Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults | Hacker News Reader

Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults

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95 pointslatchkey164 comments

Of all the antagonisms for young adults, I would say an easy method to buy cryptocurrency and hedge against inflation is not one of them. The much more significant antagonist for financially vulnerable young adults is the Federal Reserve and its inflationary monetary policy that has priced many out of ever owning a home. Furthermore, the elite's industrial policy of offshoring manufacturing to China, deindustrializing the West, and high energy prices has done much more harm to the middle and working class than the volatility of crypto.

> and hedge against inflation is not one of them

BTC lost value through the great inflation and is only gaining value today now that inflation is down to 3%.

Sounds like a pretty bad hedge against inflation. People need to stop repeating this lie.

EDIT: If people need an inflation hedge, buy i-bonds first, and then TIPS after you max out. These are indexed against CPI, so the more inflation happens the more i-bonds/TIPS make.

RemindMe! 5 years

Or you could just look at the last 15 years and stop pretending that BTC is anything new.

If BTC were a person, it'd be entering high school and thinking about a student-driver license. We've got an extensive history to draw upon now.

A history of bitcoin capturing orders of magnitude more value over basically any 4 year period, yea, the records pretty good for an emerging money.

That doesn’t mean it will continue to rise in the future. It also isn’t tied to anything outside of these very expensive exchanges. I can’t use bitcoin to buy a candy bar or pay someone to fix my toilet. Nor is there intrinsic worth to it.

Value is subjective, not intrinsic. It is guarenteed to rise like everything else of limited supply; the value of fiat currencies must necessarily decrease over time in their operation, because the base monetary unit can only be issued as credit which must be paid back at interest. Were the value of fiat currencies to increase in any meaningful sense, it will result in widespread defaults in the banking sector.

> It is guarenteed to rise like everything else of limited supply

They aren't making any more VHS copies of Toy Story, which IIRC was estimated to be ~21 Million copies of tape.

You are being pedantic, bitcoin has monetary qualities that put it in contention in this regard.

Okay.

* Zimbabwean dollars aren't being made anymore.

* Lunacoins / Terracoin isn't being made anymore.

Do these have any reason to go up? And they are (were) real currencies / cryptocoins.

> * Lunacoins / Terracoin isn't being made anymore.*

Actually, it is. There is even activity in the repos.

https://github.com/terra-money

People still trade it too:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/terra-luna-v2/

I don't agree with it personally, but just clarifying a fact.

I'm not talking about terra-luna v2.

I'm talking about v1.

Zimbabwean dollars foretell the fate of all paper currencies, they might have some monetary qualities, but they lack the important bits like hardness.

Lunacoins / Terracoin foretell the fate of all cryptocurrencies. They might have some monetary qualities, but they lack the important bits like hardness.

The problem with vapid statements is that I can just copy/paste your argument and change the words around... demonstrating how its a useless phrase all together.

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"Inflation Hedge" would be a truly useful thing. That's why it sticks, because people desperately want to prove BTC to be useful. Unfortunately, the stats just don't work out, so you see people twisting the meaning of "inflation" and "hedge" in this very thread.

"Hedges" are things that have high amounts of correlation. (Ex: Hedge on gasoline would be buying assets correlated with gasoline. Exxon, or maybe Brent Crude). And the r-value / correlations can be readily demonstrated. Either positive r-value or negative, it doesn't matter. The important bit is that there's a strong correlation (or anti-correlation).

Hardness is literally a monetary quality, its a moneys resistance to inflation. If the Zimbabwean dollar were to gain value it would be immediately printed into oblivion, exploited for all its worth. The same does go for basically every cryptocurrency, bitcoin is the only one whos total supply is fixed, reliably. Your ignorance of these monetary qualities and what role they play does not make it a vapid arguement.

Why is BTC so correlated to DOGE?

Why is there such a correlation between all cryptocoins and BTC?

Methinks your definition of "hardness" isn't as important as you think it is.

Other cryptos tend to track bitcoin because of increased demand from people who dont understand the qualitative difference between a quality product and scams. Bitcoin holds the majority of market share, and over time basically all of these loose 100% of their value. You should ask yourself what causes bitcoin to have a floor when its had 4 80+% drops in its lifetime.

I find it fascinating just how fixed everyone is on this topic. You are either for it or against it and will die trying to prove the other side wrong. We are just a few steps away from having a Holy War lol.

The difference is that only one side have, at one time, been on the other side. Until they saw the error of their ways.

The desperate rationalisation will only increase with each halving cycle. The oh-so-clever "tulips" joke is becoming increasingly tragic.

