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Blotto

Blotto 23,538

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I havent paid much attention to any of these outfits like Celsius, because I figured they were at best highly susceptible to failure (in a crypto crash), or at worst a straight up ponzi scheme. Paying out 3-8% interest on BTC when banks were paying a fraction of that seemed to put it squarely in the "too good to be true" category. Based on what little I did read this morning, people with their crypto in this outfit, should probably prepare for some no lube fucking.

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Celsius is effectively a bank for cryptocurrencies—though it’s not regulated as one. Users deposit their Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Tether and receive weekly interest payments. But the rates Celsius pays are tens or hundreds of times higher than what conventional banks pay on savings accounts. Its assets more than quadrupled last year, to $25 billion. Mashinsky tells his users—he calls them “Celsians” and says there are more than a million of them—that with Celsius they can stick it to greedy banks and help the less fortunate, and they shower him with praise for helping them make enough money to pay off their debts or even quit their jobs. Last year, Celsius raised an additional $750 million from investors including Canadian pension fund Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec. The valuation of the funding round—about $3 billion—made Mashinsky a billionaire on paper.

I presume the "less fortunate" Mashinsky was referring to was himself. 

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gyroprotagonist

gyroprotagonist 2,594

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lots of anecdotal stories from people rec'ing crypto to their families over the Thanksgiving break when ETH was > $4K.  yeesh.  I am usually pretty reluctant to try and on-board friends or family to crypto/NFTs because of the volatility and also i don't see it as a 'set and forget' type investment.  

ETH sub $1200 now.  

I thought BTC at $22K might be a good buy range (for alts) but not touching anything right now.

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Blotto

Blotto 23,538

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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc said on Tuesday it would slash 18% of its workforce, or about 1,100 jobs, to cut costs amid the financial market downturn.

The cryptocurrency market has been roiled by extreme volatility due to economic and geopolitical uncertainties such as rising inflation and the impact of Ukraine war, with bitcoin tumbling as much as 14% on Monday after crypto lender Celsius Network froze withdrawals and transfers.

"We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year economic boom. A recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period," Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong said in a blogpost.

Fairly deep cut for a company that just IPO'd a year ago. 

 

 

Edited by Blotto
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Vegas64

Vegas64 676

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2 minutes ago, Blotto said:

Fairly deep cut for a company that just IPO'd a year ago. 

 

 

They 4x'd their team in 18 months and to get the talent in an historically tight labor market, they did it by paying anywhere from $200 upwards to $700k. The average Coinbase employee makes roughly $240k.

There is fat to be cut as we enter a crypto winter or recession or extended bear market or whatever we are calling this.

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gyroprotagonist

gyroprotagonist 2,594

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20 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

They 4x'd their team in 18 months and to get the talent in an historically tight labor market, they did it by paying anywhere from $200 upwards to $700k. The average Coinbase employee makes roughly $240k.

There is fat to be cut as we enter a crypto winter or recession or extended bear market or whatever we are calling this.

But are they cutting staff because they know regulations are coming that will squash some expected revenue streams?  or burden them with expensive compliance practices?

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Vegas64

Vegas64 676

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1 hour ago, gyroprotagonist said:

But are they cutting staff because they know regulations are coming that will squash some expected revenue streams?  or burden them with expensive compliance practices?

I think the CEO was fairly transparent in his note (have you read it? I'll link it here from the blog: https://blog.coinbase.com/a-message-from-coinbase-ceo-and-cofounder-brian-armstrong-578d76eedb12). They are cutting staff because their major source of revenue is trading revenue and the crypto winter tanks volume and velocity to where their revenue is greatly diminished.

We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year economic boom. A recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period. In past crypto winters, trading revenue (our largest revenue source) has declined significantly.

Edited by Vegas64
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Immaculate Vibes

Immaculate Vibes 114

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15 hours ago, htown85 said:

Seems like a good time to buy if you believe in it?

 

15 hours ago, Acropora said:

I bought more btc.  Didn't load up as much as I'd have liked before.  

Yes. Think back to how you wish you had bought more when it was 3-6k.

No need to rush, it will likely be 20-30k for a while. The key is consistency and staying engaged. 
 

I’m a broken record but I’d Rec staying with bitcoin. Luna/Terra and now Celsius are going to put even bigger regulatory target on defi and exchanges.  

