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USV Dumps 100% of Coinbase Stock
- 3327 6y agoUsv takes fireexit.
- arthurcolle 6y ago"Democratize finance until you can get billions of dollars instantly." EDIT: I enjoy AVC.com, I'm kind of poking fun at potential naysayers
- kwonkicker 6y agoWhat does it mean for a layman?!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- max_ 6y agoTo some, it raises questions about the fundamentals of the business[0] [0]:https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1383860897999851521?s=19 https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1383860897999851521?s=19
- vidarh 6y agoMake sure to read the replies to this one, as the tweet you have linked to seems to massively misrepresent the sales in question (presenting them as proportions of these peoples total holdings, rather than the proportion of the shares they'd registered to sell) Compared this, from the quoted tweet: > On the same day #Coinbase CEO @brian_armstrong was on @CNBC publicly pumping COIN, he was privately dumping 71% of his shares. with [1]: > CEO Brian Armstrong sold 749,999 shares in three batches at prices ranging from $381 to $410.40 per for total proceeds of $291.8 million, according to one filing. While a Coinbase representative declined to comment due to the company being in a so-called “quiet period,” based on filings made before the listing, it would indicate Armstrong sold about 1.5% of his stake. [EDIT: I'll note that both Taleb and the person he quoted have had their mistake pointed out to them and have just ignored it, which frankly is a pretty awful look] [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coinbase-ceo-sold-291-8m-235052357.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coinbase-ceo-sold-291-8m-2350...
- cinntaile 6y agoUnfortunately he is quite unpleasant on Twitter, except for when he talks about food or language. Disagreements usually seem to end up in being blocked by him.
- max_ 6y agoYou are going off-topic. The case in point is USV selling all their stake in a company and what that means for the business. I didn't say anything about the CEO
- vidarh 6y agoUSV isn't selling their stake either At least nowhere near all of it. As the filing itself says, a lot of is being disposed of to their LPs (the owners of the capital in the fund). This is normal practice when a fund is preparing to wind down. The headline here is flat out wrong. You then linked to a tweet which spread further misinformation.
- jcims 6y agoThis and the Brian Armstrong story seem to be intentional or ignorant mischaracterizations of what is happening.
- CodesInChaos 6y agoThere are two very different possible reasons: 1. They believe the price will drop and want to sell before that happens. If this is the case, it raises the question why they think the company is overpriced since, as somebody involved with the company for a long time, they might have insights the public missed. 2. They want to cash out for reasons unrelated to the company. For example because their investment model is to invest in a private company, wait until it goes public, and then sell.
- vidarh 6y ago3. They're a time-limited fund that needs to dispose of assets to their LPs (limited partners) before the fund closes down. They can do so by selling the shares, or they can do so by transferring the shares to their LPs. In this case as you can see in the footnotes, as a substantial proportion of these shares where transferred to their LPs, not sold.
- CodesInChaos 6y agoI consider that part of option 2.
- KoftaBob 6y agoIt's the example you gave in #2, that's how VC firms generally work.
- PanosJee 6y agoIt's a fund with a 10 year period. The need to exit 100%.
- leugim 6y agoCoinbase was a direct listing. The only shares available were the ones already owned by employees/investors.
- npad 6y agoThey have LPs. LPs need an exit.
- jcliff 6y agoall of those transactions for $0 are actually distributions to the partners. the shares aren't necessarily sold.
- vmurthy 6y agoFootnotes are revealing. Here's the first of 7. FYI rest 6 are similar looking : "1. On April 14, 2021, Union Square Ventures 2012 Fund, LP ("USV 2012 Fund") distributed, for no consideration, 7,702,041 shares of the Issuer's Class A Common Stock to its limited partners and to Union Square 2012 GP, L.L.C., the general partner of USV 2012 Fund, representing each such partner's pro rata interest in such shares. On the same date, Union Square 2012 GP, L.L.C. distributed, for no consideration, the shares it received in the distribution to its members, representing each such member's pro rata interest in such shares"
- jrh206 6y agoI don’t understand what that means. Could somebody explain in plain English, please?
- bidirectional 6y agoIt just says the fund distributed shares to their partners and holding company, and the holding company further distributed shares to their members.
- bidirectional 6y agoWhat exactly is revealing about that?
- elefanten 6y agoIt tells a different story than “USV dumps 100% of Coinbase”
- dagaci 6y agoFYI: Union Square Ventures bought into coinbase at $0.20 per share. If they sold for around $300 then thats a gain of around 150,000.00% (in the same period if they had bought bitcoin for $128 in 2013 and sold for $60,000 that would only be and a gain of 47,000%) Other interesting USV exits: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/union-square-ventures/recent_investments https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/union-square-venture...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thomasgo 6y agoLet your winners ride...
- jack_riminton 6y agoHuh? They’re a VC, they exist solely to exit companies once they’ve made a return
- AlchemistCamp 6y agoThis editorialized title makes it easy to quickly arrive at a misunderstanding of the situation.
- floatingatoll 6y agoEmail the mods using the footer contact link and ask them to return the title to the original, uneditorialized one.
- jcims 6y agoThere’s an emerging pattern of this relative to Coinbase. I just can’t tell if it’s schadenfreude or scaremongering.
- JUNGLEISMASSIVE 6y agoGotta cover the shorts somehow.
- dempseye 6y agoThere is a contingent on HN that hates anybody doing well with crypto.
- panarky 6y agoThat contingent consists of those who have been wrong about crypto for 8 years, so to acknowledge their error now would require them to account for how their ideology and weltanschauung are at in conflict with the world as it actually exists.
- solarkraft 6y agoDo you mean cynicism against Coinbase? To be honest I see editorialized titles as an emerging pattern in general (which is neither definitely good nor bad in my view, often times it removes clickbait or points out what's remarkable about the linked page).
- 6y ago
- austenallred 6y agoThe title is wrong. This is simply a technicality. If USV moves the shares to another fund or distributes them back to their investors (LPs) they would appear here. This does not mean that they “dumped” 100% of their shares.
- koheripbal 6y agoWait... What is the difference between selling to give back to your investors vs selling to do anything else. It's still selling. When you sell any stock, it means you believe your future appreciation is going to be greater elsewhere. If investors thought there was another 150,000% gain to be had here, they wouldn't sell.
- austenallred 6y agoNo, if you give back to your investors they may still hold the stock; it’s up to them what to do. You’re just transferring the stock from your account to theirs.
- vidarh 6y agoOn top of that, funds like these are usually running for a set amount of time. One of the USV funds in question here is 9 years old and likely have a 10 year horizon. They're well into the phase where they're seeking to figure out whether to seek a sale or do what they did here and hand the shares to their limited partners.
- sdan 6y agoeasier interface to sift through info from this form: http://openinsider.com/search?q=coin http://openinsider.com/search?q=coin
- KoftaBob 6y agoThey're a VC firm, not a hedge fund. VCs don't hold onto stock long term, they exist solely to exit, give a share of returns to LPs and partners, and use the next fund they raise to invest in the next batch of companies.
- sp1ceman 6y agoI like the simplicity of their website: https://www.usv.com https://www.usv.com single sentence thesis explanations with a list of investments.