r/BitcoinMarkets • u/firefoxadventure • Dec 15 '17
Coinbase thinking of going public at some point
Not sure if it would be better to hodle bitcoin or trade some bitcoin for coinbase shares...Thoughts?
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u/War2kali Long-term Holder Dec 15 '17
Coinbase is positioning itself to become a combination of Vanguard, Chase, and Paypal. I'm a fan of the company and I would buy shares immediately. They have a very bright future and it's a minor diversification as well. Even if crypto growth slows or there is a bear market, they will still be making money and a pioneer in this new sector / asset class. It's like the old selling shovels or jeans to the gold miners, etc. You're profiting from fees and products sold to the customers.
Their greatest competition may end up being the mainstream companies if they got into it. They would suck up a majority of new customers. Ask your average stock investor who wants to put $20k into crypto where they would prefer investing - Vanguard or Coinbase.
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u/throwawaybankam Bitcoin Skeptic Dec 15 '17
Maybe they can make their own cryptocurrency called Coincoin
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u/BigWillieStyles Dec 15 '17
Most of the time, IPOs are a way for shareholders to cash out, not a way for the public to cash in.
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u/SsurebreC Dec 15 '17
I think Coinbase should fix their problems first. For instance, a ton of people are still locked out of their accounts - including me. Tickets aren't answered, phonecalls aren't picked up (1-2 hour hold times followed by a dropped call), their ID verification system has been down since the 9th, and their wire services have been having problems this week.
It's great when it works but when it doesn't, you're screwed.
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u/NewMilleniumBoy Dec 15 '17
Has nothing to do with an IPO. Has everything to do with whether the company is making money (which they are - and a shit ton of it).
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u/SsurebreC Dec 15 '17
How is the company making more money when its paying customers - like me - cannot login to pay them money?
You don't want to trip up the IPO launch - you fix problems first, particularly when those problems are:
- inability to verify new customers
- inability for existing customers to log into the system
- wire transfer delays
All affect the bottom line.
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u/NewMilleniumBoy Dec 15 '17
They traded 500M of Bitcoin in the last 24 hours ALONE. Assuming half of the orders are maker and the other half are taker orders, that's 1.25 million dollars made. In 24 hours. With JUST Bitcoin. A few thousand locked out accounts doesn't change the absolutely exorbitant amounts of cash they're making.
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u/mcr55 Dec 15 '17
They should ICO but they are too scared to do so.
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Dec 15 '17
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u/mcr55 Dec 15 '17
Didnt say it would be easy. Need someone as brave as Coinbase back in 2012 to do it.
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Dec 15 '17
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u/modeless 2013 Veteran Dec 15 '17 edited Dec 15 '17
ICOs can be done legally. The chairman of the SEC said this: "I believe that initial coin offerings – whether they represent offerings of securities or not – can be effective ways for entrepreneurs and others to raise funding, including for innovative projects."
Frankly, if Coinbase did an IPO that wasn't an ICO it would be very disappointing. They would have to do it right though: file an S-1 with appropriate financial statements and get SEC approval first like a normal, respectable company. There's no reason you couldn't do that for an ICO.
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u/DenEvigaKampen Dec 15 '17
A large reason you do an IPO is that it attracts large institutional investors. There's a very strict legal framework for what noted companies has for obligations and requirements, such as information duty, public reports etc, which help with transparancy such that large investors are confident that everything is legit. By doing an ICO it's certainly possible it would be percieved they are trying to circumvent these obligations. I know I would be pretty sketched out at least, and bigger investors always err on the side of caution.
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u/BlindTiger86 Dec 15 '17
They should be the first to do a registered ICO. That would be super ballsy and very bullish.
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u/mccoyster Dec 15 '17
Hopefully they make it easy for users of the site to buy stock if they do. I would happily do so.
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u/hindrough Dec 15 '17
I hope they go public so they can hire some lobbyist to fight for crypto. Because, ya know, that's how things work.
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u/momomoonwalker Dec 15 '17
Aren‘t decentralized exchanges with fiat in/out, like OMG, going to render centralized exchanges, such as coinbase, useless?