I believe Bitcoin is a bit more durable than a VHS, but this is a fun comparison nonetheless.

Fun as in buffoonery.

Why not? You could open a store and accept it as a method of payment.

It's funny cause normally we think of high-school aged student drivers as still kinda young and inexperienced. But yeah, now that you put it like that I guess 15 years is pretty ancient for a currency.

I’m not pretending Bitcoin is new. My comment was because of that fact. It’s the same old tired song and dance. Bitcoin goes up: “these idiot kids got lucky.” Bitcoin goes down: “about time those idiots learn their lesson! Bitcoin’s a scam!”

Bitcoin is undeniably volatile, but it is becoming less volatile over time and it continues to (on an investment period longer than a year or so) be a fantastic hedge against inflation.

Even if you buy stocks, the general consensus is that you should be looking at a longer timeframe to ensure you can handle any short-term losses.

> It’s the same old tired song and dance.

Yeah. "BTC Is an inflation hedge". Then BTC doesn't protect you from inflation. Then "Inflation hedge doesn't mean inflation or hedge, it really means..."

I'm tired of BTC community defining terms, and then redefining them when the statistics don't work out in their favor. I recognize that BTC community wants "number goes up", but just stick with that and be honest with yourself. Don't invent new bullshit terms for bullshit reasons that are discarded almost immediately.

> be a fantastic hedge against inflation.

Holy crap here we go again.

What is going to be different about the next five years vs. the past five years? The point is that inflation happened and the price of Bitcoin in USD went down. Why is that pattern going to change?

You act like BTC is only available in the US.

Anti-crypto people these days have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid the truth that Bitcoin (now called Bitcoin Cash) has worked perfectly for over a decade with almost no downside if you just buy slowly over time and hold/spend.

Bitcoin Cash works great and has for over ten years.

Bitcoin Cash as a standalone thing has been around for a bit over six years, not over ten.

Bitcoin cash isn't real Bitcoin.

People saying "inflation hedge" are at a minimum, English speakers, and secondly, are likely Americans who were concerned about the 9%+ inflation of a year or two ago.

Alternatively, maybe they're British but the great inflation affected both sides of the Atlantic. Then again, Coinbase is an American company providing American services, so I think its safe to say that this topic is American focused.

Coinbase is an American company, but operates globally. From wikipedia:

"Coinbase operates as a remote-first company and has no physical headquarters.[5] As part of its SEC filing to go public, the company reported 43 million verified users, 7,000 institutions, and 115,000 ecosystem partners in over 100 countries."

As for inflation, let me refer you to this post (and thread), a favorite of mine.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410

Young adults aren't trying to hedge inflation. They're trying to make a life in a world that recommended poor degree choices and lots of student debt, people increasing in their country faster than housing, a nation and state that taxes them to fund feelgood policies, and that tells them daily that billionaires are the reason they don't have enough money. That's rough.

CPI has typically not been keeping pace with the amount of money creation afoot [0]; attempting to index against the CPI seems like a way to end up with low quality investments. IMO if an asset isn't comparable to the M2 it is quite questionable; I'd expect inflation hedges to act more like gold, on average showing "real" returns.

Seems likely the time horizon you're talking about is too short in this case. The last few years have been a bit weird by the metrics - it looks like something has changed in the financial plumbing. But the USD has a policy of being an unreliable measure of value and Bitcoin does not, so there is a pretty good chance that Bitcoin will hold its value over time. The price hasn't been trending down (yet?).

Although I'd advise people not to choose their investments based on advertising. People don't really advertise good financial deals. They use the ad budget to get in on the deal.

[0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...

> IMO if an asset isn't comparable to the M2 it is quite questionable;

M2 has shrunk for the last 18 months. Anything correlated to M2 would have similarly shrunk for the last 18 months... which is basically nothing being discussed in this topic.

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"Inflation Hedge" is traditionally CPI, maybe PCE if you're being fancy. There's a few other inflation indicators but they're all within a magnitude (and well correlated) to CPI / PCE.

Unless you expect people to cash out their life's savings every 12 months, I don't see why anyone should care if an asset's price is correlated to the last 18 months of the M2. It just needs to be something that tends to do better than the M2. If it isn't doing at least that well, sell out and buy something that is.

And "Inflation hedge" has been redefined to be something that isn't very useful for investing. You'll notice I'm talking about prices going up due to money creation, not inflation. I choose my words carefully there, we don't have a pithy term for that effect as far as I know.

> Unless you expect people to cash out their life's savings every 12 months, I don't see why anyone should care if an asset's price is correlated to the last 18 months of the M2

So you're saying that your "inflation hedge" has no appreciable correlation to inflation or monetary supply over 18-month periods?

