Kiran on Warpcast

Kiran pfp

Perceptually, it seems like coinbase over the years has become primarily an ethereum-centric company over bitcoin. Why is this? I feel like I see a lot more initiatives toward eth l2s, wallets, ens, etc. than bitcoin-related products. Is this simply bc there's less surface area to build on? or it's less profitable?

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Kiran pfp

also if anyone has data that suggests otherwise, I'd be keen to see it! this question was inspired by looking at how Block centers their crypto business around BTC, and seems to be generating a ton of revenue from it: https://decrypt.co/151161/block-announces-increase-in-profit-year-over-year-in-q223-earnings

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Varun Srinivasan pfp

Varun Srinivasan

1. There's nothing interesting to do on Bitcoin. 2. Block used to report trade volume as revenue which is very weird from an accounting perspective and grossly overstates how much money they make from Bitcoin. (it's about 1/50th to 1/100th of what it appears to be)

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Yitong pfp

What would a bitcoin centric company even look like? Not much to do there it seems

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Dan Romero pfp

>60% of it's revenue is non-Bitcoin?

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Mark Tyneway pfp

The best way to use Bitcoin is to not use it. Just hodl, nothing else to do

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Cassie Heart pfp

Coinbase notoriously prefers safe bets. This conservative strategy has paid off as bear markets happen, but means they’ll always play catch up compared to other exchanges. It’s hard to play the bleeding edge and not get cut.

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Harry pfp

Viktor Bunin wrote this really great summary about misconceptions around lightening. Adding support to it on Coinbase sounds like it would have been a big pain in the ass versus stable coins on ETH. https://medium.com/p/lightning-for-those-who-havent-checked-in-on-it-in-a-while-776a1d8daebe

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Noah Bragg 🔥 pfp

Noah Bragg 🔥

You can build things on Eth.

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Jack Miller pfp

They started as Bitcoin-only, did everything there is to do by like 2013 Coinbase is adding support for Lightning... that's literally the only new thing they could do since then (and there wasn't even sufficient demand until recently)

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kenny 🎩 pfp

Coinbase makes its money selling tokens there are simply more tokens on ETH innovations like Pawtocol aren't possible on BTC due to its limited tech https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220211005568/en/Pawtocol-UPI-Token-Listed-on-Coinbase-and-Huobi-Two-of-World%E2%80%99s-Largest-Cryptocurrency-Exchanges

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Sahil 🥝 pfp

Well, one feeds into the other. More activity in the ecosystem means more money for an enabler like Coinbase. And so we’re seeing more eth and eth adjacent products. That being said, bitcoin will always be an extremely well traded asset so it’ll always hold an imp place there.

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Meso pfp

I don't have any hard data on this, but it seems like the ETH/smart contract ecosystem has significantly more traction in terms of usage and developer activity. Given how well Coinbase is being perceived by the crypto ecosystem over this bear market it seems like the strategy is paying off.

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