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by mrb 1894 days ago
«No retail investor has accounts directly with the NYSE»

That's a good point. So a fairer comparison would be to compare Coinbase to the market cap of NYSE ($66B) + a stock broker who has roughly the same userbase as Coinbase. For example Schwab ($127B) has about half as many accounts as Coinbase. So NYSE+Schwab = $193B. Suddenly Coinbase valued at $100B while having twice as many accounts and trading fees per dollar transacted ten-fold higher than NYSE+Schwab seems like a bargain... !
1 comments
rgifford 1894 days ago
Why stop there? Let's add in Visa too. If we're gonna add Visa, let's add Mastercard. What about banks though? Maybe we add in JP Morgan?

If Coinbase has network effects, they're incredibly weak. I'll drop my Coinbase account tomorrow if I find a cheaper, safe place to buy coins. Schwab on the other hand has inarguably the best checking account out there, incredible customer service, and a great brokerage.

Coinbase is in a race to the bottom and they're gonna get smashed against the floor by established, defensible financial services. Grandma ain't making a Coinbase checking account. That's my thinking anyways.

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mrb 1894 days ago
«Coinbase is in a race to the bottom»

90%+ of industries are. It's what capitalism is all about. It's not unique to Coinbase.

«Grandma ain't making a Coinbase checking account»

She already did. They have 56 million verified user accounts. Twice more than Schwab. A lot of grandmas in this user base :)

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rgifford 1893 days ago
> 90%+ of industries are

This is a very simple understanding of economics that's ~100 years outdated. Most of the world's largest companies sell goods and services with relatively inelastic demand and/or significant barriers to market entry. What IP does Coinbase have that makes their service/good inelastic? Tomorrow when all coins are supported on Robinhood, Cash app, and Venmo, why use Coinbase? COIN investors haven't given me a good answer here. It just comes off delusional to me.

> They have 56 million verified user accounts.

This is a deceptive number. Coinbase has ~6M monthly active users at a time when crypto grew in value 10x. Average account duration is, I'm sure, very low. Schwab has ~30M active brokerage accounts. These are actual, comparable numbers. 56M is pretty much anyone that made an account with a linked email, no?

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