TechCrunch throws shade at Coinbase

[KingZee]

Just thought it was pretty funny, their title reads : Coinbase abandons its cautious approach with plan to list up to 30 new cryptocurrencies

But the url says something else

It's still some serious news nevertheless, because it seems like coinbase is starting to believe in the potential of a lot more coins, their potential list includes coins like : EOS (EOS), Augur (REP), Storj (STORJ), Stellar (XLM), XRP (XRP)... with these names only making a small amount of the list, I don't stand against the TechCrunch journalist calling the rest shitcoins.

I still think this is good for the future, decentralization and smart contracts have come with a lot of innovation, it would be a shame to miss out on some of them, so I guess Coinbase decided to change their stance towards them. But it's still questionable that they didn't choose to pick a few more well known coins like DASH, NANO, so I wonder how this decision is going to age in the upcoming months.

[nutildah]

Lol, that is pretty funny.

Let's go through them one by one (OK, only the ones I have an opinion on):

Cardano (ADA) - this coin is a brain in a hat, and that's all. Zero real-world utility.
Dai (DAI) - stablecoin. The way it gets there (see MKR) is kind of questionable but it seems to work
district0x (DNT) - seems to work, people like it, let it be.
Kin (KIN) - who actually uses Kik? anyone?
Decentraland (MANA) - kind of a cool idea if they can keep developing it into a full-fledged virtual world
Maker (MKR) - don't understand what makes it valuable (see DAI), correctly allocating collateral?
NEO (NEO) - has potential
Po.et (POE) - a big nopetoken.
Augur (REP) - one of the oldest "oracle"-type platforms, still under development. if they could get it to work, it might actually be pretty cool
Request Network (REQ) - not even in the top 100, don't know what they're thinking here
Storj (STORJ) - the original filecoin... i wish them luck but wouldn't invest in it
Stellar (XLM) - adoption issues: who actually uses this coin, and why?
XRP (XRP) - only cool because everyone else is doing it, and, banks...

All the others I consider to be of too low importance to have an opinion about.

[mk4]

LOL. While I agree that some are indeed debatably crap, I'm pretty sure this is a good move for Coinbase as a business. As a business, they need to be profitable, hence they need to take certain moves to be able to stay so. The bear market probably affected their volume a lot.

Cardano (ADA) - this coin is a brain in a hat, and that's all. Zero real-world utility.

While I agree that it really does nothing, I wont lie, their team is looking really really good. Risky as hell though, not for me.

Dai (DAI) - stablecoin. The way it gets there (see MKR) is kind of questionable but it seems to work

It seems to work, very well in fact. Yes, we all know that stablecoins can definitely drop and rise in price a bit if ever a lot of people simply buy/sell in in a short timesplan; but in the past 3 months of bearishness of the cryptocurrency markets, DAI didn't even touch $0.98. It was pretty much always around $.99 - $.1.01. Which is a really really good thing if you ask me, knowing that DAI is somewhat decentralized. If there's a stablecoin that I'd be comfortable holding, it's DAI. I don't think it's currently "backed" enough to be able to handle Binance-levels of trade volume though.

[DooMAD]

It makes perfect sense.  As with most exchanges, they're going to be chasing raw volume over quality or real-world utility.  List anything and everything with even a hint of a buzz about it.  "All aboard the hype-train, make lots of trades plz".

[gentlemand]

it seems like coinbase is starting to believe in the potential of a lot more coins,

They believe in the fees they'll earn. That's about it. But the same applies for the people buying and selling them. It's not as if anyone's gonads are aching for decentralised storage or a drain cleaning ICO.

If I were them I would at least fence them off into a separate operation. Every single coin carries a risk of it blowing up in their faces. There could be forks, double spends, 51% attacks or flat out abandonment.

This seems a tad premature to me. Still, there's bills to pay.  

[KingZee]

NEO (NEO) - has potential

I just quickly skimmed some information and news about it, I might spend more time to understand it. Could you give a quick opinion on why do you believe in it?

I also noticed it's relatively not included in a lot of (non-asian) exchanges? (Kraken, Poloniex, ...)

EOS for instance is even listed on BitMex.

They're also slowly rising to the top 5 coins with the highest market cap, so if you never heard of it I recommend giving it a look.

They believe in the fees they'll earn. That's about it. But the same applies for the people buying and selling them. It's not as if anyone's gonads are aching for decentralised storage or a drain cleaning ICO.

Honestly due to the bear market that went down for the last month, I'm sure coinbase lost a hell lot more than something they can recoup in fees, they're not just a typical exchange, they might be a crypto-investing business, but in the end it still needs to run on fiat.

