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Comment by chadmeister | Hacker News Reader

Ok, now this would be kind of wild. Is there any real substance to this acquisition rumor? It's one thing for Facebook to want that easy money from the adverts, but it's a whole different ball game to want to get into the crypto space like this. Why wouldn't they just roll out their own crypto?

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Difficult to imagine Facebook shilling crypto (as opposed to its advertisers shilling crypto, which it can profit from without taking responsibility for) ending up in anything other than tears and class action lawsuits...

Coinbase is basically the entry point into a lot of cryptocurrencies as it has easy fiat to crypto exchange. When you have this information you can deanonymise most activity on most blockchains. This might go into tinfoil hat territory but it might be a reason Coinbase is of interest to Facebook

> Why wouldn't they just roll out their own crypto?

Roll your own crypto is playing the game.

Running an exchange is being the house.

The house always wins.

Coinbase isn’t a crypto currency

Coinbase invented Bitcoin yesterday

because Coinbase is one of the largest and what would Facebook do if they couldn't own everything everywhere?

I think FB is more interested in the exchange than the coin itself.

> Why wouldn't they just roll out their own crypto?

Because in the times of gold-rush, you don't look for a gold. You setup your online store to sell axes :)

there is no substance to this rumor. that is all.

I wonder if this is Zuckerberg's way of saying "fuck you" to Winklevoss twins/Gemini.

By giving them even more money?

I don't understand your comment ? They own Gemeni exchange not Coinbase. Do they have stakes in Coinbase ?

They have BTC, this would increase the value of BTC dramatically.

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