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Coinbase targets financially vulnerable young adults
- b2bsaas00 3y agoIt’s like online gambling with less regulations.
- Beijinger 3y agoThere is a crypto coin that I like and I wanted to buy some on an exchange. All these exchanges are 1. Super scamy, often in dubious jurisdictions 2. From the layout obviously targeted at very young people 3. The appearance, interactions and handling resembles more an online casino.
- sneak 3y agoNone of the online gambling I engage in is regulated in any way. Coinbase is pretty heavily regulated.
- EternalUsenet 3y agoAnd the sky is blue. News at 11. But in all seriousness, Coinbase is not a particularly ethical company. I still won’t forgive them for how they pulled off the insider trading and boosting of Litecoin, which made Charlie Lee rich off the backs of the peanut gallery. EDIT: for those with seemingly limited memories - Charlie Lee worked for Coinbase at one point, and was able to successfully get his shitcoin (which was basically a hastily tweaked bitcoin) accepted for off ramping to fiat. Sounds like a direct conflict of interest, and I’m surprised Coinbase wasn’t investigated for this.
- latchkey 3y agoYou're getting downvoted, but your post is partially correct. You missed the best part though. Charlie Lee sold all of his tokens at the top and then told everyone he sold the top, causing the top to not be so top any more. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/litecoin-founder-charlie-lee-sells-his-holdings-in-the-cryptocurrency.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/litecoin-founder-charlie-lee...
- EternalUsenet 3y agoReally was one of the best heists he ever pulled off in broad daylight. Probably should have left Coinbase in handcuffs, but I digress.
- latchkey 3y agoBest part... he keeps pumping it on X... the grift never ends.
- rideontime 3y agoThese ads really are deeply cynical. "The whole system is fucked, but if you're lucky, you can win enough of other people's money on the crypto lottery that you'll be able to escape it"
- injeolmi_love 3y agoCrypto is not zero sum since new value is created.
- dpflan 3y agoYes, FTX knows a lot about value creation from thin air.
- throwaway29812 3y agoand destroyed ..
- WalterSear 3y agoSure. Lots of new bridges to sell - on the blockchain.
- desert_rue 3y agoIt’s not the expanding supply of Bitcoin that creates value; it is the people putting money in at higher rates.
- robertlagrant 3y ago> Crypto is not zero sum since new value is created. I'll bite, because I struggle to find people who think this. What value is created?
- logicchains 3y agoAll the people who managed to buy drugs safely without risking being robbed by some shady street dealer?
- outside415 3y agocoinbase made me a lot of money last cycle. don't play a pvp game for money if you don't have an edge.
- ethanbond 3y agoMy edge: the Fed's discretion
- outside415 3y agoan understanding of global macro/liquidity cycles is indeed an edge :)
- mikhael28 3y agoUnderrated reply. Thinking of crypto as a PVP game makes a lot of sense as a mental model.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TheBlight 3y ago>But there are questions about Coinbase's commitment to racial justice. Concern troll political hit-piece.
- vore 3y agoOne Black employee, cited in the report, said that “her manager suggested in front of colleagues that she was dealing drugs and carrying a gun.” Another Black employee said that a co-worker “broadly described Black employees as less capable” during a recruiting meeting. The company told employees that the story painted "an inaccurate picture.” Is it really a concern troll political hit-piece, though? These seem like pretty concretely bad and racist things. Also, way to pick a single line you don't like out of an article that enumerates a whole bunch of issues with what Coinbase is doing.
- TheBlight 3y agoConsider the title of another recent article from the same publication: "10 alarming things Trump has promised to do in a second term"
- vore 3y agoI think you should spell out your implication.
- TheBlight 3y agoThe publication seems biased to a certain political persuasion.
- megabless123 3y agobeing biased against racism and authoritarianism is good
- infamouscow 3y ago
- bcrosby95 3y ago> prey on the financial anxieties of Gen Z and other young adults > cable television ????
- rolobio 3y agoThey live in their parents' homes. Its not like they could afford cable themselves.
- tshirthoodie 3y agoFinancially vulnerable young adults are a HUGE demographic. All companies should be targeting them, especially as an opportunity to "do good."
- moron123 3y agoCoinbase may not be the best representative of crypto, but the philosophy and technology still has a lot of potential. All it takes is one more breakthrough. We saw it with AI. When the chatgpt of crypto comes around, it will sweep the world.