Edited by Immaculate Vibes
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gyroprotagonist

gyroprotagonist 2,594

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1 hour ago, Vegas64 said:

I think the CEO was fairly transparent in his note (have you read it? I'll link it here from the blog: https://blog.coinbase.com/a-message-from-coinbase-ceo-and-cofounder-brian-armstrong-578d76eedb12). They are cutting staff because their major source of revenue is trading revenue and the crypto winter tanks volume and velocity to where their revenue is greatly diminished.

We appear to be entering a recession after a 10+ year economic boom. A recession could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period. In past crypto winters, trading revenue (our largest revenue source) has declined significantly.

ugh.  had a post that got lost in the ether.  but the CEO mentioned 'bets that did not pay' or something.  i think they failed big time on their NFT marketplace and not sure how much traction they are getting on their own wallet, so some their ventures also seemed to tank.  The swift cancellation of job offers and RIFing existing workers seems a little too quick to solely lay at the feet of a slowdown.  but that's just like, my opinion, man...

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Vegas64

Vegas64 676

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5 hours ago, Immaculate Vibes said:

 

Yes. Think back to how you wish you had bought more when it was 3-6k.

No need to rush, it will likely be 20-30k for a while. The key is consistency and staying engaged. 
 

I’m a broken record but I’d Rec staying with bitcoin. Luna/Terra and now Celsius are going to put even bigger regulatory target on defi and exchanges.  

And rightly so to the bolded.

I also agree that BTC is a good value buy at some point, if not exactly now.

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Immaculate Vibes

Immaculate Vibes 114

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19 minutes ago, Hefeweizen said:

I want my FDIC insurance on crypto!

No thanks. 
 

2 hours ago, Captainant said:

Wow what a great store of value!

 

1 hour ago, Hefeweizen said:

And a hedge against inflation!

It’s historically performed fairly well. 
 

1 hour ago, gyroprotagonist said:

need to start a 'dunk on crypto' thread, lol

bought a little ETH and SOL before the Fed news.  nothing crazy but a nice little 10-15% run.  sold half and set SL

Let them stay here. Helps to figure out public sentiment. 

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Blotto

Blotto 23,538

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On 6/14/2022 at 8:27 AM, Vegas64 said:

They 4x'd their team in 18 months and to get the talent in an historically tight labor market, they did it by paying anywhere from $200 upwards to $700k. The average Coinbase employee makes roughly $240k.

There is fat to be cut as we enter a crypto winter or recession or extended bear market or whatever we are calling this.

Here's an article I stumbled across on Insider that discusses their hiring binge

Quote

It was late 2021, and Coinbase, riding high from the crypto market's record year, was building an armada of customer-support agents for its budding trading-subscription product, Coinbase One, in addition to general live support. 

While crypto recruitment and compensation packages had made headlines for poaching top Wall Street and Silicon Valley execs and engineers, it wasn't just senior or technical hires who enjoyed above-market pay packages. 

One prospective agent did a double take at Coinbase's salary offer for what amounted to a typical customer-service role.

"When I got hired, I was like, 'Wait, what?' You're paying me how much to answer phones?" the former employee said of their $70,000 salary, which is nearly double the average annual salary of a call-center representative in the US, according to employment website Indeed.

"For what we did, they paid way too much and they hired too many people, honestly," the former employee, who requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak to the press, told Insider. 

And they weren't the only one on the firm's near-400 person Global Support Team to think Coinbase's compensation levels were untenable. 

Another former employee, who managed a team of customer-support agents, saw the signs when they helped build out the organization at the beginning of 2022 by hiring hundreds of employees. 

"We basically have what seems like a blank checkbook and that can't work," the former manager, who received a 40% pay bump when they ditched a financial-technology company to join Coinbase, recalled telling senior management during the recruitment period. 

"Eventually the chickens are going to come home to roost," the former manager said. 

Indeed, on June 14, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced in a blog post the company was laying off 18% of its staff, or roughly 1,100 employees. Both the customer-support agent and the manager were among those who were let go. 

As the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, Coinbase helped to drive, and benefited from, a surge in interest in crypto throughout the pandemic. Along the way, the firm attracted legions of top talent by offering exorbitant salaries and benefits, even by crypto and tech standards. 

But Coinbase employees who were recently laid off told Insider that, even if they didn't think job cuts would come as quickly or as drastically as they did, they felt tremors shaking Coinbase's business as the crypto industry began to falter this spring. The former employees requested anonymity in order to speak freely, but their identity is known to Insider.

In the post announcing the layoffs, Armstrong acknowledged the firm hired too many people amidst a booming crypto economy.

"While we tried our best to get this just right, in this case it is now clear to me that we over-hired," Armstrong said in the post. 

