Coinbase CEO-'still up in the air which chain gets crypto from 50m to 5b users'

[gentlemand]

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1235314764219322371

Thread here - https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1235309368918388736

Now we know how much Brian Armstrong dislikes Bitcoin. Despite it being the very foundation of everything he's built he still can't bring himself to say many or any complimentary things about it.

Do you reckon he has the slightest point or is it the hopeless ramblings of someone who wants you buy as many shitcoins off him as possible and wees himself in the face of the one project immune to his power?

As far as I can tell every single other potential contender is a broken joke in some way and every day that doesn't introduce something 'better' makes it less likely. There are still a lot of things to address but nothing else appears to understand that you can't do that unless the underlying foundations respect the principles on which it's built.

[hatshepsut93]

He hates Bitcoin because its decentralized, so there's no one to do business with - with shitcoins like XRP or ETH he can call their respective bosses and have a chat with them how they can make changes to their coins that would in some way benefit his business, but if he tried the same with Bitcoin devs or community, he would be laughed at.

[figmentofmyass]

Do you reckon he has the slightest point or is it the hopeless ramblings of someone who wants you buy as many shitcoins off him as possible and wees himself in the face of the one project immune to his power?

as a bitcoiner, i don't take it personally.

in 2017, coinbase watched as endless waves of investors bought into BTC through coinbase but immediately sent all their coins to poloniex, bittrex, and binance to trade shitcoins. i almost felt bad for them. they were vital to the ecosystem and they paid through the nose on AML compliance, but shitcoin exchanges who didn't even require KYC were raking in all the dough.

they obviously don't intend on letting that happen again. they know (as well as i do) that altcoins will go crazy again in the next bubble, and they are positioning themselves accordingly. in april 2017, coinbase only had BTC and ETH listed. now they have dozens of shitcoins, something like ~60 markets in all, and more to come i'm sure.

their shareholders value profits over loyalty to bitcoin. no surprise there. it's just business.

[gentlemand]

in 2017, coinbase watched as endless waves of investors bought into BTC through coinbase but immediately sent all their coins to poloniex, bittrex, and binance to trade shitcoins. i almost felt bad for them. they were vital to the ecosystem and they paid through the nose on AML compliance, but shitcoin exchanges who didn't even require KYC were raking in all the dough.

they obviously don't intend on letting that happen again. they know (as well as i do) that altcoins will go crazy again in the next bubble, and they are positioning themselves accordingly. in april 2017, coinbase only had BTC and ETH listed. now they have dozens of shitcoins, something like ~60 markets in all, and more to come i'm sure.

their shareholders value profits over loyalty to bitcoin. no surprise there. it's just business.

I think that's fair enough but it's ever so slightly disingenuous of him to pretend that all the shit they're touting is somehow vying for the crown. And it is more than business for him in particular. I can't think of many other bigwigs who pussy out at remarking on reality.

Maybe that's how you get people through the door but if it were me I would remain neutral at best and acknowledge Bitcoin's position.

[DooMAD]

I think that's fair enough but it's ever so slightly disingenuous of him to pretend that all the shit they're touting is somehow vying for the crown. And it is more than business for him in particular. I can't think of many other bigwigs who pussy out at remarking on reality.

Maybe that's how you get people through the door but if it were me I would remain neutral at best and acknowledge Bitcoin's position.

If I were running a business like that, I suspect I'd probably try to appear like I'm staying on the fence, even in the face of reality.  Somewhere along the line, it turned into a political question.  Depending how you answer, potential customers may elect to use other services that view their preferred chain more favourably.  We're fortunate in that we all have the luxury of not needing to give a shit what the forkcoin supporters think.  But if Armstrong came out and said BTC was the undisputed #1 chain, the hardcore BCH/SV fanboys may take umbrage and elect not use Coinbase going forwards.  So you try to play 'happy families' instead, despite it being disingenuous.

[gentlemand]

But there's also the opposite tack which is by listing whatever they're endorsing it.

He's in a bit of a tricky position as purveying a glossy and reassuring image while being a portal to a screeching mess.

Bch has been 51% attacked. Coinbase have been tweeting about eos's functionality failing.

Look at what happened to iota with their total chain shutdown.

I get that they need the shitcoin masses but that also brings the potential for disaster.

[DooMAD]

But there's also the opposite tack which is by listing whatever they're endorsing it.

He's in a bit of a tricky position as purveying a glossy and reassuring image while being a portal to a screeching mess.

Bch has been 51% attacked. Coinbase have been tweeting about eos's functionality failing.