> And "Inflation hedge" has been redefined to be something that isn't very useful for investing.

"Inflation Hedge" is just bullshit. Its easy enough to call out. If you want a real reason to invest, then tell me the real reasons. Don't make up bullshit terms.

I'm specifically not calling anything an inflation hedge [0]. I don't consider anything you'd accept as inflation in my investing. I'm looking at money creation.

And you are correct that I also disregard correlations over 18 month periods. I suspect most small-timers do. It isn't clear to me why that would matter.

[0] To clarify what I meant a few comments ago, I meant what most other people would call an inflation hedge in common parlance - ie, something that can't be printed. I don't think they'd be using the term in a way that has an actual definition though, and I don't expect that sort of asset to have anything to do with the inflation rate when it comes to price performance.

> I meant what most other people would call an inflation hedge in common parlance

In 2021, "Inflation Hedge" meant that if inflation would happen, BTC would protect you from it. Inflation then happened, and BTC failed to protect anyone. Now that its been disproven, people are changing the term "inflation hedge" to mean things that they never meant before.

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If it takes over 18-months for an "Inflation Hedge" to protect you from inflation, I think I can safely say it fails at its job. (A hedge is supposed to protect you from the event, so that you can reallocate your money from the hedge into all the assets that drop during said event).

Now if you want to argue to me that "inflation hedge" never meant anything with regards to inflation or hedging, then sure, we're both in agreement there. Its a meaningless term inside of the cryptocoin community.

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Meanwhile, the people who actually were worried about Inflation bought TIPS, and then sold TIPS during their height (making money, that they could use to purchase other assets). That's what a hedge actually looks like.

I mean, we (probably) do agree and this is an exercise in talking past each other - but the issue here is that Bitcoin appears to be preserving its value and, all else equal, something that preserves it's value is going to appreciate in price faster than the inflation rate [0].

So if someone is worried about monetary creation devaluing the currency, based on what we've seen so far, they'd be doing well to buy Bitcoin. Now you are correct that that isn't an inflation hedge. But typing out all that is a lot of words so unless someone invents a new short phrase to describe "monetary creation devaluing the currency" people are going to keep misusing the word "inflation" to mean that. And, frankly, that is what the word should mean in monetary contexts; the technocrats can go hang. Hopefully not literally, but they seem on a mission to upset people.

[0] Assuming the situation snaps back to pre-COVID trends, anyway. At the moment there is a lot of excitement and the M2 is going down.

Inflation is a lagging indicator. Bitcoin gained in 2020 and early 2021 when debasement happened and the supply of money increased. That debasement takes time to show up in price data, and then even longer to show up in headline inflation, which is a 12 month average.

TIPS and i-bonds are limited in their role as a hedge. Sure, you are exactly compensated for inflation on the capital you invest. However, without the ability to have any leverage, you can't actually use this as a hedge against other capital which has exposure to inflation but which couldn't be converted.

It sounds like you're trying to tie BTC to the monetary supply. BTC goes up when M2 increases, and possibly goes down when M2 goes down?

So why is BTC going up when M2 is shrinking for the past 18+ months?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS

Not sure, it is just a correlation not an iron rule and definitely not the only influence. The shrinking here of m2 is much much smaller than the previous increase was as well.

> it is just a correlation

Correlation of what, to what, and what's the R-value? Across what time frame?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation

These words normally have _meaning_ ya know. They're not just things you toss out in a meaningless online discussion.

There are certainly time frames where change in global m2 money supply and change in bitcoin's price over say 12mo would have a positive R value. That isn't the point I am making. If the amount of money available goes up, then one would expect that the price of other things, all else held equal would also go up. It would be quite strange for bitcoin or any other commodity to behave differently consistently and over a long period.

> If the amount of money available goes up, then one would expect that the price of other things, all else held equal would also go up

And if the amount of money available goes down for 18 months... then what?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS

An "inflation hedge" goes up when inflation is up, and down when inflation is down. But in practice, BTC is closer to down when inflation is up, and up when inflation is down.

It isn't a perfect inflation hedge, no one is claiming that. You are cherry picking a single interval where the correlation is negative. If you zoom out, you'll find that the correlation is mostly positive. Past correlation is also not predictive of future results.

Last time I checked overall BTC has gone up in value over the last 5 years and by a large margin unless you bought at all time highs. The statement it lost value through inflation doesn't even make sense.

