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Coinbase is more about turning non-crypto currencies into crypto currencies while UNI/SUSHI are more about turning crypto currencies into different crypto curre

Coinbase is more about turning non-crypto currencies into crypto currencies while UNI/SUSHI are more about turning crypto currencies into different crypto currencies. In my POV, there's only two ways to get into crypto: - Centralized exchanges with KYC - Mining Coinbase is a KYC centralized exchange and enables people to turn their bank account $$s into crypto. Uniswap and Sushiswap are only relevant once someone has crypto and needs to exchange between various tokens.

noman-land 6y ago
Don't forget working for it by doing stuff and receiving payment in them. That's my personal philosophical favorite.
- littlestymaar 6y ago
  True, though in practice “stuff” means “drug dealing”. \s
  - samatman 6y ago
    It's fairly normal to receive payment in cybercoins if you're working for a company in the space. At least it was in the ICO era.
    - tyre 6y ago
      Yep. And then you can go spend them on
      - cachvico 6y ago
        USD
      - vmception 6y ago
        Farmville Iykyk
  - vmception 6y ago
    yes, if you don’t have marketable skills there are artificially crippled growth industries involving drugs or your body that isn’t new with crypto
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - de6u99er 6y ago
    Coffeeshops here in NL only accept either cash or plastic.
    - smeej 6y ago
      There's already an entire industry growing up around enabling cryptocurrencies to be spent using traditional payment rails too, though, for those who don't want to see their governments print away the value of their money. Coinbase itself has a debit card that deducts directly from your crypto balance and allows you to swipe the card anywhere that normally takes Visa. They're even a card issuer for Visa in their own right, so they don't have to do it through partner banks.[0] Spending crypto is easy, whether the vendor opts into using it or not, so if you do get paid in it, it's easy to use. [0] https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-becomes-direct-visa-card-issuer-with-principal-membership https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-becomes-direct-visa-...
      - imtringued 6y ago
        >for those who don't want to see their governments print away the value of their money. The sad reality is that governments fail to do so. The irony behind your comment is that if they could, they would have stopped a long time ago.
        smeej 6y ago
        I think we must be talking past each other or something. The purchasing power of every single fiat currency has trended down since the elimination of hard money standards, so as far as I can tell, every single government is printing away the value of its money. I don't see how that's "failing to do so" if "so" refers to "printing away the value of their money"?
- chii 6y ago
  and yet, almost nobody does this. Because it's impractical so far. I would look forward to the day when it does become practical, but i cannot see when that may be.
  - jchw 6y ago
    It’s not that unfathomable, it’s just not something you’re about to get in place of a direct deposit any time soon. I’ve seen internet artists and musicians offer to take commission payment in crypto before. Assuming the ecological issues of cryptocurrencies are possible to sort out, this kind of peer-to-peer usage feels nearly ideal, especially when many smaller businesses have trust issues with internet peer to peer payment providers such as PayPal.
- mdoms 6y ago
  No one wants to pay you for legal above-board work in bitcoin[0] because bitcoin is not a useful currency (for reasons that have been rehashed plenty of times in HN comments. [0] within margin of error
  - ca98am79 6y ago
    I don’t understand why people think this is true. I use it often with my business and it works great.
    - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
      What is the benefit for you or your customers? My assumptions: You may save a miniscule amount on transaction fees. For your customers It’s just a new hoop they have to jump. Does it worth it?
      - nlitened 6y ago
        If your customer is willing to spend BTC they own for your services, and you’re willing to exchange your services for some amount of BTC — then it’s very straightforward, zero extra hoops to jump. Imagine now your customer is in a non-US country, and you are in another non-US country with another currency. Using USD wire transfer is jumping through hoops in this context, and might not always be fast, cheap, or possible at all with some pairs of countries.
        logifail 6y ago
