Perhaps Coinbase is an example of that, though maybe not as well known due to less drama?
It's very easy to see the celebrity endorsements, puff pieces and the companies name plastered over a stadium as endorsements of how solid the business is, after all, a bunch of kids living in the Bahama's couldn't just buy all this right?...right?
While FTX tried to gain respectability through all that, seems that Coinbase is taking the tack of just focus on the fundamentals of the business and build trust that way (you know the old school way).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31738029
Some gems:
"Yeah. FTX people clearly know a lot more about market making and how exchanges work. Makes coinbase look like amateurs.
... I agree and am in general a big fan of FTX and the guys that work there. The CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried one of these HFT guys from Jane Street and his net worth shot up from 0 to $24 billion in just a few years. He kept things super lean and focused. But in the last few months it looks like he's hired a PR team and is all over the place: podcasts, obviously planted news stories, etc. He even hired a head of fashion and luxury partnerships and even has an ad out in Vogue ...
This is the case for most market makers in whatever markets they're in. A crash usually produces a huge trading windfall, and then the subsequent "recession" leaves people with little money to invest/gamble with. FTX's traders are veterans of the industry, and they understand the need to be lean when order flow is light, and the need to make as much as possible when it's hot. Coinbase just watched the best two years of trading pass in front of their eyes, and failed to monetize it even to 10% of its potential. If they're lucky, they will get another opportunity to do things right in 5 years. But the trading graveyard is filled with people/companies like Coinbase who did really well for a year because they lucked into a good position, but who should have done 10x better. But then the real players see the opportunity, and run the Coinbases of the world off"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31738560
> Very different approach to Bryan Armstrong, who’s more of a Bitcoin “believer”
The fact that you think this goes to show just how little you know about this ecosystem. And Bankman is the worst type of con-artist, he is going to use his billion(s) to influence US politics rather than build viable technological solutions. Armstrong has been the source of ire since the Segwit wars where he scammed and peddled Bcash on unsuspecting noobs using the 'legitimacy' of being the only YC backed and US sanctioned exchange. It's been a series of horrible UX after bad business strategy.
Armstrong is what I expected when SV entered this space and played the typical VC game as seen with the buy-out of 21 Inc. I kind of respect him for hustling the SV crowds with such an absurd IPO valuation, but he is immensely foolish if he did not cash out then and there and anticipate buying back under this bear market to recapitalize and sell more of his worthless shares as they cratered in price.
Again, HN is pathetically out of its depth when it comes to this Industry that it's hard to take most of you seriously on anything else.
As it turns out doing things the right way like Coinbase looks "boring" sometimes, while fraud might look more exciting.
I don't think we should refer to them as kids. It seems to absolve them of responsibility. Kids are given leniency when they do wrong. The FTX/Alameda people are adults that graduated from one of the highest ranked universities in the world. They are foolish, but not kids.
Part of me wonders if there is media narrative that wants them to be referred to as kids because powerful people don't want them to be punished as harshly.
I'm not saying that young people can't create great companies. Many big companies are started by young founders, but when there are no adults in the room at all it starts looking suspect.
Their image as kids playing League of Legends who were trying to make money to give it away benefits them a lot.
People who use Coinbase are called normies by the larger cryptocurrency community, as though relying on competency is a bad thing. It's this bizarre communal masochism. But then they complain when it all goes wrong? I don't get it.
This never made sense to me. To me celebrity endorsements and purchasing naming rights only mean that you have the money to pay for them. It might convey some legitimacy in the way of "they can pay for it", but I don't think of them as some sort of stamp of approval.
They just ruined that by using the exchange's money to bail out Alameda's unrelated investments. As far as I can tell if they hadn't done that Alameda would've died and FTX would've just kept being a good exchange.
It was a giant scam. All of it.
Basically a textbook Ponzi scheme pitch and yet again it worked.
https://www.theblock.co/post/186187/alameda-promised-high-re...
There is some evidence that they "passed" the audits by moving all of the money around the companies while auditing them one at a time using a hidden money transfer function written by SBF.
the problem was FTX customer deposits ended up being borrowed by Alameda (using as collateral ftt that was fraudulently created and then loaned to them), if no one did the ftt fraud then who knows what might have happened.
"As far as I can tell if they hadn't done that Alameda would've died and FTX would've just kept being a good exchange."
Read the report from the new FTX CEO, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-situation-is-unpreced...
It was a total fucking clown show from top to bottom.
FTX and SBF avoided this and really any scrutiny by repeating the correct words and opinions, but were actually fraudulent under the surface.
It goes to show how shallow it all is.
The company is having problems because they have too many employees (5000+), sky-high expenses, and very little revenue (due to falling crypto prices and the implosion of NFTs). If they want to succeed, they need to be making money. It's as simple as that. Cries of "we're getting cancelled!!" isn't going to save the company.
Most crypto volume will continue to be in unregulated exchanges, traders just maybe will be more vigilant about not leaving money in them.
His big mistake was making an enemy that was sitting on enough fake token to crash the exchange. Had SBF stayed on good terms with Changpeng Zhao FTX would still be around today and could probably have survived for many years.
Coinbase is about the least exciting exchange out there. They don't offer the derivatives, futures, and leverage the others do and are very slow to add any new tokens or coins. They don't fly as high and fast as others, but there was never a high chance of crashing and burning. Now that they are public it's even lower. The company itself may flounder and crypto may tank, but I doubt there's a safer place for customer deposits outside of holding the keys yourself.
Perhaps as a kick starter Alameda was important, but I doubt they were needed after the usual suspects came on.
An exchange can make money letting the customers trade different types of magic beans with each other.
An exchange that only does that won't have any customers, because they'll all be going to the ponzi-exchanges that pay out 8-12% APR if you buy and hold their shitcoin, or where the market makers piss away mountains of customer funds to tighten the spreads.
Now that I think of it, maybe the best way to reign all this madness in is to require that celebrity endorsers and sports arenas can only get paid a decade after they shill for an exchange/coin/etc.
Just pointing out that what they were saying about FTX, before, that is now proven correct, is also being said about Coinbase and has been for some time.
When filling a tank from zero, there is inevitably a lot of growth at first. I think this is what happened to BTC and attracted a lot of the wrong kind of usages. I wonder if when the ecosystem reaches an equilibrium it will become better at being what it promised originally.
It would be a great way to park your money to ride out bad economic times if it wasn’t for the fact that people seemingly tie it to the overall economic attitude for no good reason.
Hopefully.