Look at what happened to iota with their total chain shutdown.

I get that they need the shitcoin masses but that also brings the potential for disaster.

Yep.  And that's sadly something that's just innate to crypto.  It's all a bit experimental.  Any number of blockchains could conceivably come crashing down and ruin everyone involved.  Yet here we all are messing about with them, taking our chances.  And there Armstrong is making a tidy profit from it all, while notably taking fewer chances in practice by playing intermediary.  It's the users who carry the brunt of the risk.  Somehow I doubt he cares all that much if some of those coins he lists do fail.  He'll still have the profit and it won't be his problem.

[rdbase]

He hates Bitcoin because its decentralized, so there's no one to do business with - with shitcoins like XRP or ETH he can call their respective bosses and have a chat with them how they can make changes to their coins that would in some way benefit his business, but if he tried the same with Bitcoin devs or community, he would be laughed at.

He also hates bitcoin because he holds more ethereum than he does BTC according to a really old article from back in November 2017.
https://coinjournal.net/coinbase-ceo-owns-ether-bitcoin
And armstrong does have plans for ethereum erc-20 tokens being used on the site, so why wouldnt he be in favor of something which will be more beneficial on his own platform and making his bags of ETH value shoot up?
https://dailyhodl.com/2020/03/06/coinbase-ceo-says-bitcoin-btc-may-lose-cryptocurrency-race-to-altcoins-heres-why

[kryptqnick]

I like Bitcoin and hope that it will be the one people use when massive adoption comes. But it seems to me that Brian is right that it's a question whether Bitcoin would be able to do that. The number of users is still very low, so a Telegram token or a Facebook one can theoretically overcome Bitcoin's dominance overnight (that is, if we count them as cryptocurrencies, of course). I don't think that a decentralized pseudo-anonymous currency like Bitcoin can beat it in terms of the number of users, but Libra or something really might.

they obviously don't intend on letting that happen again. they know (as well as i do) that altcoins will go crazy again in the next bubble, and they are positioning themselves accordingly. in april 2017, coinbase only had BTC and ETH listed. now they have dozens of shitcoins, something like ~60 markets in all, and more to come i'm sure.

I don't know that. I think that the time of the altcoin market flourishing like it used to be in 2017 is over, and it won't happen again. Unlike the previous time when Bitcoin's dominance was going down (the thing that Coinmarketcap and Coingecko call 'dominance'), it did not decrease when Bitcoin recovered (more or less) throughout 2019. Some coins might rise, but I don't think that most of those even in the top-50 will.

[figmentofmyass]

But there's also the opposite tack which is by listing whatever they're endorsing it.

He's in a bit of a tricky position as purveying a glossy and reassuring image while being a portal to a screeching mess.

Bch has been 51% attacked. Coinbase have been tweeting about eos's functionality failing.

Look at what happened to iota with their total chain shutdown.

I get that they need the shitcoin masses but that also brings the potential for disaster.

Yep.  And that's sadly something that's just innate to crypto.  It's all a bit experimental.  Any number of blockchains could conceivably come crashing down and ruin everyone involved.

and not just altcoins. 51% attacks, consensus failures, fatal bugs---all were possible with bitcoin in coinbase's earlier days, or even today. just think about the 2010 overflow bug and associated 53 block chain reorg, or the 2018 duplicate input vulnerability which (thank god) wasn't exploited in a 0-day attack.

bitcoin may have the most prolific developers and most hardened/secure software in cryptocurrency, but it's still experimental beta release "use at your own risk" software. if these are the standards, then coinbase isn't being that inconsistent by listing a bunch of experimental shitcoins years later.

i cared a lot more about this shit back in 2016 or so, back when ethereum was starting to blow up. the 2017 altcoin run was a kick in the pants for me. the market simply doesn't care about a lot of the shit we care about---decentralization, scalability, privacy etc etc. ETH isn't scalable? nobody cares, it bubbled anyway. the same applies to every other hype coin of the day, past, present, or future.

all we can do is hope and plan for overhyped shitcoins to fall to the wayside, and try to nudge people in the right direction. i'm not gonna fight the market or get upset about any of it though. it's just the market playing out. i used to hate brian armstrong, like seriously bitter hatred. i ain't even mad at the dude anymore.

[pooya87]

But there's also the opposite tack which is by listing whatever they're endorsing it.

He's in a bit of a tricky position as purveying a glossy and reassuring image while being a portal to a screeching mess.

Bch has been 51% attacked. Coinbase have been tweeting about eos's functionality failing.

Look at what happened to iota with their total chain shutdown.