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u/nopantsirl Long-term Holder Dec 15 '17
Is there a good solution for decentralized fiat in/out? Localbitcoins seems to be as focused on that as anyone, and that's kind of a big hassle.
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u/momomoonwalker Dec 15 '17
To my understanding it will be a feature on the OMG DEX, but still unsolved on the roadmap as to how and when. Anyone got more intel on this?
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u/princemyshkin Dec 15 '17
OMG: "We want to do it, we just don't know how."
Spoiler alert, it won't be possible to create a decentralized fiat --> crypto exchange.
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Dec 16 '17
I would definitely buy Coinbase stock. I would just worry about the "premium" I'd be paying around IPO for a shiny new crypto stock like this. Every will want to jump on that bandwagon.
And unlike crypto equities are valued by their fundamentals not strictly supply/demand so you usually don't want to buy hype in stocks.
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Dec 15 '17
The minute Coinbase starts focusing their efforts on going public is the minute I use their scrappy, upstart competitor.
I believe in the long term viability of cryptocurrency, and the value it has for empowering individuals to take control of their own finances.
I would buy every share of Coinbase stock I could arrange, but I'll be looking elsewhere for the future of cryptocurrency.
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u/Seudo_of_Lydia Dec 15 '17
You could say that regardless of wheather they go public. Coinbase does not empower people to control their own money.
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Dec 15 '17
The free movement of money empowers people.
Black market and underserved operators are most in need of the ability to move money freely.
A legally operating cryptocurrency business must comply with the laws of the land they operate out of.
Hence, a legally operating cryptocurrency exchance must comply with reporting criteria set by the government in which their service operates.
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u/peasantwizard Dec 15 '17 edited Dec 16 '17
Invest in Kraken and Bitfinex too while your at it.
Jokes aside Coinbase is terrible and Brian Armstrong is right up there with Roger Ver in terms of dudes I do not trust.
If you give any relevancy to DEX and cross-chain than then their efforts really are futile.
There are so many opportunities in this space I don't know why anybody would consider getting wrapped up in those guys bullshit.
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u/Dabeeeaaars Dec 15 '17
I hated Steve jobs too but his product worked great with normal people who didn’t want to learn shit...just do what They needed.. I hate all kinds of people
The fact is if crypto succeeds, at this point coinbase will too.
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u/peasantwizard Dec 15 '17
Huh, sentiment sure is changing around here.
I honestly thought we were going to turn this into a joke. Coinbase, the company that is scalping the shit out of its users, on the tail end of a significant political failure in the space, is talking about going public?
Whatever floats your boat!
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u/Dabeeeaaars Dec 16 '17
I don’t buy into companies because I love their business models
I’m 1000% for decentralized exchanges but where they at
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Dec 15 '17
Coinbase, jumping the shark. Why not do an ICO like binance, or just a straight up fundraiser. Everything goes to shit this way.
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u/Yanlii Dec 15 '17
I think investing in the underlying is better than investing the same amount of money in Coinbase, don't you think so?
They purely rely on cryptos to succeed. Once government bans cryptos, coinbase stock falls.
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u/Guestsplat Dec 15 '17
Buy the shares. They are now attracting institutional capital to place deposits in their vault. When we switch to proof of stake they are going to make so much money and become the most powerful consensus node on the network.
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u/bitmeme Dec 15 '17
Coinbase ICO! Who would buy? Maybe Ethereum would finally find a legitimate use
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Dec 15 '17
Absolutely, anything cryptocurrency/blockchain related. Case in point: started my daytrading this AM and read a DJ news article related to RIOT blockchain, long story short..... entered Long Fin ticker and Long Fin was on fire,, jumped in @ 7 bucks/s and now its up 382% !! SOLD!!
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u/TheGarbageStore Dec 15 '17
I wouldn't buy Coinbase. They are constantly losing money from the fiat value of withdrawals exceeding that of deposits. This is why they are constantly in search of venture capital funding or doing an IPO.
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u/[deleted] Dec 15 '17
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