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Buy USDC on Coinbase, withdraw to personal wallet, now you can use on dex. Or that’s what I do. I pay all my taxes and I pay a lot of them.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
This works but it's also specifically not using the dex (decentralized exchange, for anyone confused) to exchange fiat / crypto in either direction. Coinbase is doing that.
- monero-xmr 4y ago
  Yes but the benefits of dexes, specifically the ability to earn fees by being a liquidity provider (LP) in an automatic market maker pool (AMM) are very useful. You can maintain your exposure to assets and not need to maintain a trading bot with all of its risks and still earn fees.
- saurik 4y ago
  But that relegates the centralized exchange into the position of being nothing more than a "fiat on-ramp", and potentially literally nothing more than a trivial wrapper around Circle (in the case of Coinbase and USDC), which effectively undermines their business model of operating the whole exchange apparatus. (Hell: does Coinbase even make any money at all if you deposit USD and withdraw USDC? I think they don't have deposit fees in general, do the USD<>USDC 1:1, and then offer free withdrawals on USDC due to some fancy new "gasless" withdrawal mechanism Circle came up with.) Regardless, the point being made in the comment upthread wasn't "you will never need a centralized entity ever again": that was a total strawman. It wasn't even that you wouldn't want any centralized exchanges! It was merely that the "long tail" of random exchanges who specialize in listing more random tokens is effectively dead as who would bother with all that trouble to navigate all the red tape--particularly to operate in the United States--to support and vet these tokens when every token ever can be made available on a decentralized exchange. You might thereby still want a handful of the largest exchanges... but do you really need Bittrex enough for them to make enough money to put much effort into existing?
  - quanticle 4y ago
    But that relegates the centralized exchange into the position of being nothing more than a "fiat on-ramp" That's actually a pretty profitable business. "If you want to interact in any way with crypto, you either have to go through Coinbase or some shady black market crypto dealer," is actually great news for Coinbase.
    - saurik 4y ago
      I mean, you cut off the rest of that paragraph ;P. Sure: it sounds like maybe a reasonable opportunity for Circle, but Coinbase would effectively be adding no value anymore and would have to attempt to charge (a lot, if they wanted to have any hope of making anywhere near as much money as their current business model) for something that not only are they currently doing for free but which they aren't really doing in the first place (as they are just a thin wrapper around Circle). The only reason Circle isn't bothering with this market is seemingly that they didn't want to deal directly with retail and they don't really have to because Coinbase was willing to integrate it for free... but like, Paxos (which is also regulated) does deal with individual users, so there is no reason Circle can't in a world where Coinbase is otherwise irrelevant. (The reality, though, is that there is still benefit for traders to having centralized exchanges due to their limit order book model, so I wouldn't discount Coinbase just yet, anyway ;P.)
      - quanticle 4y ago
        The only reason Circle isn't bothering with this market is seemingly that they didn't want to deal directly with retail That's actually a really good reason! An analogous situation is with e.g. Robinhood and Citadel. In one sense Robinhood is "just" a retail onramp. All their trades go through Citadel. So in theory Citadel could, at any moment, just cut off Robinhood by allowing retail investors to trade directly with them. But I'm willing to bet that they won't, because dealing with retail investors is a hassle. You have to have customer service. You have to deal with additional regulation. You have to deal with random social media firestorms. It's a mess. I don't blame Citadel for leaving it to Robinhood to deal with these issues and I wouldn't blame Circle for leaving it to Coinbase to deal with the retail issues surrounding crypto.
latchkey 4y ago
This is what my friend was doing, until CB just locked his account after making two $10k USDC purchases. He was fully KYC'd. No warning or reason given, just "convert back to USD and withdraw your money please, that's our final answer".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago

This works but it's also specifically not using the dex (decentralized exchange, for anyone confused) to exchange fiat / crypto in either direction. Coinbase is doing that.

monero-xmr 4y ago
Yes but the benefits of dexes, specifically the ability to earn fees by being a liquidity provider (LP) in an automatic market maker pool (AMM) are very useful. You can maintain your exposure to assets and not need to maintain a trading bot with all of its risks and still earn fees.
saurik 4y ago
But that relegates the centralized exchange into the position of being nothing more than a "fiat on-ramp", and potentially literally nothing more than a trivial wrapper around Circle (in the case of Coinbase and USDC), which effectively undermines their business model of operating the whole exchange apparatus. (Hell: does Coinbase even make any money at all if you deposit USD and withdraw USDC? I think they don't have deposit fees in general, do the USD<>USDC 1:1, and then offer free withdrawals on USDC due to some fancy new "gasless" withdrawal mechanism Circle came up with.) Regardless, the point being made in the comment upthread wasn't "you will never need a centralized entity ever again": that was a total strawman. It wasn't even that you wouldn't want any centralized exchanges! It was merely that the "long tail" of random exchanges who specialize in listing more random tokens is effectively dead as who would bother with all that trouble to navigate all the red tape--particularly to operate in the United States--to support and vet these tokens when every token ever can be made available on a decentralized exchange. You might thereby still want a handful of the largest exchanges... but do you really need Bittrex enough for them to make enough money to put much effort into existing?
- quanticle 4y ago
  But that relegates the centralized exchange into the position of being nothing more than a "fiat on-ramp" That's actually a pretty profitable business. "If you want to interact in any way with crypto, you either have to go through Coinbase or some shady black market crypto dealer," is actually great news for Coinbase.
  - saurik 4y ago
    I mean, you cut off the rest of that paragraph ;P. Sure: it sounds like maybe a reasonable opportunity for Circle, but Coinbase would effectively be adding no value anymore and would have to attempt to charge (a lot, if they wanted to have any hope of making anywhere near as much money as their current business model) for something that not only are they currently doing for free but which they aren't really doing in the first place (as they are just a thin wrapper around Circle). The only reason Circle isn't bothering with this market is seemingly that they didn't want to deal directly with retail and they don't really have to because Coinbase was willing to integrate it for free... but like, Paxos (which is also regulated) does deal with individual users, so there is no reason Circle can't in a world where Coinbase is otherwise irrelevant. (The reality, though, is that there is still benefit for traders to having centralized exchanges due to their limit order book model, so I wouldn't discount Coinbase just yet, anyway ;P.)
    - quanticle 4y ago
      The only reason Circle isn't bothering with this market is seemingly that they didn't want to deal directly with retail That's actually a really good reason! An analogous situation is with e.g. Robinhood and Citadel. In one sense Robinhood is "just" a retail onramp. All their trades go through Citadel. So in theory Citadel could, at any moment, just cut off Robinhood by allowing retail investors to trade directly with them. But I'm willing to bet that they won't, because dealing with retail investors is a hassle. You have to have customer service. You have to deal with additional regulation. You have to deal with random social media firestorms. It's a mess. I don't blame Citadel for leaving it to Robinhood to deal with these issues and I wouldn't blame Circle for leaving it to Coinbase to deal with the retail issues surrounding crypto.

latchkey 4y ago

This is what my friend was doing, until CB just locked his account after making two $10k USDC purchases. He was fully KYC'd. No warning or reason given, just "convert back to USD and withdraw your money please, that's our final answer".

deleted 4y ago
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