I get that they need the shitcoin masses but that also brings the potential for disaster.

here is the problem with these people who heavily criticize bitcoin, they always attack bitcoin and talk about its flaws while only hinting that "others are good" whereas a good critic would also criticize others and would mention that these other coins that people think are good are actually a lot worse when it comes to the negative points they keep raising about bitcoin.

for example scalability has been a hot topic in bitcoin which a lot of these people used to attack bitcoin. what they don't realize is that the shitcoins they so love are a lot worse when it comes to scalability! for example during 2017 bitcoin was under severe spam attack but the worst thing that happened was higher fees. the same time due to ICO hype and some games on ethereum platform (cryptokitties) the number of transactions on ethereum blockchain increased so much that the network went down and all these exchanges including Coinbase had to disable their wallets for weeks. not to mention that fees went up ~4000%

[davis196]

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1235314764219322371

Thread here - https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1235309368918388736

Now we know how much Brian Armstrong dislikes Bitcoin. Despite it being the very foundation of everything he's built he still can't bring himself to say many or any complimentary things about it.

Do you reckon he has the slightest point or is it the hopeless ramblings of someone who wants you buy as many shitcoins off him as possible and wees himself in the face of the one project immune to his power?

As far as I can tell every single other potential contender is a broken joke in some way and every day that doesn't introduce something 'better' makes it less likely. There are still a lot of things to address but nothing else appears to understand that you can't do that unless the underlying foundations respect the principles on which it's built.

5B users?I really doubt that any blockchain EVER will handle 5 billion users.I also doubt that any cryptocurrency will ever become popular enough to be used by 5 billion users.Sounds like the typical "bitcoin can't scale" whining coming from an altcoin supporter.
I myself view Coinbase as a player of the financial "status quo".They might be the biggest cryptocurrency wallet with most users,but they just aren't a crypto company to me.
Armstrong seems like a BCH/BSV supporter.Even Roger Ver is commenting under one of his tweets.

[itchycoin]

Coinbase is a big point of centralization and now they are pushing forward face recognition. People should think about it

[igglyboo92]

Armstrong seems like a BCH/BSV supporter.Even Roger Ver is commenting under one of his tweets.

BSV supporter?? Seems not because Coinbase doesnt even list BSV. BCH maybe yes. He used to be a vocal big blocker but seems very quiet ever since the insider trading allegations around the BCH listing.

[pooya87]

Armstrong seems like a BCH/BSV supporter.Even Roger Ver is commenting under one of his tweets.

BSV supporter?? Seems not because Coinbase doesnt even list BSV. BCH maybe yes. He used to be a vocal big blocker but seems very quiet ever since the insider trading allegations around the BCH listing.

i don't think exchanges "support" anything. and they definitely don't give a shit about block size, scaling or in some cases even security not matter if it is about bitcoin or some shitcoin. the only thing that exchanges care about is trading volume because that is the main (legal) way they make money. which is why they haven't listed BSV because its volume was a lot lower than most of the altcoins that they also don't list. if they were to list a new one they would list one of those.
BSV gained some volume this year though so they may list it now if they think it can sustain that higher volume

[figmentofmyass]

BSV supporter?? Seems not because Coinbase doesnt even list BSV. BCH maybe yes. He used to be a vocal big blocker but seems very quiet ever since the insider trading allegations around the BCH listing.

i don't think exchanges "support" anything. and they definitely don't give a shit about block size, scaling or in some cases even security not matter if it is about bitcoin or some shitcoin.

i agree they shouldn't care, but it used to be a big deal for coinbase. brian armstrong constantly injected them into the block size debate in 2015-16. for instance:

Lets plan for success. Coinbase supports increasing the maximum block size
http://gavinandresen.ninja/block-size-and-miner-fees-again

he was publicly lobbying for every hard fork block size increase, from BIP101 to XT to bitcoin classic, and loudly too:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-ceo-armstrong-id-like-to-increase-the-block-size-in-december
https://blog.coinbase.com/scaling-bitcoin-the-great-block-size-debate-d2cba9021db0
https://medium.com/@barmstrong/the-bitcoin-roundtable-consensus-proposal-too-little-too-late-e694f13f40b#.y8q7xnjhh

when the segwit debate came to a head, there was naturally a lot of backlash against coinbase. i think 2017 was when #DeleteCoinbase became a real thing for the first time. i'm sure they realized getting involved in political debates was really bad for business.

[Toomykins]

Bitcoin is decentralized, so there is such hatred for it. He just doesn't have anyone to do business with.