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Coinbase S-1

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Re: Coinbase S-1

#691

Post by arrosenberg »

boh wrote: post #689
arrosenberg wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I? From 1861-1933 you could redeem paper currency for gold. I agree you can’t do that today, which was the original distinction I was making.

You are. You are conceptualizing currency as debt, as if currencies represented finite deposits of gold which implies the value of the currency. Even with the gold standard, governments still decide the value of the currency.

Doesn't seem like I'm confusing the two. Regardless of how the value was decided, you could still get gold in exchange for paper currency through the Treasury at the fixed rate. You can't do that today, because the money isn't backed by gold.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#692

Post by smabie »

gbillz wrote: post #654
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a prop firm that briefly did a foray into coin trading. Coinbase's trading fees are * outrageous** compared to what we're used to in the world of normal equity/option/future/fx trading. Literally 100x+ what we're used to paying. You have to do absolutely enormous volume before they'll give you anywhere near a sane rate. I'm not surprised they're printing money.

Or you could just go to Coinbase pro and log in with the same credentials and pay a tiny fraction of the usual fees. No setup or form to fill out. You can transact small amounts as well.

Still egregious (and no derivs) compared to large Asian exchanges. No real trading firm wants to trade on CB right now.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#693

Post by smabie »

f430 wrote: post #239
andy_ppp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't even remotely necessary for Coinbase to do well - the only thing they need is for crypto currencies to be more widely used in 25 years.

They won't be. For the same reason it is not widely adopted as a store of value or a currency. Especially not with the looming Tether liquidity crisis.

Is your money where your mouth is? 100% BTC will be worth more than it is today in 25 years.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#694

Post by anonisko »

Ekaros wrote: post #200
jcims wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a complete n00b so this is coming from a place of ignorance, why is that such a factor in the current price? Someone is sitting on $50B in a $1T market, who cares?

Because it is not actually a 1T market. If Satoshi's coins aren't on market they really aren't part of cap. Thus we are talking about 950B market... And then count out rest of "lost" coins and actual market cap start to shrink and that 50B is starting to be much bigger thing... Yes theoretically it is 1T, but practically much lower...

Couldn't you make this case for many company stocks?

Jeff Bezos owns 20% of AMZN, most of which he hasn't touched since it's founding. Does that mean that AMZN isn't really a $1.5 trillion company?

Re: Coinbase S-1

#695

Post by smabie »

ghayes wrote: post #653
xadhominemx wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee you coinbase stock is going to be highly correlated to the price of Bitcoin.

I would disagree. Coinbase's value is based on volume and volatility. If anything, stable values are the worst time for exchanges, as experienced in early 2019.

Ehh, sort of. Volume is highly correlated with return due to the wealth affect. When crypto crashes people stop trading.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#696

Post by smabie »

cmdli wrote: post #591
hntrader wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"no underlying intrinsic value" 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.

All of those things have intrinsic value in that they bring people some measure of joy. Bitcoin, by comparison, brings people very little joy in and of itself (you might argue it provides entertainment value, it certainly does for me). Not saying Bitcoin is worthless; it's a currency and it has it's uses, which makes it worth something. However, I think the belief that "it's scarce, therefore its worth something" is…

My BTC brings me joy.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#697

Post by anonisko »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #75
anonu wrote: post #37

Love reading the risk factors section. First thought: how can a lay person possibly understood the risks as laid out here? Also they view this as a major risk: •the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous person or persons who developed Bitcoin, or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins; Second thought, what an incredible business and growth. 1.14bn in revenue on 193bn in trading volume: thats 60bps on every…

> These are insane fees ripe for disruption. No other exchange today has my trust, I don’t care if they compete on fees. When your btc is at real risk of they by an exchange, trust is everything. There is no FDIC insurance for exchanges. Now if Chase were to do BTC exchange at better rates... i would probably switch.

Trust is not just in the form of the institution itself being established and trustworthy, though that's important.

It's also whether the institution can effectively do cyber and key security. This is where a non tech first company like Chase would have a lot of trust to build.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#698

Post by anonisko »

josefresco wrote: post #110
pmurt7 wrote: post #23

I have tried to use Coinbase this past month to buy some ETH. Worst customer support I have ever seen in my life. Have a look at Reddit to see what's going on with this company: https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/new/ It's not ok to brag about your business when many of your customers are in deep emotional stress because you mess with their money.

You'll find the same situation over at Binance. All of these exchanges (even Robinhood who just updated a ticket I opened weeks ago) buckled under the load of the increased participation.

This right here.

We're in a huge bull run for an emerging asset class with little institutional support. Since no can ever perfectly predict when the herd is going to start to stampede, it's not at all surprising that the exchanges have been overwhelmed by support requests.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#699

Post by anonisko »

Solvitieg wrote: post #677
technick wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

true, as a 20+ year sec guy, I didn't get interested in crypto till I started buying it in 2017. I might be able to retire in under 5 years if crypto keeps growing at the rate.

Perhaps you're being intentionally tongue in cheek. But the implication of your comment is that you like Bitcoin because it has made you wealthy.

We all worship the thing that feeds us.

Re: Coinbase S-1

#700

Post by vkou »

frongpik wrote: post #652
vkou wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a community of hackers, there really seems to be a lack of vision when it comes to crypto specifically. The lack of vision panned out. Bitcoin is not a good currency, it is not bringing us into a decentralized land of milk and honey, it is environmentally ruinous, and all that it has accomplished is creating yet another financial gambling market. Broadly speaking, we already have enough of those. And I guess yo…

Bitcoin, imho, is a clever way to redirect excess energy production into a trustless payments system. The fact that individuals have used personal gpus is an abveration. It will be governments running btc network on excess energy from nuclear plants, they will sign treaties to use only so much energy on btc to prevent the race to the bottom (similar to icbm treaties) and they will use btc for massive gov-to-gov trans…

> Bitcoin, imho, is a clever way to redirect excess energy production into a trustless payments system.

It's utterly failed at that, because nobody actually cares about it as a payments system. People care about it as a speculative investment.

The more people care about it as a speculative investment, the worse it gets at being a payments system. We're seeing this today, as the costs of using bitcoin skyrocket, and the overwhelming majority of bitcoin transactions are sending it to and from fiat-to-bitcoin exchanges.

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