        > If your customer is willing to spend BTC they own for your services[..] In this scenario, would one's rate be set in BTC, or fiat? I'm struggling to understand how a (non-crypto) business could want to hire a contractor at - let's say - 0.016 BTC/day, then watch the real (fiat) cost of that rate change value as the crypto markets move. "We hired a contractor at what was $100/day but right now it's costing us $1000/day because we agreed to fix her rate in BTC" ? Isn't this essentially like agreeing to pay someone in gold, or any other random commodity?
echelon 6y ago
Yesterday someone asked for me to pay them in Bitcoin rather than PayPal/CashApp. I'm kind of at a loss for how to do this...
- gzer0 6y ago
  You can send, receive and even buy Bitcoin with fiat with CashApp after you go through their KYC procedures within the app. [1] https://cash.app/bitcoin https://cash.app/bitcoin
- opportune 6y ago
  If you had said this 6 years ago I would have laughed, now I'm just sad at how bastardized this project has become. You know you can just... use a bitcoin wallet and do an on-chain transfer?
  - ImprovedSilence 6y ago
    You do know a lot lot lot of people would still be at a loss when it comes to doing what you describe in your last sentence.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    As a Canadian, there's basically no fast and _safe_ way to turn _serious_ amounts CAD into BTC without using a large exchange. Given the choice, I would immediately choose the option where I can pay in CAD and not BTC.
dwighttk 6y ago
Coinbase tells me there are no fees for crypto to crypto conversion, just when I initially buy crypto with cash. What does a decentralized exchange give me that beats that?
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  There are fees for every exchange, not sure where you saw the no fees part.
  - dwighttk 6y ago
    Do you mean they give me a slightly worse exchange rate than I could get somewhere else? The “fee” line when I do an exchange is $0.00
    - 3np 6y ago
      They make money off the spread on exchanges. Exact same principle as Forex “no fees” - it’s the difference between buy/sell rates. On the OTC side (which I guess you’re referring to?, CB sets their own spread , which makes it more akin to a fee. Even if CB is technically correct saying “0 fee”, they can still charge any price they want for buying vs selling.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  > What does a decentralized exchange give me that beats that? Owning the actual asset and not just an IOU
  - ravenstine 6y ago
    Doesn't Coinbase give you a wallet? What am I missing?
    - pta2002 6y ago
      You don't have the private keys. If coinbase loses them, you're out of money. Possibly. They're insured supposedly, but if you have your own private keys then the only entity you have to deal with in this case is yourself (this can be both a positive and a negative, depending on how careful you are)
fastball 6y ago
As others mentioned you're forgetting an economy which just uses crypto as the means of exchange, which for many has always been the long term goal. But you're also forgetting P2P crypto marketplaces like LocalCryptos[1], which (for Ethereum) allows you to have smart contract escrow and therefore the middle-man is only really required in the case of disputes. I personally have transacted > $100k with LocalEthereum, not once having an issue with a trade, and most settling in under 30min. [1] https://localcryptos.com/ https://localcryptos.com/
- jacques_chester 6y ago
  > As others mentioned you're forgetting an economy which just uses crypto as the means of exchange, which for many has always been the long term goal. Taxes are owed in income or capital gains, whatever form that income or capital takes, but taxes can only paid in legal tender. Until the IRS et al hang out a wallet address for payments you will still need to touch the ordinary financial economy.
  - fastball 6y ago
    A good number of people (in the US at least) legally pay no taxes every year. So it's hypothetically possible to live entirely within crypto (legally) already. But yes, that was more talking about the future. That is the matter at hand, after all – Coinbase's future (or lack thereof).
    - ImprovedSilence 6y ago
      A good number of that good number of people that dont pay taxes are children that dont participate in the economy first hand.
      - fastball 6y ago
        I'm not talking about children...
        6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
opportune 6y ago
There are p2p market places where you can exchange regular currency for crypto too (with a huge benefit that you actually own it from day one).
hi5eyes 6y ago
bisq and p2p exchanges exist but yeah buying from miners/mining is the safest way to get into crypto
- sprash 6y ago
  Bisq is surprisingly smooth if you want to exchange fiat to crypto without intermediate centralized exchange. Great to see a solid implementation of colored bitcoins in the wild with great UX.
jhanschoo 6y ago
I'd also add on that Coinbase is in a position to build payment features (e.g. chargebacks) a la Paypal for transactions within their platform, that a DEX cannot provide.