- andrewljohnson 3y agoIf not Coinbase, then who?
- jankyxenon 3y agoI don't really know what the LLM of cryptocurrency would mean. With AI the goalposts are very easy to understand. What is a better crypto? Are we waiting for, some novel computational model? If its use-cases, cryptocurrency is more than a decade old. You'd think that someone would have figured it out by now.
- Zenul_Abidin 3y agoThere is a reason why it's called crypto, because it's named after cryptography, it has no use for AI.
- throwaway29812 3y ago> When the chatgpt of crypto comes around, it will sweep the world. You mean when a consumer facing product that actually has value is launched?
- snide 3y agoI can't wait to sing my region's corporate anthem before sporting events just like Rollerball[1] foretold. [1] Rollerball is kind of a hidden dystopian film. More people should watch it.
- hyggetrold 3y agoThey could have been taking a swipe at IBM who already had this: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_IA1.html https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_IA1.htm... Lift up our proud and loyal voices, Sing out in accents strong and true, With hearts and hands to you devoted, And inspiration ever new; Your ties of friendship cannot sever, Your glory time will never stem, We will toast a name that lives forever, Hail to the I.B.M. Our voices swell in admiration; Of T. J. Watson proudly sing; He'll ever be our inspiration, To him our voices loudly ring; The I.B.M. will sing the praises, Of him who brought us world acclaim, As the volume of our chorus raises, Hail to his honored name.
- Ancapistani 3y ago... as opposed to targeting only "qualified investors", thereby shutting out the vast majority of interested parties from participating? Yes, it's risky. That doesn't mean it should be restricted only to the wealthy.
- ska 3y agoRight, but the idea is to restrict to those financially sophisticated enough not to be taken for a ride. That after all is what the "qualified investor" concept is actually about, you either are sophisticated enough to know better or wealthy enough to survived not being so. Unfortunately there is no easy way to measure the former, so they take the easy out of something like 1mm liquid assets. Perhaps it should be a cert. instead?
- chowells 3y agoWhere does this bizarre idea come from? There aren't queues of high-quality companies just lining up for piddling investments from nobodies. If you can't provide them with enough money to be worth their time in lawyer's fees, vetting you as an investor, and accounting... no quality company is interested in you as their 36th investor. If you can provide them with enough money to make that worthwhile, you have enough to be an accredited investor. Scammers are very happy to take a piddling sum from a nobody, as that ensures you don't have the resources to go after them. And they don't need to vet you as an investor - the fact that you aren't invested in a high-quality company is all they need to know you're a mark. Accredited investor laws aren't about protecting you from risky investments. They're about protecting you from scams you lack the self-awareness to identify. And given that you can't see that, I'm betting that's a lot of scams.
- ethanbond 3y agoNo, as opposed to not marketing into financial anxiety
- exoverito 3y agoOf all the antagonisms for young adults, I would say an easy method to buy cryptocurrency and hedge against inflation is not one of them. The much more significant antagonist for financially vulnerable young adults is the Federal Reserve and its inflationary monetary policy that has priced many out of ever owning a home. Furthermore, the elite's industrial policy of offshoring manufacturing to China, deindustrializing the West, and high energy prices has done much more harm to the middle and working class than the volatility of crypto.
- dragontamer 3y ago> and hedge against inflation is not one of them BTC lost value through the great inflation and is only gaining value today now that inflation is down to 3%. Sounds like a pretty bad hedge against inflation. People need to stop repeating this lie. EDIT: If people need an inflation hedge, buy i-bonds first, and then TIPS after you max out. These are indexed against CPI, so the more inflation happens the more i-bonds/TIPS make.
- latchkey 3y agoYou act like BTC is only available in the US.
- kylebenzle 3y agoAnti-crypto people these days have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid the truth that Bitcoin (now called Bitcoin Cash) has worked perfectly for over a decade with almost no downside if you just buy slowly over time and hold/spend. Bitcoin Cash works great and has for over ten years.
- RGamma 3y agoSomeone wants to join SBF in prison.
- samketchup 3y agoCoinbase stock outperformed NVIDIA this year
- kneel 3y agoBitcoin is highly volatile yet safe in the long term. Dollars are stable and lose value over time. What are young people to do with their money? Real estate has a high cost of entry. Retirement accounts tie up their money until late age with rules that may change. Pensions are a thing of the past. Crypto for all its flaws is soaring, less boomer, and allows for ownership of wealth.
