.................


if it flies




https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/17/larg...ast-23000.html

I think I'll probably sell my crypto if this flies. Crypto is an uncorrelated hedge against the financial system. Integration makes it worthless to me. A Coinbase IPO would be a business model of taking fees on a speculative bubble, which would eventually result in a huge loss for shareholders.

pleas fly again Coinbase

if what you're saying is true wouldn't that make Gold a worthless hedge?

Gold and bitcoin aren't the same thing. I think gold is a hedge against some things, bitcoin is a hedge against others, and an overlap exists between the two. Strong integration with the financial markets will ruin the hedge that bitcoin currently possesses.

In reality, gold is the rarest metal element on earth.

How does Coinbase even make money? They rape you in fees when you buy or sell but speaking for myself, I am never selling the Crypto that I have so how are they going to monetize that? And given the limited supply of Bitcoin, it's gonna eventually mostly be in the hands of hoarders like me.

They don't charge any annual fees as far as I know, and if they did people would just leave the platform. So how does Coinbase become like this huge runaway company?

It's pretty naïve to think that just because you make very few trades, so will everyone else. Dollar volume of trades keep going up, and Coinbase shares are valued in dollars.

Crypto needs infrastructure, regulation and trusted brands to continue to grow. Not sure at all why people itt view this as bearish for crypto.

Eh, maybe. My point is basically that they don't have a natural recurring revenue source that's particularly compelling, particularly when you evaluate them vis a vis their competitors (Square and Paypal) who I would think can undercut them on pricing and kill their margins.

All of Coinbase's costs are recurring and will increase in time (G&A, marketing, cybersecurity, compliance, legal, etc.) but as far as I know their revenue source is basically charging people fees for converting their dollars into Crypto, which seems very likely to A.) Be under pressure from competitors with diverse revenue streams who can afford to attack their per transaction margins, and B.) I think that volume (particularly with Bitcoin) will go down over time as the float is going to be under pressure and will naturally gravitate towards hoarders like me over time, as we don't sell and will accumulate a larger and larger percentage.

I mean yeah I suppose if the volume of transactions continues to increase then that's great, but I just think over time with Bitcoin in particular it's going to become very low float with lots of institutionalized buying and people like me hoarding, and Coinbase doesn't really have the ammunition to compete with Paypal and Square, which both earn tons of revenue from payment processing.

I just don't think Coinbase is going to be that great of an investment, but again, I don't know enough about them to really have a strong conviction on this, it's just sort of my initial read. What's the moat here? Why is Coinbase going to crush, other than just having a sexy name? It's definitely smart for them to do an IPO and cash out all their executives while raising capital for the company, but I just don't see the long term story here as being particularly compelling.

From what I can gather us normies wont be able to get in day one on this ipo.

I would only imagine they will make first week buys a ton even in the short term.

Will be trying to get in on this one imo.

Coinbase doesn't have a competitor in the US market remotely in their league.

Paypal lets you buy 4 different currencies and you can't even move them to a different wallet. Square/Cashapp limits you to just bitcoin and both have much smaller deposit/withdrawal limits.

Coinbase supports trading for over 40 cryptocurrencies, supports margin trading for a select few, can trade in different base currencies and allows for automated trading via their api. Just because you are planning on holding your coins doesn't mean a ton of other people won't be trading in and out of positions all the time or try to running their own trade bots. The types of people this attracts are much more likely to be spending large amounts of money than someone using Paypal/Square.

I don't see Paypal or Square spending the tens of millions of dollars required to develop a competing product with coinbase. It just doesn't fit their business model and think they're both more than happy to take a small piece of the crypto pie with the ability to support basic crypto purchases.

Every other exchange I've used or tried using has either left the US market or requires me to wait for a bank wire to go through before I can deposit cash. Coinbase lets me deposit instantly; its a no brainer to use them and the only choice I and whole bunch of other people have.

Who do you think all the big money coming into crypto is using to broker their purchases? Its coinbase. Michael Saylor used them to purchase 1 billion dollars worth of Bitcoin.

If crypto continues to grow, coinbase is likely to maintain a position as an industry leader. They've been around for 8 years, have established trust, built relationships with investment funds/institutions and dealt with all the regulation. It's gonna be really tough for another company to compete with that.

Good post, thanks. This makes a lot of sense to me.

This summarizes it well. Why would people trust a new company that likely has no relationship with the IRS, and needs to build liquidity to get acceptable profits?

The wreckage of failed clearinghouses litters the highway.

Any idea when it happens ?

Crypto is fools gold, and Coinbase is selling shovels. It is the only crypto investment I actually believe in, but I would like to see how the revenue stream looks like. I hope they reward their users with some IPO share allotment.

this is true if you consider crypto an investment

but if you consider it a gambling game - that's an entirely different matter

gamblers betting on whether or not other gamblers will buy or sell

there is no reason at all that crypto cannot succeed as a gambling enterprise

................

Coinbase goes public today on Nasdaq with an reference price of $250

ticker symbol COIN


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/b...ipo-stock.html

So what kind of limit order do you think will get filled at the open? I'm thinking this opens above $400

I couldn't make a good guess about that
I'm not going to play it - I'm not hungry anymore

but I would surmise that those who do play it well will make money
and that it's likely to be pretty easy money if they don't try to get greedy and sell at the very top

CNBC just flashed that expected to open at $340

today's winners: insiders selling shares and random lucky "traders"

Yeah getting RSUs at $54.80 I don't see how you don't sell off a good portion as an insider.

The entire business model is at risk:

> Charge 10-20x what everyone else does
> Spend almost 10 years and have > 2k employees,, to create a site with worse functionality vs FTX (2 devs and 1 year)
> Massively cyclical business that collects fees in magic clown money they have to then dump on their own customers
> Huge advantage of having a banking rail in SVB no longer counts as much

regulatory adherence etc is a massive moat

FTX has the same fate as BitMEX unless the political donations/family status/billionaire effect angle pans out (very often does, sadly)

The other big risk to coinbase's business is DeFi/DEXs