"Inflation Hedge" means you have an correlation with Inflation. Or in statistical terms, reason to believe that r-value is positive. (ie: if Inflation is +9%, then inflation-hedge is positive, or even close to +9%, though it could be +18% or whatever. If inflation is -5%, then an inflation-hedge should also be -5% or otherwise negative)

Anyone claiming "inflation hedge" needs to tell me how they calculated this correlation.

Oh wow you should be a copywriter for Coinbase

Unfortunately it's been like this since the beginning of crypto, everyone who buys in becomes a tireless advocate for their "investment".

Shilling. Endless shilling.

It's a requirement. "Line don't go up" if there aren't new buyers out there to buy out your bags, so you're forced to try and hype thing or lose your whole investment.

How can the fed both cause inflation and high housing costs? Raising interest rates like they have been doing should lower inflation but make housing more expensive.

First they give free money so house prices skyrocket. 10 years later they "fight" inflation that they caused by making credit scarce.

House prices are sticky and dont drop by 50%.

Also in general the inflation created through interest is not returned by central banks, so they make rich richer and poor poorer.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

Raising inflation only lowers house prices if the number of people competing for the houses remains static.

Weird, I know friends who lost all their savings to cryptocurrency. Don't know anyone who lost all their savings due to inflationary monetary policy.

1) Are you sure? Inflationary monetary policy is literally "people who try to hold cash will lose all their savings over 50 years". You must know someone who tried that; it's an easy mistake to make and most people are really bad at understanding investment.

2) The Bitcoin price is currently comparable to its all-time highs. So someone who lost all their money on crypto was doing something more exotic than just buying and holding a diverse basket of cryptos.

There's an old expression - instead of try to save money on your taxes, find a way to make more money instead.

I would give the same advice to people who freak out 'oh my god, inflation, it's going to eat all my money, even though I live in stable America and not Argentina' - chill out. Instead of freaking out and putting your money into unstable investments that have a high non-zero change of going to zero, find a way to make more money.

Stories of people who put their money into risky investments that promised high interest, only to lose their shirt, are quite common in crypto at least - those people would have been much better served just keeping their cash.

Most savings accounts pay 5%+ now, I agree that holding your cash under your mattress is not the play, but that's very different than gambling on risky options or even riskier cryptocurrencies.

Your second point makes zero sense - BTC is 40% lower than it's all-time-high, I just looked it up. Other cryptos are much worse.

60% of all time highs, when the all time highs were ~2 years ago and the market is rather volatile, is comparable to me. It is a lot healtheir than the 2018 peak, and that looks like small biscuits compared to today.

Regardless, being down 40% is not losing all the money. It isn't even losing half the money.

Student loans take a large portion of the top of issues affecting young adults.

> The much more significant antagonist for financially vulnerable young adults is the Federal Reserve and its inflationary monetary policy that has priced many out of ever owning a home

The Federal Reserve doesn't control housing policy; local politics (often NIMBY's) do. House prices are high because there are not enough houses in cities where NIMBY's control the city council. No amount of interest rate adjustments will lower house prices if there are not enough houses to begin with.

The alternative to high interest rates from the Fed is high inflation, and inflation is even more harmful to the average citizen. There's a reason Powell keeps emphasizing stable price levels in every single speech he gives, because high inflation is something that must not be allowed to happen.

Cryptocurrency is not an inflation hedge, it's way too volatile for that. Cryptocurrency is the most speculative of speculative investments, and one must buy in knowing that you're flipping a coin and praying that it lands on tails.

I think you're on to something! If you want to each the young folks how banks are going to screw them long into the future, you could instead encourage them to get into crypto today so they can get screwed immediately.

"New advertisements by Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, prey on the financial anxieties of Gen Z and other young adults."

It appears that HN comments promoting/defending crypto employ the same tactic.

These ads really are deeply cynical. "The whole system is fucked, but if you're lucky, you can win enough of other people's money on the crypto lottery that you'll be able to escape it"

Crypto is not zero sum since new value is created.

Yes, FTX knows a lot about value creation from thin air.

and destroyed ..

Sure. Lots of new bridges to sell - on the blockchain.

It’s not the expanding supply of Bitcoin that creates value; it is the people putting money in at higher rates.

> Crypto is not zero sum since new value is created.

I'll bite, because I struggle to find people who think this. What value is created?

All the people who managed to buy drugs safely without risking being robbed by some shady street dealer?

How's that value created by bitcoin? Cash also creates that value.

Personally, the ability to always have access to my money, accept contracts internationally, and to be protected from a fickle financial system.

For other people I’ve seen a wide variety of things they consider valuable that I don’t care for. Trading, community, loans, art, gaming for examples.

> Personally, the ability to always have access to my money, accept contracts internationally, and to be protected from a fickle financial system.

