Coinbase and the Widespread Adoption of Cryptocurrency
melewi.net
melewi.net
Ugh, please don't blog like this, hyperlinks exist for a reason. Each of the noun phrases composing the object of this sentence could have been a link. What Google tells you today won't be what Google tells you a year from now.
Besides the title containing the word "cryptocurrency", I'm not sure why this got on the front page.
And Coinbase is far from spotless. They have a track record of doing sh*tty things to their customers that you can piece together with a simple HN search. They might be the least bad option, but that truth is not nearly as ringing an endorsement as the content of the linked article.
* Coinbase is making plenty of money,
* Google, Facebook or Apple etc wouldn't provide much more additional value,
* and there would be a real risk that an acquisition would be a disaster since tech giants clearly don't understand cryptocurrencies (see AOL/Timewarner).
I could see an acquisition by a large bank or exchange.
Coinbase’s volumes have consistently fallen every month since December. January was less than December, February less than January, March less than February, et cetera. They're not in a terrific place, for raising an up round nor selling their business.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-the-biggest-u-s-bitcoin-exc...
[0]: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/2y?c=c&exchange=c...
That's not true. All three have an enormous power when it comes to promoting certain technologies or companies. If Google starter promoting major cryptocurrencies instead of the silly GooglePay, the adoption would skyrocket. They literally have the power to change the world, and crush (some) fiat currencies.
But they probably wouldn't, their wealth is somewhat dependent on the political favoritism.
Rather than focusing on what crypto is bad at (nearly everything because trust is useful for 99% of its applications), crypto should focus on the niche where it’s actually good at: large money transfers across international boundaries.
Immune to country-
specific sanctions
(e.g. Russia-Visa)
Is Bitcoin even good at that?
If you're going to transfer a million dollars from Nigeria to the USA, presumably you're going to want to cash it out at the other end. If the exchange providing your USD follows the law, they'll be asking the same questions concerning the provenance of the $1M that would get asked for a regular wire transfer. So you're not really getting access to the money any quicker in the end.
Of course if the intent is to diffuse the $1M into smaller crypto transactions and cash out those under the radar... Well, that's a different niche entirely than just plain old "large international wires".