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Comment by scrlk | Hacker News Reader

Brian Armstrong looking for a Coinbase co-founder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754664

I enjoy that his motivation for starting Coinbase was that credit card transaction fees are too high, and digital currency can solve this problem.

Here we are, 12 years later, and people still buy and sell cryptocurrency almost exclusively as an investment/bet, and very rarely is it used to facilitate any real transactions.

Not to forget that "cheap fees" is an argument that doesn't hold up anymore - Bitcoin and Ethereum fees are outlandish; Solana and other chains are just about "alright".

The tech at its core is really interesting though, sadly the most innovation seems to be in marketing at the moment.

The fees are virtually nothing on the layer 2 chains, but of course that's besides the point because it's a hurdle for anyone remotely non-technical to get there.

All new networks promise low fees, but as soon as the activity shifts there they don't hold up. I have seen it happen too many times before and is just by design of the fee market.

I don't even think the hurdle is that big, I find a lot of "crypto wallets" nicer to use than many banking apps - main issue imo is the risk to loose funds, which is significant even for technical users.

And the Fed released FedNow to support cheap domestic US instant payments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36801491

Sometimes, a startup is not the path to solve for a problem statement (but you can still be wildly financially successful as is the case with Brian).

Here we are 12 years later and Coinbase has the highest fees of any.

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