I'm sure this business decision has come just for them to be able to diversify their investments. Fees are obviously going to generate a bonus income if they have enough volume of these "shitcoins", but I doubt it was their only motive.

[gentlemand]

EOS for instance is even listed on BitMex.

Because Bitmex knows it's a shameless shitcoin and will make plenty of money helping to drive it into the ground. I cannae believe it got as high as it did considering its nature. I guess that's the power of pump.

[Al-e_x]

coinbase is a very good wallet, there are lots of good coins there. Coinbase has many features to make users more comfortable. security, ease of transaction, and others.

I think, dash and nano will complete coinbase in the future, because the dash and nano are coins that can attract public attention. and it will give a good contribution to coinbase.

[aoluain]

Lol, that is pretty funny.

Let's go through them one by one (OK, only the ones I have an opinion on):

Cardano (ADA) - this coin is a brain in a hat, and that's all. Zero real-world utility.
Dai (DAI) - stablecoin. The way it gets there (see MKR) is kind of questionable but it seems to work
district0x (DNT) - seems to work, people like it, let it be.
Kin (KIN) - who actually uses Kik? anyone?
Decentraland (MANA) - kind of a cool idea if they can keep developing it into a full-fledged virtual world
Maker (MKR) - don't understand what makes it valuable (see DAI), correctly allocating collateral?
NEO (NEO) - has potential
Po.et (POE) - a big nopetoken.
Augur (REP) - one of the oldest "oracle"-type platforms, still under development. if they could get it to work, it might actually be pretty cool
Request Network (REQ) - not even in the top 100, don't know what they're thinking here
Storj (STORJ) - the original filecoin... i wish them luck but wouldn't invest in it
Stellar (XLM) - adoption issues: who actually uses this coin, and why?
XRP (XRP) - only cool because everyone else is doing it, and, banks...

All the others I consider to be of too low importance to have an opinion about.

There is only 4 out of the list above which i would rate:
Augur and NEO because I have some in an exodus wallet. They seem to have good development and good adoption.
Storj, i like the idea and it has potential but prefer SIA.
RIPPLE, purely because it has stamina, is well adopted but dont like the centralisation and bank relationship.

I think coinbase are doing the right thing, i assume these will also be available on GDAX?

[mk4]

It makes perfect sense.  As with most exchanges, they're going to be chasing raw volume over quality or real-world utility.  List anything and everything with even a hint of a buzz about it.  "All aboard the hype-train, make lots of trades plz".

This exactly. People are always like "Coinbase/Binance/etc likes to spread scammy shitcoins etc etc etc". People forget that exchanges or businesses in general exist, mainly for what? To make money. Sure, the CEOs might really be passionate on blockchain technology, but profits and making sure that the company is afloat is still always first priority.

[darkangel11]

They're listing XRP that isn't even a cryptocurrency. Coinbase used to be really picky and I remember when there were supposed to be new BTC forks and they said they're not going to be listed, so why 30 coins all of a sudden. They were supposed to add SV once the dust settles and I still don't see it listed. What if they are taking their time because your forked coins are being traded by Coinbase? You never know with these private exchanges. Hold your keys people, don't use exchanges if you don't have to.

[squatter]

it seems like coinbase is starting to believe in the potential of a lot more coins,

They believe in the fees they'll earn. That's about it. But the same applies for the people buying and selling them. It's not as if anyone's gonads are aching for decentralised storage or a drain cleaning ICO.

If I were them I would at least fence them off into a separate operation. Every single coin carries a risk of it blowing up in their faces. There could be forks, double spends, 51% attacks or flat out abandonment.

This seems a tad premature to me. Still, there's bills to pay.  

This is actually pretty big news for the altcoin world since Coinbase is by the far the biggest operation in the US for onboarding retail investors. If they spin off a new operation, they can't easily leverage that brand.

I suppose it's better to work out the kinks now than than to launch dozens of coins during the next bubble. Coinbase had multiple fiascos last year -- the BCH manipulation, the ETH flash crashes, constant network outages. If they launch these markets sooner than later, they can get a better handle on market liquidity and infrastructure needs.

[LeGaulois]

Coinbase didn(t have the choice to add more altcoins to keep up with the income it currently makes. It couldn't stop to just BTC initially otherwise it would miss a lot of income. It's all about money, but I remember back in the years when Coinbase was considered as a Bitcoin purist, now it's a profits purist (or a capitalist if you prefer).

[gentlemand]

but I remember back in the years when Coinbase was considered as a Bitcoin purist, now it's a profits purist (or a capitalist if you prefer).