The company more-than quadrupled its headcount over the past 18 months, Armstrong noted.

"Our employee costs are too high to effectively manage this uncertain market," he added. 

A representative for Coinbase declined to comment for this story. 

Business was booming

Coinbase's business mirrored that of the broader crypto industry throughout the pandemic. The exchange went public in a blockbuster 2021 direct listing with its market cap shooting above $100 billion at one point. It was a signal that crypto — or at least the industry's biggest players — was here to stay.

The total volumes flowing through Coinbase surged from $80 billion in 2019 to $1.7 trillion in 2021, according to regulatory filings. The company's net revenues consequently grew as well, jumping 1,400% between 2019 and 2021 to $7.8 billion.

Amid the crypto boom, Coinbase aggressively hired, poaching top talent from the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Goldman Sachs. This February, Coinbase's Chief People Officer L.J. Brock wrote a blog post detailing the firm's plans to hire 2,000 employees across product, engineering, and design teams. By May, Coinbase was already more than halfway there, adding 1,200 new staff. And that was after the company had tripled its headcount in 2021 with 2,400 new employees, compared to 750 in 2019.

High salaries and frenetic hiring weren't the only signs of Coinbase's generous spending. Earlier this year, the company spent an estimated $14 million on its infamous Superbowl commercial that consisted of a single QR code bouncing around the screen like a DVD screensaver.

And just a week before Tuesday's layoffs, Coinbase's Global Support Team enjoyed a four-day off-site in Austin, Texas, with the company flying in employees from India, Japan, Ireland, and England, the former customer-support manager said.

"It's almost like they were telling us one thing while they were getting ready to do something else," they added.

Even when things didn't work out, Coinbase was generous. 

Two former Coinbase employees whose team was restructured earlier this year said they were offered to either re-interview with the company or take a severance package that offered a minimum of six-months pay. Both took the package.

But the grow-at-all-costs strategy came with downsides.

Another former Coinbase employee who was let go Tuesday told Insider the company's growth was "too fast, too inefficient." 

The rapid hiring caused confusion and a sense that Coinbase, even as it ballooned in size, retained a loose and chaotic startup culture.

One former employee who worked on Coinbase's customer-experience team recalled feeling a sense of disorganization at the company as they onboarded last year; it only worsened leading up the layoffs.  

"I chalked it up as a startup vibe, just like fixing an airplane in midair," they told Insider.

The halting rollout of Coinbase One, the subscription trading service, exemplified the uncertainty with which some new products were developed. The firm's budding subscription product that gives members access to $0-trading fees, slated to launch June 6, is still in beta, according to the former customer-support manager. 

"As of June 6 it was supposed to go to 100% general availability, but I think that got delayed and I did not know the reason why — this might be the reason why," the former manager said, who added the service was available to half of Coinbase's customers as of June 1.

Trouble ahead

Even as Coinbase reiterated its desire to hire more staff in 2022, the crypto industry was being buffeted by bad headlines and falling prices this spring.

Amid the broader wave of selling hitting tech stocks this year, the price of major cryptocurrencies has tumbled. Bitcoin, which accounted for nearly 25% of Coinbase's total trading volume in the first quarter, has fallen 55% year to date. Ethereum, which comprised another 21% of volume, is down nearly 70%. 

Coinbase's exchange, the crown jewel of its crypto empire, relies on trading volume to bring in money. As the world's biggest cryptocurrencies tanked, so did the volume Coinbase saw on its venue. The number of visits to Coinbase's exchange on desktops and apps fell 60% between May 2021 and May 2022, according to data from Similarweb, a digital intelligence platform that tracks traffic for millions of websites.

"Brian said the majority of our revenue comes from trading — no one's really trading," the former customer-service agent said.  

To be sure, the entire crypto market was in crisis. The collapse of Terra, a decentralized stablecoin nominally pegged to another cryptocurrency, Luna, wiped out billions in market value this May. The day before Coinbase announced its own layoffs, crypto-lending platform Celsius announced the freeze of withdrawals from its platform. Meanwhile, layoffs swept through industry, impacting crypto powerhouses like Gemini, Crypto.com, and BlockFi. 

Amid all the noise, Coinbase stock has fallen 78% this year. By mid-May, cracks began to show in its hiring plans. Just days after Coinbase released its quarterly report in which Armstrong discussed its hiring this year, the firm said it would enact a pause on new recruits. In early June, Coinbase announced it had rescinded offers the company had extended to hundreds of candidates. 

