1) The other crypto IPO
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Great thread, Sam. Similar to how I'm thinking about it as well. Another issue for Coinbase is the trend of fees going down long term. Sure they can charge these in manias but unlikely to last. Coinbase did $923M rev in 2017 on $75.4B volume.
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holy shit!
yeah, agreed -- it's not going to be easy for them to keep that cash cow.
thus, probably, the pivot towards institutional service.
(or, I mean, selling equity at $50b.)
One thing that's worth a lot of money though that you didn't mention is their compliance and relationships with regulators. Not really apples and oranges to compare to Binance etc because it's unlikely that Coinbase will be significantly affected by large regulatory interventions
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True!
Though I think this is easy to oversell.
One reading of their blitz of listings is "Coinbase is immune to the SEC".
Another -- if you look at their XRP delisting -- is to ask, "how would we actually _know_ whether they were immune, or just reckless?"
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Making those simplistic assumptions , Amazon would have been closed years ago. Coinbase is priced on various aspects that other competitors aren't holding. Regulatory risk , age , brandname and most importantly the userbase of 50mln
Those were very similar points i've heard back early 2015 with Shopify.
They are more focused on structurally unsound from a tax perspective (in US) debit cards & listing more and more tokens which themselves will have fees that trend towards zero, not work or if they do work become more utility then speculative, all.of which kill their revs.
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They have real potential on the institutional side given their custody & liquidity (when it's up) yet are still hiring based on dopamine 1st product managers which is akin to robinhood, not bulge bracket finance.
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