest valued YC company so far.

HN is not universally friendly toward YC. As the person who has to keep tabs on this relationship I'd say it's a tricky one.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#640

Post by bhupy »

wpietri wrote: post #631
bhupy wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm glad I could provide you some entertainment! > Personally, I think the burden of proof goes the other way. Well, it's not exactly a brand new experiment, we already know what happens when you have a deflationary store of value alongside fiat currency, and we see that in Gold today. The concept isn't strictly unheard of. I think what's debatable is if the last 70 or so years of gold alongside fiat currencies…

If Bitcoin is the same as gold, then we don't really need Bitcoin. But its point is being different. So you can't handwave away concerns based on it being exactly the same. I'm not saying Bitcoin isn't perfect; nothing is. My point is that Bitcoin has not demonstrated any significant value certainly not in excess of its costs and harms, and it's had plenty of time. Bitcoin and Android are basically the same age. Bitc…

> If Bitcoin is the same as gold, then we don't really need Bitcoin

This argument doesn't make much sense. It's like saying if rubies are the same as emeralds, then we don't need rubies. Also, there can be multiple types of assets! Nobody wants to put all of their eggs in one basket. Bitcoin can coexist with gold.

Bitcoin is also arguably superior to gold in that it's MUCH easier to pay for bread with a little bit of bitcoin, and MUCH harder to do the same with gold (who's going to chop up the gold bar?). In fact, if I were to use the same zero-sum argument as above, one could even say: "if Bitcoin is the same as gold, then we don't really need gold" (again that's also a bad argument, both can coexist and gold is sometimes better)

> But its point is being different. So you can't handwave away concerns based on it being exactly the same.

You're right that gold and Bitcoin are different, but things can be different while still being "the same" at a fundamental/conceptual level. Cars and bicycles are different, but they still serve the same underlying need: transportation.

> My point is that Bitcoin has not demonstrated any significant value certainly not in excess of its costs and harms, and it's had plenty of time. Bitcoin and Android are basically the same age. Android is coming up on 3 billion users worldwide, providing clear daily value.

I think this is a really strong argument that Android is more valuable than Bitcoin (in some subjective sense), I agree with you that Android is extremely valuable and "good". That said, this is not a particularly strong argument that Bitcoin is absolutely valueless. The value of Bitcoin is in the eyes of the "behodler", and some people seem to value it a lot. People are using it as a safe haven from their country's poor monetary policies (happening in Nigeria and Argentina right now, has happened in Venezuela and Zimbabwe before). That's clearly non-zero value.

And if your argument is that value is strictly a function of its utility, well then I'd like to introduce you to the economic concept of the Diamond-water paradox (https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/032615/how-can-marg...) which is the fundamental underpinning for the Subjective Theory of Value.

> Bitcoin is still at best a niche, probably a shrinking one.

We agree that Bitcoin is currently a niche, but I'm not sure that I agree that it's a shrinking niche. As of the last month, major institutional investors like BNY Mellon and BlackRock have started to include it in their asset mixtures. Major companies like Square and Tesla have started to hold some of their cash reserves in Bitcoin. Canada just approved North America's first Bitcoin ETF, trading on the TSX. I'm not sure how we can conclude that Bitcoin is shrinking with all of this institutional activity.

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