noman-land 6y ago

Don't forget working for it by doing stuff and receiving payment in them. That's my personal philosophical favorite.

littlestymaar 6y ago
True, though in practice “stuff” means “drug dealing”. \s
- samatman 6y ago
  It's fairly normal to receive payment in cybercoins if you're working for a company in the space. At least it was in the ICO era.
  - tyre 6y ago
    Yep. And then you can go spend them on
    - cachvico 6y ago
      USD
    - vmception 6y ago
      Farmville Iykyk
- vmception 6y ago
  yes, if you don’t have marketable skills there are artificially crippled growth industries involving drugs or your body that isn’t new with crypto
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- de6u99er 6y ago
  Coffeeshops here in NL only accept either cash or plastic.
  - smeej 6y ago
    There's already an entire industry growing up around enabling cryptocurrencies to be spent using traditional payment rails too, though, for those who don't want to see their governments print away the value of their money. Coinbase itself has a debit card that deducts directly from your crypto balance and allows you to swipe the card anywhere that normally takes Visa. They're even a card issuer for Visa in their own right, so they don't have to do it through partner banks.[0] Spending crypto is easy, whether the vendor opts into using it or not, so if you do get paid in it, it's easy to use. [0] https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-becomes-direct-visa-card-issuer-with-principal-membership https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-becomes-direct-visa-...
    - imtringued 6y ago
      >for those who don't want to see their governments print away the value of their money. The sad reality is that governments fail to do so. The irony behind your comment is that if they could, they would have stopped a long time ago.
      - smeej 6y ago
        I think we must be talking past each other or something. The purchasing power of every single fiat currency has trended down since the elimination of hard money standards, so as far as I can tell, every single government is printing away the value of its money. I don't see how that's "failing to do so" if "so" refers to "printing away the value of their money"?
chii 6y ago
and yet, almost nobody does this. Because it's impractical so far. I would look forward to the day when it does become practical, but i cannot see when that may be.
- jchw 6y ago
  It’s not that unfathomable, it’s just not something you’re about to get in place of a direct deposit any time soon. I’ve seen internet artists and musicians offer to take commission payment in crypto before. Assuming the ecological issues of cryptocurrencies are possible to sort out, this kind of peer-to-peer usage feels nearly ideal, especially when many smaller businesses have trust issues with internet peer to peer payment providers such as PayPal.
mdoms 6y ago
No one wants to pay you for legal above-board work in bitcoin[0] because bitcoin is not a useful currency (for reasons that have been rehashed plenty of times in HN comments. [0] within margin of error
- ca98am79 6y ago
  I don’t understand why people think this is true. I use it often with my business and it works great.
  - faeyanpiraat 6y ago
    What is the benefit for you or your customers? My assumptions: You may save a miniscule amount on transaction fees. For your customers It’s just a new hoop they have to jump. Does it worth it?
    - nlitened 6y ago
      If your customer is willing to spend BTC they own for your services, and you’re willing to exchange your services for some amount of BTC — then it’s very straightforward, zero extra hoops to jump. Imagine now your customer is in a non-US country, and you are in another non-US country with another currency. Using USD wire transfer is jumping through hoops in this context, and might not always be fast, cheap, or possible at all with some pairs of countries.
      - logifail 6y ago
        > If your customer is willing to spend BTC they own for your services[..] In this scenario, would one's rate be set in BTC, or fiat? I'm struggling to understand how a (non-crypto) business could want to hire a contractor at - let's say - 0.016 BTC/day, then watch the real (fiat) cost of that rate change value as the crypto markets move. "We hired a contractor at what was $100/day but right now it's costing us $1000/day because we agreed to fix her rate in BTC" ? Isn't this essentially like agreeing to pay someone in gold, or any other random commodity?