Doesn't cash also fulfil these? I'd have thought bitcoin is more fickle than cash.

> For other people I’ve seen a wide variety of things they consider valuable that I don’t care for. Trading, community, loans, art, gaming for examples.

Sorry - is this crypto related? Or just examples of things people like?

I don’t use Bitcoin because it’s too slow and expensive. Other people do find value in it.

Carrying more than $10k in cash is dangerous, and likely to be seized during international travel.

That’s a list of things people use crypto for. Obviously, if they preferred the non crypto version of those services, they would use them instead.

What I mean is I can do all this with my bank:

> the ability to always have access to my money, accept contracts internationally, and to be protected from a fickle financial system

What's the difference, that is valuable enough to explain the bitcoin price differences?

What’s your bank? I’d like an account there. Every one I’ve checked so far freezes accounts and has a painful process for international wire transfers.

Er. A wire transfer like BACS? You just put in the details, click "yes, I understand this is probably a bad idea" and wait. At least in the UK.

But I'm not saying there's zero value to bitcoin's advantages. I'm saying that that in no way explains the price of bitcoin. What explains it is greater fool theory.

Bitcoin's dollar value is just the amount of it in circulation divided by the people interested, the actual number value doesn't really mean anything directly (e.g if there were 100x more of it then the price would be that much less).

How so? It's pretty easy to see how economic value can be created via stocks and bonds: they're basically indirect ways to give companies or governments money for investment. That money can then be used to hire more/better people, buy equipment, or build infrastructure, which will hopefully produce more value than it cost. What's the equivalent in cryptocurrency speculation or "yield farming"? Can you explain where the value actually comes from there?

Providing a consistent-over-time and tamper-proof record of transfers. It is pretty obvious how that provides value; if you have a system that provides that and one that doesn't, we'd expect the first to be more valuable. We're also seeing the first asset in history which can't be reliably confiscated without the cooperation of its owner which is also worth a lot. Involuntary rules change mid-game by local authorities has been the cost of doing business for all of human history and it is quite exciting to see that change.

Also, if you're assumption is that all government regulation is automatically good then we don't have common ground on this one but ... most government regulation is destructive. The market for bitcoin is implicitly showing the enormous costs of financial regulation where it makes sense to burn absurd amounts of energy rather than get involved in the financial system. Shaking that off is likely to lead to better outcomes. Freer systems tend to prosper more than systems people don't want to be in.

To be honest, I'm still not sure what practical usage scenarios you have in mind. Is it protecting your money from terrible economic policies if you live in a country like Venezuela? Or are you envisioning a whole new financial sector, free from existing financial regulation? In the latter case, while I don't think that all government regulation is good, I don't see how transitioning to cryptocurrency would help you avoid its problems. After all, if you're doing business somewhere, you have to obey that place's laws no matter which currency you're using to do business.

Say I have a friend in Hong Kong, Russia, the US or wherever. I can send them $10k in Monero. Whatever laws the local country may or may not have mean nothing - they can't detect the transfer and they can't stop it or roll it back even if they could detect it.

We don't know exactly what the value of being able to do that is, but it is not something that has ever been possible before and it is a concrete action that would help a friend. So it definitely has some value.

>But there are questions about Coinbase's commitment to racial justice.

Concern troll political hit-piece.

  One Black employee, cited in the report, said that “her manager suggested in front of colleagues that she was dealing drugs and carrying a gun.” Another Black employee said that a co-worker “broadly described Black employees as less capable” during a recruiting meeting. The company told employees that the story painted "an inaccurate picture.”

Is it really a concern troll political hit-piece, though? These seem like pretty concretely bad and racist things. Also, way to pick a single line you don't like out of an article that enumerates a whole bunch of issues with what Coinbase is doing.

Consider the title of another recent article from the same publication:

"10 alarming things Trump has promised to do in a second term"

I think you should spell out your implication.

The publication seems biased to a certain political persuasion.

being biased against racism and authoritarianism is good

What executive orders has Trump signed that are racist or authoritarian?

Please list the EO numbers and explain your rational of how you arrived there using the text in the EO, rather than some highfalutin opinion written by an activist.

I keep hearing this, but nobody can seemingly answer such a simple question. I can only conclude they are blatant liars and propagandists.

Well he did say he'll be a dictator for his first day in office. Can't think of the last time a non-authoritarian struggled to say "No" to "Will you be a dictator?"

He had a whole term to be a dictator. Why didn't he go full dictator last term? Or are you just saying in a hyperbolic way that that he'll do the same stuff he did last term?

I am literally stating what he literally stated.

