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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

#761

Post by tigerBL00D »

alx__ wrote: post #584
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…

Christ on a skateboard!? All the temporarily displaced billionaires in this thread are something else. If you require more than 100M in net worth to be "motivated" to work. There's a larger problem with you. Being a CEO/leader doesn't require some skill set that's given to you from some mythical watery being just because you're special.

Most of wealth is in stock, which also represents control. If you tax heavily that would lead to loss or control. That's not necessarily a good thing for anyone.

Besides, you can only buy a okay superyacht for 100M, definitely not the best /s

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#762

Post by indecisive_user »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #740
sytelus wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most fundamental tenant of capitalism. The output is perpetually distributed according to initial risk taken, not according to amount of day-to-day work performed. The property of capital is that it keeps growing (more or less) effortlessly. So you just need to capture initial capital and pay employees only returns from capital , not the capital itself. Fun fact: Bill Gates has made vastly more money just…

What risk did he take, gimme a fucking break. Worst possible outcome for him was he has to settle for a $400k job at a FAANG after his startup fails. Boo fuckin hoo Of course he did enough to deserve some fuck you money, but hundreds of millions? Slap yourself, fool, cos you dreaming

The risk was in the opportunity cost. How much was he making in the first ~9 years pre IPO? As you said he could have made a comfortable salary working 40hrs/week at many other companies but likely took a significant pay cut for many years to found a startup.

Coinbase was valued at 86B a year ago, so hundreds of millions would have been ~.2% of that valuation.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#763

Post by nightski »

shigawire wrote: post #279
nightski wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth taxes seem so dumb to me. In many cases it's forcing sale of private or public company ownership from those who know the company best often to - you guessed it - institutional investors. It's bad enough how much control institutional investors have, but to force it by law seems even more ridiculous. There has to be a better solution.

Better solution - sell off the company to the employees. This way you also promote worker ownership.

It's a nice thought, my wife had an ESOP actually. She had a stake in the 5 figures when she left the company (it takes several years to vest and we can't touch it). But the problem is as an employee I don't really like my net worth tied up in my employers stock. I'd rather have it diversified and in an index fund.

But what you propose is probably better than the alternative at least.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#764

Post by supernovae »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #674
Aeolun wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a firm believer in a maximum of like 50% tax on income. Anything more just feels like a punishment for working.

“There is only one way to kill capitalism – by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.” — Karl Marx

billionaires aren’t capitalism.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#765

Post by forgingahead »

sharkweek wrote: post #618
alx__ wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christ on a skateboard!? All the temporarily displaced billionaires in this thread are something else. If you require more than 100M in net worth to be "motivated" to work. There's a larger problem with you. Being a CEO/leader doesn't require some skill set that's given to you from some mythical watery being just because you're special.

I'm a big fan of 100% taxation on anything above 999M, but my continuation here is that anyone that earns more than that gets a trophy for every additional 1B they earn put on display in a big museum in a city of their choice (Museums selectively scattered around the US).

What's your current net worth? How about we set the level to be somewhere less than what you personally are worth?

There are a universe of people who earn and have a net worth much less than you who would be very happy with that ceiling figure. But would you?

Western politicians who float this idea are hilarious too - they're all multi-millionaires themselves, but a wealth tax is always proposed at a level that is "slightly more than what I have", never below.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#766

Post by azpa »

This prognosis was the final straw caused me to exit the market as it sounded like Brian wasn’t expecting a recovery in any reasonable time period.

Furthermore, I felt that other asset classes were overvalued when I got into crypto and I hardly think that’s it’s currently the same.

It also turned out to not be the inflation hedge I originally assumed it would be. Part of my current assertion is that cryptos value is tied to retail investors - the same who need to pull out of the market to deal with Very real expenses.

Let’s also give credit where credit is due. Brian may also be using the economy as cover. Give credit where credit is due - FTX came in and ate their lunch. Hats of to them.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#767

Post by stevenjgarner »

supernovae wrote: post #764
stevenjgarner wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“There is only one way to kill capitalism – by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.” — Karl Marx

billionaires aren’t capitalism.

What is the goal of capitalism? Is it not: "Capitalism is often thought of as an economic system in which private actors own and control property in accord with their interests, and demand and supply freely set prices in markets in a way that can serve the best interests of society. The essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit." [1]

[1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2015/06/basics.ht...

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#768

Post by thrwy_meta »

sdenton4 wrote: post #567
jerry1979 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not settled on this yet. I'm from the USA, and one thing that concerns me is the geopolitics of billionaires. What happens when USA taxes billionaires out of existence? Russia and China still have billionaires. Does that do something to the power relationships in the world? Is there such a thing as "our" billionaires? The other question I have has to do with feudalism. If we let "our" billionaires exist, does tha…

The most productive decades in the US correspond with its highest relative tax rates, between the fifties and the eighties. Thomas Piketty: "if you look at the long-run evolution, we’ve seen less concentration of wealth. So the top 10 percent of the wealth distribution today would have 60 percent in Europe, 70 percent in the U.S., as compared to 90 percent before World War I in Europe. This did not destroy the econom…

>>>The most productive decades in the US correspond with its highest relative tax rates, between the fifties and the eighties.

The most productive decades in the US also correspond with a period when the US was essentially the only industrial power not absolutely shattered by World War 2. In global economic terms, the post-war period was a huge anomaly, and I would be hesitant to tie too many conclusions/correlative effects to something as singular as domestic tax policy.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#769

Post by thrwy_meta »

Johnny555 wrote: post #352
krrrh wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billionaires provide value as alternate sources of power to the state. Distributed sources of philanthropy that can target areas neglected by government are one thing (Carnegie’s libraries, Bill Gates work on tropical diseases, Frick’s art collection which he donated to the American people, alternate media and educational projects (Ford foundation’s continued funding of NPR, Soros’ Open Society Foundation, Koch fundi…

A wealth tax wouldn't prevent the Gates Foundation from existing, it would encourage it -- instead of keeping personal wealth that's going to be taxed, the would-be billionaire can set up a charitable foundation like the Gates Foundation to spend the money. Since the charity is run by a board and bound to abide by its charter, it's not the same thing as the person controlling the wealth himself. The Gates Foundation…

>>>Since the charity is run by a board and bound to abide by its charter, it's not the same thing as the person controlling the wealth himself

I would expect this to be a "distinction without a difference" if the billionaire is careful/competent about how he staffs the board and how he writes the charter.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#770

Post by aq9 »

higeorge13 wrote: post #228
hardtke wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been chatting with some friends whose company shut down recently, basically with no warning. They are getting recruited like crazy. In my opinion that's much preferable than to being left go as part of the 20% lowest performing employees. This reads like a "culling of the herd because we can use the alleged upcoming recession as an excuse" event. I'm not sure the generous severance makes up for the "you are not…

Layoffs is never about underperforming employees. Whole teams or departments are usually laid off, including top talent.

Not always, and not if they are competently planned and executed. I will grant you that, in the current climate, that they are probably not competently planned nor executed.
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