echelon 6y ago

Yesterday someone asked for me to pay them in Bitcoin rather than PayPal/CashApp. I'm kind of at a loss for how to do this...

gzer0 6y ago
You can send, receive and even buy Bitcoin with fiat with CashApp after you go through their KYC procedures within the app. [1] https://cash.app/bitcoin https://cash.app/bitcoin
opportune 6y ago
If you had said this 6 years ago I would have laughed, now I'm just sad at how bastardized this project has become. You know you can just... use a bitcoin wallet and do an on-chain transfer?
- ImprovedSilence 6y ago
  You do know a lot lot lot of people would still be at a loss when it comes to doing what you describe in your last sentence.
- dleslie 6y ago
  As a Canadian, there's basically no fast and _safe_ way to turn _serious_ amounts CAD into BTC without using a large exchange. Given the choice, I would immediately choose the option where I can pay in CAD and not BTC.

dwighttk 6y ago

Coinbase tells me there are no fees for crypto to crypto conversion, just when I initially buy crypto with cash. What does a decentralized exchange give me that beats that?

rawtxapp 6y ago
There are fees for every exchange, not sure where you saw the no fees part.
- dwighttk 6y ago
  Do you mean they give me a slightly worse exchange rate than I could get somewhere else? The “fee” line when I do an exchange is $0.00
  - 3np 6y ago
    They make money off the spread on exchanges. Exact same principle as Forex “no fees” - it’s the difference between buy/sell rates. On the OTC side (which I guess you’re referring to?, CB sets their own spread , which makes it more akin to a fee. Even if CB is technically correct saying “0 fee”, they can still charge any price they want for buying vs selling.
hanniabu 6y ago
> What does a decentralized exchange give me that beats that? Owning the actual asset and not just an IOU
- ravenstine 6y ago
  Doesn't Coinbase give you a wallet? What am I missing?
  - pta2002 6y ago
    You don't have the private keys. If coinbase loses them, you're out of money. Possibly. They're insured supposedly, but if you have your own private keys then the only entity you have to deal with in this case is yourself (this can be both a positive and a negative, depending on how careful you are)

fastball 6y ago

As others mentioned you're forgetting an economy which just uses crypto as the means of exchange, which for many has always been the long term goal. But you're also forgetting P2P crypto marketplaces like LocalCryptos[1], which (for Ethereum) allows you to have smart contract escrow and therefore the middle-man is only really required in the case of disputes. I personally have transacted > $100k with LocalEthereum, not once having an issue with a trade, and most settling in under 30min. [1] https://localcryptos.com/ https://localcryptos.com/

jacques_chester 6y ago
> As others mentioned you're forgetting an economy which just uses crypto as the means of exchange, which for many has always been the long term goal. Taxes are owed in income or capital gains, whatever form that income or capital takes, but taxes can only paid in legal tender. Until the IRS et al hang out a wallet address for payments you will still need to touch the ordinary financial economy.
- fastball 6y ago
  A good number of people (in the US at least) legally pay no taxes every year. So it's hypothetically possible to live entirely within crypto (legally) already. But yes, that was more talking about the future. That is the matter at hand, after all – Coinbase's future (or lack thereof).
  - ImprovedSilence 6y ago
    A good number of that good number of people that dont pay taxes are children that dont participate in the economy first hand.
    - fastball 6y ago
      I'm not talking about children...
      - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

opportune 6y ago

There are p2p market places where you can exchange regular currency for crypto too (with a huge benefit that you actually own it from day one).

hi5eyes 6y ago

bisq and p2p exchanges exist but yeah buying from miners/mining is the safest way to get into crypto

sprash 6y ago
Bisq is surprisingly smooth if you want to exchange fiat to crypto without intermediate centralized exchange. Great to see a solid implementation of colored bitcoins in the wild with great UX.

jhanschoo 6y ago

I'd also add on that Coinbase is in a position to build payment features (e.g. chargebacks) a la Paypal for transactions within their platform, that a DEX cannot provide.