And I don't think the surprise win of 2016 with no GOP machinery backing him out of the gate is going to be a good analog to the preparations that are ongoing right now. He will have far, far more capable people around him, a sense of revenge, and nothing to lose.

The correct answer to "Will you be a dictator?" when asked to a US presidential candidate, is "No." The fact that ridiculous question even had to be asked, and came from someone throwing him a softball (Hannity), and he still couldn't answer it correctly are all serious alarm bells.

> I am literally stating what he literally stated.

And if you look what he said in full context it doesn't seem that bad?

>"You are promising America tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?" Hannity asked.

>"Except for Day One," Trump said.

>When asked to clarify, Trump said he would use the presidency to close the border and increase oil drilling in the U.S.

>"That is not retribution," Hannity said.

>"I love this guy. He says, 'You're not going to be a dictator, are you?' I said, 'No, no, no. Other than Day One.' We're closing the border, and we're drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I'm not a dictator," Trump said.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-sean-hannity-dicta...

I agree that it's not a great thing to say as a presidential candidate, but it's tenuous to go from that to "he's going to go full dictator like Xi Jinping/Putin/Maduro/Orban".

I didn’t say he is going to (especially not successfully). I said two things:

1) he is clearly authoritarian (adjective) and

2) there are several answers other than self-control or lack of willpower/desire that could explain the fact he didn’t successfully “become a dictator” in his first term, and some of those components have changed dramatically between then and now

"Nobody is going to waste time indulging in my sealioning, so they're liars."

I'm also not going to waste my time indulging in it, but it's worth pointing out for passers-by that that's exactly what this is. It's a low-effort rhetorical gambit designed to waste time demonstrating from first principles something that the questioner isn't going to change their mind about anyway just because somebody more clued-in than said questioner sighed and pulled up EO 13769 to cite chapter-and-verse.

How exactly are you arriving at racism without first explaining why economic, political, and military relations between these countries were not the cause? Are the continued sanctions of Cuba racist? What is the discerning factor for why Biden continues these sanctions in the year 2023?

The word "racist" has been so over-used by activists to silence dissenting voices pointing out how brain-dead their ideas really are, that the word has lost all meaning. Just imagine if the word "dumb" had the same effect. How long would it take before it's meaning is completely eroded away to protect indefensible positions? That's is where we are.

I'm convinced there is no legitimate rationale here other than "orange man bad". This is very easy to falsify, but the fact there's a continued refusal to engage in the argument presented speaks for itself.

You can always twist anything into enough knots to construe it as "blatant lies and propaganda" – clearly you've already made up your mind – so this is not an exercise worth doing for anyone.

It seems you've made up your mind without any evidence, but it's too embarrassing to admit you've been propagandized so you're making excuses and deflecting. Asking for a single bit of evidence isn't unreasonable.

For all that's been written about Trump, you'd think this should be easy to retrieve. I've personally looked and found nothing, but maybe my methodology was flawed which is why I asked.

If no evidence is provided, it's reasonable to conclude the claims are false.

Your bias about their bias is biased.

Calling Trump an authoritarianism when it was Biden that tried to coerce people to take a novel medical treatment or face losing their job, a fundamental violation of medical ethics.

I think you should spell out your implication.

I mean, ol' mini-hands _has_ promised to do some deeply alarming things if he gets a second term; I'm not entirely sure what your point is?

It's the nature of these types of allegations but:

>These seem like pretty concretely bad and racist things

Nothing about them seems concrete at all? Like, if there was any context and a quote, maybe?

Anecdotal hearsay. Coinbase has nearly 5000 employees and they found 2 unverified examples of racism. Does that mean its a systemic problem? Why does have a crypto exchange have to take a stance on "racial justice"? What does that mean?

I think they're different. A company can crack down on bigotry and discrimination without proclaiming a "commitment to racial justice". Just like a company can have a raging racism problem while publicly talking about their "commitment to racial justice." One is about legal compliance and action, and the other is words.

This needs to be said more, people have always fallen for these false platitudes from bosses, government and so on. Only recently has this "placation culture" really moved to companies and for whatever reason it seems our blind spot for this today is much worse than a decade ago

Is the piece about how it's financially predatory, or is it about how they're racist? Sticking that in randomly makes it seem like they're just trying to smear the organization however they can.

TFA is trying to smear in any way it can: it even has a line likening Coinbase to FTX.

Coinbase is a HN unicorn, created in the US, where the names of all the executives are known. While SBF was running a ponzi.

It's dishonest writing.

"But there are questions about Coinbase's commitment to racial justice." - this is a quintessential example of weasel words and is indicative of the article's quality.