For one former contract worker on Coinbase's talent team, the company's decision to rescind the job offers was the first sign that its growth strategy had gone awry. 

At a last-minute meeting held with the heads of Coinbase's talent division immediately following the rescinded offers, the contractor said, "We honestly thought we were getting laid off then and there."

Some teams bore the brunt of layoffs

When the layoffs were announced this Tuesday, former employees were shocked at how they were conducted. For one, impacted employees' access to Coinbase's computer systems were shut off without warning first, at which point they received emails to their personal addresses informing them of their termination. 

One of the former employees on Coinbase's customer-experience team was in the middle of training new employees this week when they "woke up to a grey screen on my Mac," adding they "slowly saw my Coinbase email disappear on my phone." 

In the blog post announcing the layoffs, Armstrong said the lack of notice given to impacted employees was intentional and driven by concerns over security.  

"Given the number of employees who have access to sensitive customer information, it was unfortunately the only practical choice, to ensure not even a single person made a rash decision that harmed the business or themselves," Armstrong wrote.

Full-time employees were offered a minimum of 14 weeks of severance, nearly half of what the firm had previously offered some employees at the beginning of the year. 

It's not uncommon for companies pursuing waves of layoffs to pare back severance packages in order to cut costs, Alan Johnson, a compensation consultant at Johnson Associates, told Insider, adding that Coinbase's current package is still competitive.

"Usually when firms go through cycles of layoffs, they are most generous at the beginning. You feel guilty, you've got more economics to give. So usually the longer it goes on, the skimpier it gets," Johnson said. 

Former employees cited many of the layoffs landed at non-revenue generating teams, with talent and customer support among those hit hardest. Teams focused on longer-term projects that had yet to develop products were also impacted, according to a former member of one of those teams.

The contractor said much of the talent team at Coinbase was laid off along with at least several recruiters.  

As for Coinbase One, the customer-support team for that product has been "gutted," whittled down to about 18 from more than 100, the former manager said.

Positions within the firm's "experimental venture areas" would be among the first to go amid job cuts, Coinbase President and COO Emilie Choi told CNBC in the wake of the layoffs. 

Meanwhile, development at Coinbase's nascent NFT business, a Web3 marketplace for non-fungible tokens that entered beta April 20, has stalled, according to a former company program manager. Much of the NFT team has been laid off, they added.

"With our NFT launch, that was also pretty much a nothing burger, nothing transpired from that. So we just keep seeing failure after failure," the program manager said. 

2000 era dotcom lunacy, all over again. And these C-level executives are never really held accountable for running their business like fucking idiots. I'm guessing Armstrong does pretty well from a compensation basis this year. From an employee standpoint, I'm glad coinbase has been generous with severance packages. If I was a shareholder, I would question why these fucksticks running Coinbase still have a job. 

 

Edit - "still have a job" is a bit harsh, you cant argue with Coinbase's success in establishing themselves as the dominant Crypto exchange, so they obviously did some things correct. Still, as a shareholder, I would question their ability to run the business properly. Its not like share price has held up particularly well. 

Edited by Blotto
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Serak The Preparer

Serak The Preparer 3,431

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On 6/15/2022 at 3:14 PM, Immaculate Vibes said:

It’s historically performed fairly well. 
 

Cue the punchline about how you must be a consultant, because you just said something that was true but without adding any value. No shit it has historically performed very well, bitcoin's history coincides with great market growth. Now that doesn't mean it will or won't crash, but I won't give BTC a ton of credit for it's growth in this Dow Jones market:

image.png.06b14d23c285b80862b284e74b3add8c.png

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Immaculate Vibes

Immaculate Vibes 114

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1 hour ago, Serak The Preparer said:

Cue the punchline about how you must be a consultant, because you just said something that was true but without adding any value. No shit it has historically performed very well, bitcoin's history coincides with great market growth. Now that doesn't mean it will or won't crash, but I won't give BTC a ton of credit for it's growth in this Dow Jones market:

image.png.06b14d23c285b80862b284e74b3add8c.png

Well, no shit. It was created in response to bank bailouts and money printing. It’s benefited from it directly. 
 

It’s obviously not fair to compare the 5x growth of the Dow since 2009 to the top performing asset of all time. Let’s look at the s&p since the Covid crash. Up 60% vs bitcoin up 5x even after this week’s crash.

 

I think it’s clear that the narrative of bitcoin being an inflation hedge that tracks cpi has been blown up.  But if you look at it, bitcoin moved up before inflation took hold/as the money printing started. It started to tank just before monetary tightening became a reality. It seems to be a leading indicator of monetary policy.

