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Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

blog.coinbase.com

81–90 of 203 posts

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#81
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they're replaced with a team in Jakarta or Dhaka making 10% of what they made.

You really believe an in office work environment was the only thing preventing this from happening? Top talent gets paid the most.

It wasn't possible before because companies couldn't figure out how to effectively manage a workforce remotely. Now that they've been forced to learn, this will be explored with renewed vigor. There are a lot of highly talented foreign workers who will work for a fraction of US salaries.

Companies that are good about integrating foreign workers into their existing teams are already reaping the benefits of this. Fortunately for Western tech workers, the majority of companies are terrible at integrating their offshore workers and have very outdated concepts of "outsourcing" where trusted local workers send robotic tasks to offshore teams being paid ridiculously low salaries. This model will continue to fail and should slow the enthusiasm for offshoring for a lot of companies.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#82

Industries that rely heavily on business travel are basically fucked. Airlines (first and business class), hotels, ridesharings, car rentals and etc.

If WFH becomes more of a norm, I can imagine facilities / office budgets being re-purposed towards more travel for offsites, visits, and other activities to stay better connected. Work from home doesn't necessarily mean never seeing coworkers or clients in person.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#84
post #3

I can see a future where office work is so rare that it's considered to be a major benefit only afforded by large corporations.

Why would it be a benefit?

The worker can escape screaming kids, nagging spouse, etc.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't companies use WFH for their own benefit? They are businesses. I find it weird that western workers somehow imagine that WFH means that they can happily work remote but not compete with other remote workers. The fact is that their big value-add has been the physical contact with the employer, as employers want to interact with their employees f2f for god knows what reason.

I think the big value add is time proximity and lack of language barrier. Moreover, the large majority of high-level technical talent remains in the West (and the west coast of the west-most country of the West, at that), although that gap is closing.

The west coast is heavy with tech talent because the tech companies are there. And tech companies are there because the tech talent is there. It's been a self-perpetuating feedback loop until now. With remote work normalized and proven to work to whatever extent it has, that feedback loop will start to break down.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#86
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing keeps you from doing that, but Coinbase can easily detect that after the fact, and then ban you from using their service.

What's worse is that when they ban you they refuse to talk to you. No explanation, no justification, no appeal. Just an automated reply to look at their ToS and you can never hold a coinbase account again.

Unfortunately this is essentially what anti-money laundering laws require businesses to do. It's illegal to "tip off" a customer of the reasons you flagged them for being under suspicion of money launder/evading sanctions/funding terrorism. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470685280.ch...

I agree that it's a frustrating / bad experience for customers especially when they get flagged by a false alarm e.g. https://news.bitcoin.com/the-moss-piglet-dilemma-paypal-bans...

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#87

Too bad coinabase\s approach to crypto is centralized. They operate a blocklists to prevent people from sending funds to certain addresses . Even paypal does not do this.

Which addresses?

OFAC which manages US sanctions maintains a list of addresses that any entity complying with US regulations needs to block e.g. https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...

Most exchanges also use a service like Chainalysis to help identify which addresses need to be blocked or are high risk and need additional due diligence.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#88

Too bad coinabase\s approach to crypto is centralized. They operate a blocklists to prevent people from sending funds to certain addresses . Even paypal does not do this.

It's not too bad for them. Turns out the average consumer really doesn't give much of a hoot about the decentralization aspect.

Re: Coinbase is a decentralized company, with no headquarters

#90
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really believe an in office work environment was the only thing preventing this from happening? Top talent gets paid the most.

If a tech company is sourcing engineers in an office work environment, they need to pay salaries competitive for the location of said office. (You can find great engineers in Jakarta, but you have to relocate them to SV and pay SV rates) If everything is remote work, you hire the same worker, and pay them Jakarta rates (you can sub Jakarta for any very-low COL city).

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