The examples are one-sided claims without evidence, and there are many ways they could be "an inaccurate picture". The first case most likely is an inappropriate jocular interjection during casual mutual banter on clothing, music, or a story. The second case could well be a common misinterpretation of meaning during a discussion about affirmative action or DEI policies.

Why did you take this out of context? Post the whole paragraph.

> The ad identifies real issues in the modern economy around college debt, housing affordability, and the rising cost of raising a family.

Maybe just focus on fixing the actual problems? How is this any different from Army recruiting? Or Draftkings ads on every sport channel? Or medical ads? Or insurance ads? Or basically everything marketing?

Those things are also bad, great point.

Its literally the first thing you learn in sales (watching the wolf of wallstreet): create a problem - sell the solution.

Even better, sell something that is perceived to be a solution and the problem keeps existing. Ideally that then creates a new problem. See for example "Torches of Freedom".

> prey on the financial anxieties of Gen Z and other young adults

> cable television

????

They live in their parents' homes. Its not like they could afford cable themselves.

... as opposed to targeting only "qualified investors", thereby shutting out the vast majority of interested parties from participating?

Yes, it's risky. That doesn't mean it should be restricted only to the wealthy.

Right, but the idea is to restrict to those financially sophisticated enough not to be taken for a ride. That after all is what the "qualified investor" concept is actually about, you either are sophisticated enough to know better or wealthy enough to survived not being so. Unfortunately there is no easy way to measure the former, so they take the easy out of something like 1mm liquid assets. Perhaps it should be a cert. instead?

Where does this bizarre idea come from? There aren't queues of high-quality companies just lining up for piddling investments from nobodies.

If you can't provide them with enough money to be worth their time in lawyer's fees, vetting you as an investor, and accounting... no quality company is interested in you as their 36th investor. If you can provide them with enough money to make that worthwhile, you have enough to be an accredited investor.

Scammers are very happy to take a piddling sum from a nobody, as that ensures you don't have the resources to go after them. And they don't need to vet you as an investor - the fact that you aren't invested in a high-quality company is all they need to know you're a mark.

Accredited investor laws aren't about protecting you from risky investments. They're about protecting you from scams you lack the self-awareness to identify. And given that you can't see that, I'm betting that's a lot of scams.

No, as opposed to not marketing into financial anxiety

It’s maybe not entirely fair to compare crypto to gambling, but I do think it’s worth placing the rise of questionable crypto use cases in context with the increasing acceptance and legalization of gambling, especially online gambling. I remember when I was a kid growing up in the northeast, Atlantic City was still _a thing_ because gambling was not really legal anywhere else. That seems to have changed in the last decade or so and now online gambling and casinos are apparently an acceptable industry to have everywhere. What happened to change this?

Afaik, some clever gambling 'lite' gaming startups found a loophole in the current online gambling legal system (I don't remember how it worked exactly). At a time that states are struggling financially, they (the courts) turned a blind eye to the abuse of the system [see taxes and lobbyists]. Perhaps others know more details.

This seems pretty relevant too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...

It’s like online gambling with less regulations.

There is a crypto coin that I like and I wanted to buy some on an exchange.

All these exchanges are

1. Super scamy, often in dubious jurisdictions

2. From the layout obviously targeted at very young people

3. The appearance, interactions and handling resembles more an online casino.

Sounds similar to registering a domain name.

Try https://internet.bs/

None of the online gambling I engage in is regulated in any way.

Coinbase is pretty heavily regulated.

> But regardless of how much crypto is being purchased, users are typically charged an additional "spread fee"of 0.5%.

... Wait, is this correct?! Why does anyone use this? Like, you can buy delicious bitcoins through normal brokers, these days, right? And those don't usually charge 0.5% for, well, just about anything.

> Purchasing crypto on Coinbase with a debit card triggers an additional fee of 3.99%. Funding your purchase with your bank account comes with a 1.49% fee.

... Eh?

This all seems so _wildly_ out of whack with conventional discount broker behaviour, it's hard to understand why anyone uses it if this is accurate.

All the substantive material indicates normal financial product marketing. Why pick on Coinbase? This is answered in the last three paragraphs:

> But there are questions about Coinbase's commitment to racial justice.

Everyone is a victim and everything you don't like is a victimizer.

I can't wait to sing my region's corporate anthem before sporting events just like Rollerball[1] foretold.

[1] Rollerball is kind of a hidden dystopian film. More people should watch it.

They could have been taking a swipe at IBM who already had this: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_IA1.htm...