It was only a purist because that's where the only significant money was to be made back in the day. I'm not sure if I'd class them as an enemy of Bitcoin, but they're certainly no friend of it. They've supported plenty of cockamie attempts to fuck it up over the years. I think by this point they would probably prefer it to go away for good so they can concentrate on things they can control.

[KingZee]

but I remember back in the years when Coinbase was considered as a Bitcoin purist, now it's a profits purist (or a capitalist if you prefer).

It was only a purist because that's where the only significant money was to be made back in the day. I'm not sure if I'd class them as an enemy of Bitcoin, but they're certainly no friend of it. They've supported plenty of cockamie attempts to fuck it up over the years. I think by this point they would probably prefer it to go away for good so they can concentrate on things they can control.

Bold to claim that they can control even one altcoin on the market. It's crazy to see that not even one altcoin ever managed to hold itself against bitcoin, everytime bitcoin takes a dump, every altcoin follows. I'm sure coinbase only care about filling their pockets but it's not as easy as just adopting a bunch of alts and calling it a day..

[bkbirge]

Wake me up when they list HODLcoin, lol. They've gotta figure out a way to earn in this market and if they need to churn on volume instead of their undoubtedly vast coin holdings then they gotta do what they gotta do. It seems a shame to tarnish their reputation of only picking stable coins for the exchange though, but not like I was looking at just what's listed on coinbase as my only metric to determine safe investments.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Just a few months ago Coinbase said they would add some new coins based upon their Digital Asset Framework.

Now, I don't know anything about a lot of the coins listed in the article because I'm not really in to shitcoins, but there are some blatantly obvious contradictions in there - XRP and EOS aren't decentralized for a start, which goes against their very first point. I would bet that most, if not all, of these coins would be excluded for one reason or another.

Having said that, I am not surprised Coinbase are jumping in to the alt game. Go to https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/ and look at all the top exchanges. They all list loads of coins, and a significant amount of their volume (and therefore their profits) comes from alts. Coinbase have always been solely about profits - insider trading scandals, absolutely extortionate fees for all the newbies who didn't know about GDAX/Pro, awful customer support, accounts being locked indefinitely, etc. It is not really surprising they now appear to abandoning their own standards to list a bunch of shitcoins. I haven't used Coinbase in a long time, I don't plan to ever again.

[darklus123]

Just thought it was pretty funny, their title reads : Coinbase abandons its cautious approach with plan to list up to 30 new cryptocurrencies

But the url says something else

It's still some serious news nevertheless, because it seems like coinbase is starting to believe in the potential of a lot more coins, their potential list includes coins like : EOS (EOS), Augur (REP), Storj (STORJ), Stellar (XLM), XRP (XRP)... with these names only making a small amount of the list, I don't stand against the TechCrunch journalist calling the rest shitcoins.

I still think this is good for the future, decentralization and smart contracts have come with a lot of innovation, it would be a shame to miss out on some of them, so I guess Coinbase decided to change their stance towards them. But it's still questionable that they didn't choose to pick a few more well known coins like DASH, NANO, so I wonder how this decision is going to age in the upcoming months.

Its just that coinbase chooses the shitcoins that they liked and nano nor dash is not a part of it. Dash is been in the industry for a quite sometime already but still it is in the bottom. Nano is overrated in my opinion maybe coinbade also saw that one.

What ever coinbase might want to do with their business that might not meets our expectations. Coinbase were doing dome crazy stuffs quite awhile already so this is not so surprising

[franky1]

coinbase went for the wrong business model.

going for the custodial exchange model meant alot of labour, security, auditing, regulation. which means they had to diversify to survive.

if they concentrated their efforts more on OTC/merchant gateway and used less money on the custodial/regulatory costs. and more on promoting their business to merchants that want them. they would have stood better.

the 'customer acquisition' cost to get people to use coinbase, where some people only make a couple trades a year. whereby fee's of not even 1% of the trade. would have lost them alot.

they should have aimed it at the merchants/day traders and done it as a daily payout financial service to avoid the "custodial fiasco" they put themselves into

but with all that said.
im not surprised. coinbase is just another subsidiary arm of DCG.co. who seem more interested in the capitalist greed than the bitcoin/blockchain purist mindset.

[pooya87]

it seems like coinbase is starting to believe in the potential of a lot more coins,

in case you have missed it, Coinbase is earning a lot of money through their exchange services. as an exchange they earn money from traders. and a large portion of the daily trading volume in this market comes from pump and dump altcoins. an exchange having a couple of pump and dump altcoins will earn a lot of money from pumpers. and that is why they are adding more.

it has nothing to do with believing in anything. it is a business and they saw the "trading volume" and that is all they cared about.