- wmf 3y agoInvest in the real economy using a normal brokerage account.
- latchkey 3y agoWhat is "the real economy"?
- xcv123 3y agoEquities
- latchkey 3y agoI didn't know Gensler had his own HN account! https://twitter.com/TheBTCTherapist/status/1735362730238882125 https://twitter.com/TheBTCTherapist/status/17353627302388821...
- xcv123 3y agoHuh? That link discusses the treasury market. Nothing to do with equities. Equities means shares in companies, which are what real economy is made of. The population collectively producing physical goods and services. Tangible real things, created by people doing actual work.
- kemotep 3y agoBitcoin is only now recovering to the prices it was a few years ago. In that same time, my investment account is up 15%. I would still be in the red if I didn’t go the boring route. So personally investing in Bitcoin would have lost me money. So I do not think you can blanket say doing one over the other is a clear choice. The day to day volatility of crypto is absolutely a concern for making any kind of financial planning.
- exabrial 3y agoI chuckled when I saw this. Definitely here for the crypto bros vs woke crowd.
- darth_avocado 3y ago> The ad identifies real issues in the modern economy around college debt, housing affordability, and the rising cost of raising a family. Maybe just focus on fixing the actual problems? How is this any different from Army recruiting? Or Draftkings ads on every sport channel? Or medical ads? Or insurance ads? Or basically everything marketing?
- fckgw 3y agoThose things are also bad, great point.
- miningape 3y agoIts literally the first thing you learn in sales (watching the wolf of wallstreet): create a problem - sell the solution.
- kipchak 3y agoEven better, sell something that is perceived to be a solution and the problem keeps existing. Ideally that then creates a new problem. See for example "Torches of Freedom".
- adolph 3y agoAll the substantive material indicates normal financial product marketing. Why pick on Coinbase? This is answered in the last three paragraphs: > But there are questions about Coinbase's commitment to racial justice.
- jmyeet 3y agoPeople become susceptible to scams and get-rich-quick schemes because of desperation or sometimes greed. But really it's desperation. The economic circumstances of many people is that they're living paycheck-to-paycheck and/or are drowning under a mountain of debt. They're often also beholden to the whims of landlords. People see no way out. This is really just the latest iteration of paycheck cashing, 1-800 personal loan lenders and the like. Sure, Coinbase shouldn't target such people. This requires government intervention (for all the libertarians out there). Ultimately though we're treating symptoms. The problem is capitalism. The unquenchable desire for ever-great profits leads to extracting every ounce of value from people so Jeff Bezos can have $200 billion instead of $100 billion.
- legitster 3y agoEveryone is a victim and everything you don't like is a victimizer.
- keiferski 3y agoIt’s maybe not entirely fair to compare crypto to gambling, but I do think it’s worth placing the rise of questionable crypto use cases in context with the increasing acceptance and legalization of gambling, especially online gambling. I remember when I was a kid growing up in the northeast, Atlantic City was still _a thing_ because gambling was not really legal anywhere else. That seems to have changed in the last decade or so and now online gambling and casinos are apparently an acceptable industry to have everywhere. What happened to change this?
- jadbox 3y agoAfaik, some clever gambling 'lite' gaming startups found a loophole in the current online gambling legal system (I don't remember how it worked exactly). At a time that states are struggling financially, they (the courts) turned a blind eye to the abuse of the system [see taxes and lobbyists]. Perhaps others know more details.
- keiferski 3y agoThis seems pretty relevant too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_Athletic_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...
- rsynnott 3y ago> But regardless of how much crypto is being purchased, users are typically charged an additional "spread fee"of 0.5%. ... Wait, is this correct?! Why does anyone use this? Like, you can buy delicious bitcoins through normal brokers, these days, right? And those don't usually charge 0.5% for, well, just about anything. > Purchasing crypto on Coinbase with a debit card triggers an additional fee of 3.99%. Funding your purchase with your bank account comes with a 1.49% fee. ... Eh? This all seems so _wildly_ out of whack with conventional discount broker behaviour, it's hard to understand why anyone uses it if this is accurate.
- lacoolj 3y ago"The ads, which are on heavy rotation on cable television ..." I have literally never seen a coinbase video ad in my life. Anywhere.
- nicholasbraker 3y agoAnother nail in the "We need retail money desperately to keep our ponzi-schemes viable" coffin. Volume and influx of money in crypto is at an all-time low, so without any viable use case Coinbase must be really desperate..