Why Coinbase and not Bitcoin will replace Mastercard | Hacker News Reader

Why Coinbase and not Bitcoin will replace Mastercard

researchly.leobosankic.com

27 pointsBLP4YC17 comments

I don't think coinbase/bitcoin will replace anything. At best they might get 1% of that market, but they will never be real competition. Besides the technical issues where cryptocurrency cannot keep up with the same demands credit and banks can. Coinbase sits on a razor blade of questionable ethical practices. Reddit and other cryptocurrency forums always have a handful of people asking for help dealing with exchanges(say exchanges because not just coinbase does this) that either fail to transfer funds or funds just go missing over night. The regular response from people is "it is crypto money what you expect?". Saying it is the normal for money to go missing with no recourse just demonstrate the lack of control and power a end user has in this anarchy financial system.

"Coinbase sits on a razor blade of questionable ethical practices." Nice coincidence: Just on Tuesday (31.07.2018) Coinbase reported that they have hired a chief compliance officer (https://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCAKBN1KL1BH-...)

"The regular response from people is "it is crypto money what you expect?" Although we should point out that it is general investing "knowledge" that one can lose everything, this must _never_, as you correctly pointed out, happen due to technical issues. I am just now realizing that it is actually truly crazy how ok people are w/ losing money due to such incidents.

I wonder if there's an opposite term for 'leapfrogging' [1], whereby the pace or focus of technology -- instead of allowing poorer countries to skip trends altogether -- it leaves them behind.

An example of leapfrogging is China's payment system which switched directly from a cash-only system to a mobile-payment system in the span of a decade, entirely bypassing the need for credit cards.

I believe that cryptocurrencies, ironically, are leaving the unbanked populace behind by being a payment-only system instead of being a payment-credit system. If Bitcoin is truly successful and replaces Visa and MasterCard -- both of which also operate as a credit system -- then that's just going to result in slower economic growth in underdeveloped countries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leapfrogging

I get your point. Although (as I have touched slightly upon in the article) several crypto-based donation systems exist and some companies are already working on crypto-based lending.

BTW: the only term I can think of is "leaving behind"

Ideally, we would be able to provide modern financial services backed by first world institutions to underdeveloped countries. An example of this came through a podcast I listen to [1].

For the most part, I am skeptical of cryptocurrencies since they need to solve stability and identity first before tackling credit. An additional problem might also be usability; private-public key pairs should be abstracted away to the end user. As for donation systems, I don't think they have the same network effect as credit systems.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/09/07/492988779/epis...

"need to solve stability and identity first before tackling credit." that makes sense, yes.

"private-public key pairs should be abstracted away to the end user" what do you mean by that?

"I don't think they have the same network effect as credit systems" What kind of network effects to do you see w/ a credit system?

1. Having something equivalent to account with a username and a recoverable password.

2. Credit systems where you loan money to other people based on other's deposits has a multiplier effect [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier

Now I understand you first point.

Did not know about the Money_multiplier. Cool info, thanks!

Leapfrogging-from-the-front-using-a-trampoline-and-taking-the-trampoline-with-you?

definitely better than my "leaving behind".

"Bitcoin has never had a service interruption" — LMAO!

Yeah, no service interruption. Just a period of weeks on and off where it took hours or days to confirm transactions.

yeah, what use has 100% uptime if you cannot use it reasonably. sometimes I am unsure if such tweets originate from not knowing or not _wanting_ to know.

Assinine, coinbase has MANY problems and is nowhere near a market leader. Paypal would stand a better chance, but then they use mastercard for their debit card, but if they could roll out their own network of cards like Amex/Discover have that is accepted everywhere, then they'd be the new dog. Stripe also could do something like this considering their market share.

People trust paypal/stripe over coinbase, coinbase has been known to freeze money and have horrible customer service. I've taken all my coins out and won't be using them in the future at all.

It has been obvious for years now that Bitcoin will not replace Mastercard due to it's technical limitations.

Nice work, author of blog post. 1) Recognize a stagnation in e-coin investment; 2) buy up some Coinbase; 3) Write a blog post how Coinbase will beat Bitcoin; 4) Profit.

Hi. Thanks for your comment. However, I am unsure what you mean. Can you please explain?

As disclosure: I am in no way affiliated w/ Coinbase (nor do I hold any stakes in them). I do, however, own various cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin moves up on big news(not one loan blogger but I think your kidding here) like the SEC reviewing ETF stuff and Coinbase pondering about adding more coins. That was two weeks ago and I feel those two things pushed Bitcoin from $6500 to $8500.

Then I read the Winklevoss twins ETF was rejected by the SEC and knew that $8500 was going to slide back down which it’s down to $7500 now.

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