 

So if you think that the Fed will engage in sustained monetary tightening then you should avoid bitcoin. If you think that the Fed will blink before inflation is meaningfully dampened then you should be buying now. Place your bets.


I believe that the modern financial system is reliant on an increasing amount of debt to maintain it. When tightening is attempted, debt or liquidity crises emerge and more money must be printed to paper over the issues.  Basically you can’t taper a ponzi. In our current regime an asset that performs well in easy conditions is one you want to own.

 

 

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Nothing To Add

Nothing To Add 81

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OK...if a man had some cash laying around and was looking to buy bitcoin once it gets so low he doesn't mind risking all of it, where would he go to buy?  I am the first to say I am clueless on crypto but enjoy watching the roller coaster.  Full disclosure...I know the odds of roulette and yet play it constantly.  I'm in a place in life where I have disposable income and don't mind losing some for the simple thrill of watching the wheel turn and the ball bounce around.

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Acropora

Acropora 856

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51 minutes ago, Nothing To Add said:

OK...if a man had some cash laying around and was looking to buy bitcoin once it gets so low he doesn't mind risking all of it, where would he go to buy?  I am the first to say I am clueless on crypto but enjoy watching the roller coaster.  Full disclosure...I know the odds of roulette and yet play it constantly.  I'm in a place in life where I have disposable income and don't mind losing some for the simple thrill of watching the wheel turn and the ball bounce around.

Lots of places to buy.  I use a combo of Coinbase, binance, voyager primarily.  I would buy through Coinbase if you are mainly staying in btc/eth.  

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Muny_Tex

Muny_Tex 293

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I'm in a place in life where I have disposable income and don't mind losing some for the simple thrill of watching the wheel turn and the ball bounce around.


Will you get the same gambling thrill if you awaken one day to an email saying all your funds are now frozen due to the bankruptcy proceedings of your coin servicer, along with instructions for pursuing a partial recovery claim?
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Immaculate Vibes

Immaculate Vibes 114

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Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, longhornmatt said:

LMAO.  That was a remarkably easy and shameless pivot from:

”It’s an inflation hedge and store of value whose worth is derived from a limited supply that the Fed can’t devalue with all of its artificial easy money machinations!  And the Fed can’t keep doing that forever without the shit hitting the fan, so then you’ll wish you had Bitcoin!”

to:

”Its worth is derived from how it performs well as long as the Fed prints money and juices the market with its artificial easy money machinations!  And the Fed will have to keep doing that forever, so you’ll wish you had Bitcoin!”

It’s like a “natural remedy” pitch where if you feel better, it’s because it’s working, and if you feel worse, it’s because it’s working by drawing out all those toxins you didn’t know you had.  

How do you not have a better target audience of marks than an obscure college sports board?

Again it was created in response to easy money and bank bailouts. When the easy money returns, it will pump again. This isn’t hard. Or do you disagree with that statement? 
 

I’m not looking for “marks” here. I graduated for UT so I have frequented iterations of this site off and on going back to hornfans and Mira Sorvino eating an ice cream cone.
 

I have also enjoyed following bitcoin for a while. This place is a fun place to discuss it and I selfishly would like as many Longhorns and Texans to benefit as possible from something that I still see as a large long term opportunity.
 

I try to educate where I can. I’ve said for a long time to get your coins off centralized exchanges and avoid lending platforms. Each time we have a down cycle and people get burned a new class of people learn the right way to handle this stuff. 
 

4 hours ago, Nothing To Add said:

OK...if a man had some cash laying around and was looking to buy bitcoin once it gets so low he doesn't mind risking all of it, where would he go to buy?  I am the first to say I am clueless on crypto but enjoy watching the roller coaster.  Full disclosure...I know the odds of roulette and yet play it constantly.  I'm in a place in life where I have disposable income and don't mind losing some for the simple thrill of watching the wheel turn and the ball bounce around.


If you’re interested in getting in and have a decent amount I would start dca buying through a service like Swan or Strike. We’ll have some time at these levels and that way you’ll catch a bit if it dips lower. 
 

https://www.swanbitcoin.com/

 

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/strike-bitcoin-payments/id1488724463

I would avoid Coinbase or other exchanges that have been dabbling in shitcoin stuff. There’s still a lot tbd about these leveraged exchanges and funds blowing up and any contagion. 


TL;dr

 

Edited by Immaculate Vibes
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