Lift up our proud and loyal voices, Sing out in accents strong and true, With hearts and hands to you devoted, And inspiration ever new; Your ties of friendship cannot sever, Your glory time will never stem, We will toast a name that lives forever, Hail to the I.B.M.

Our voices swell in admiration; Of T. J. Watson proudly sing; He'll ever be our inspiration, To him our voices loudly ring; The I.B.M. will sing the praises, Of him who brought us world acclaim, As the volume of our chorus raises, Hail to his honored name.

coinbase made me a lot of money last cycle. don't play a pvp game for money if you don't have an edge.

My edge: the Fed's discretion

an understanding of global macro/liquidity cycles is indeed an edge :)

Underrated reply. Thinking of crypto as a PVP game makes a lot of sense as a mental model.

Another nail in the "We need retail money desperately to keep our ponzi-schemes viable" coffin. Volume and influx of money in crypto is at an all-time low, so without any viable use case Coinbase must be really desperate..

And the sky is blue. News at 11.

But in all seriousness, Coinbase is not a particularly ethical company. I still won’t forgive them for how they pulled off the insider trading and boosting of Litecoin, which made Charlie Lee rich off the backs of the peanut gallery.

EDIT: for those with seemingly limited memories - Charlie Lee worked for Coinbase at one point, and was able to successfully get his shitcoin (which was basically a hastily tweaked bitcoin) accepted for off ramping to fiat. Sounds like a direct conflict of interest, and I’m surprised Coinbase wasn’t investigated for this.

You're getting downvoted, but your post is partially correct.

You missed the best part though. Charlie Lee sold all of his tokens at the top and then told everyone he sold the top, causing the top to not be so top any more.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/litecoin-founder-charlie-lee...

Really was one of the best heists he ever pulled off in broad daylight.

Probably should have left Coinbase in handcuffs, but I digress.

Best part... he keeps pumping it on X... the grift never ends.

Financially vulnerable young adults are a HUGE demographic. All companies should be targeting them, especially as an opportunity to "do good."

People become susceptible to scams and get-rich-quick schemes because of desperation or sometimes greed. But really it's desperation. The economic circumstances of many people is that they're living paycheck-to-paycheck and/or are drowning under a mountain of debt. They're often also beholden to the whims of landlords. People see no way out.

This is really just the latest iteration of paycheck cashing, 1-800 personal loan lenders and the like.

Sure, Coinbase shouldn't target such people. This requires government intervention (for all the libertarians out there).

Ultimately though we're treating symptoms. The problem is capitalism. The unquenchable desire for ever-great profits leads to extracting every ounce of value from people so Jeff Bezos can have $200 billion instead of $100 billion.

Coinbase may not be the best representative of crypto, but the philosophy and technology still has a lot of potential.

All it takes is one more breakthrough. We saw it with AI.

When the chatgpt of crypto comes around, it will sweep the world.

If not Coinbase, then who?

I don't really know what the LLM of cryptocurrency would mean. With AI the goalposts are very easy to understand. What is a better crypto?

Are we waiting for, some novel computational model? If its use-cases, cryptocurrency is more than a decade old. You'd think that someone would have figured it out by now.

There is a reason why it's called crypto, because it's named after cryptography, it has no use for AI.

> When the chatgpt of crypto comes around, it will sweep the world.

You mean when a consumer facing product that actually has value is launched?

Someone wants to join SBF in prison.

Bitcoin is highly volatile yet safe in the long term. Dollars are stable and lose value over time.

What are young people to do with their money? Real estate has a high cost of entry. Retirement accounts tie up their money until late age with rules that may change. Pensions are a thing of the past.

Crypto for all its flaws is soaring, less boomer, and allows for ownership of wealth.

Invest in the real economy using a normal brokerage account.

What is "the real economy"?

Equities

I didn't know Gensler had his own HN account!

https://twitter.com/TheBTCTherapist/status/17353627302388821...

Huh? That link discusses the treasury market. Nothing to do with equities.

Equities means shares in companies, which are what real economy is made of. The population collectively producing physical goods and services. Tangible real things, created by people doing actual work.

Bitcoin is only now recovering to the prices it was a few years ago. In that same time, my investment account is up 15%. I would still be in the red if I didn’t go the boring route.

So personally investing in Bitcoin would have lost me money. So I do not think you can blanket say doing one over the other is a clear choice. The day to day volatility of crypto is absolutely a concern for making any kind of financial planning.

I chuckled when I saw this. Definitely here for the crypto bros vs woke crowd.

Coinbase stock outperformed NVIDIA this year

"The ads, which are on heavy rotation on cable television ..."

I have literally never seen a coinbase video ad in my life. Anywhere.

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