> E*Trade would be one of the largest securities brokerages to allow crypto trading. It will enter into a competitive market with startups like Coinbase Inc., which have made names for themselves as go-to places for such transactions. Closely held Coinbase reached a valuation of $8 billion in 2018 and projected sales of $1.3 billion. Fintech startup Robinhood, most recently valued at $5.6 billion, has also added cryptocurrency trading as a way to woo millennial customers.
TD Ameritrade has also been rumored to have quietly rolled out Bitcoin trading to some customers:
There seem to be ample comments discussing the "viability" of crypto trading/tokens, but if I'm Etrade, all I care about are the commissions - to hell with the underlying tech or what it can/can't do. Not even just for BTC, ETH, EOS, etc now, but for the coins to come in the future. Sure, they can have prolonged periods of low volume (even manipulated volume), but when there's a frenzy (e.g., 2016-2018), I imagine that the profit potential on commissions would do wonders for "shareholder value". Combine that with Etrade's namebrand (as mentioned in other comments) experience, and infrastructure, and you've got a gang of traders that would gladly do away with the sketchy/lesser-known exchanges for Etrade (my opinion).
ETrade is presumably very cautious to get started, and very slow to move when they do, by nature of their maturity, scale, and industry context. So they're taking many multiples longer than someone like coinbase, for example, to spin up this type of thing.
So this initiative probably started years back.
Is this late-launching residue from bitcoin's 20k days when this would have been, if not less silly, at least less silly looking?
Is this evidence that some big names in finance have been deliberately understating their interest in the space, while scrambling beneath the surface to spin up offerings?
If the rest of the players in this space also support crypto, it starts to be genuinely commoditized, and maybe that could help it. But if you commoditize something that nobody cares about... does it matter? does it help?
> if you commoditize something that nobody cares about
I think cryptocurrencies are an obvious trash fire. I also think they contain all the elements (flow information asymmetry, bad price transparency and consistency, high technical volatility, and zero capacity for fundamental edge) that make it quite profitable to make markets in, i.e to be the house in respect of. Combine that with the general culture around cryptocurrencies, which I suspect is averse to litigation, and you have a supremely profitable business.
One need not love what they trade. (I do see an ethical issue with selling retail customers such products.)
Seems to me that launching at the peak of a bubble is a lot sillier. Launching after a deep bear market when it's been back in an uptrend for four months is pretty reasonable, and more likely to be good for your customers.
I wonder, can you make an argument that Bitcoin is like an index akin to S&P, but for gambling and hedging against events like asset seizure or state currency failure?
First let's assume that fundamentals remain unchanged. No innovation, no growth in adoption, no major security failures. Let's also assume that the rough percentage of world populations willing to gamble remains roughly the same over the decades. BTC is deflationary, private keys will keep getting lost indefinitely. So wouldn't it make sense for the price of Bitcoin to at least keep up with inflation, forever?
I hold many cryptocurrencies, and your argument is only valid if people don't switch to other new better cryptocurrencies.
There used to be very strong network effects, but now that you can exchange coins easily, it's trivial to move to a new shiny thing.
On the plus side, Bitcoin has a brand name and recognition. An average person has no idea about Ethereum or Monero. In my opinion, its brand is the only thing keeping it afloat. Other coins are clearly superior in functionality (except maybe the hash rate).
The S&P companies generate a stream of future profit; that's where the value of holding the index comes from. Bitcoin doesn't and I don't see the logic in assuming it's deflationary or that its fundamentals will remain constant in the long term when the empirical evidence strongly suggests otherwise. It's extremely volatile and has lost more value in the space of months than most inflationary currencies have lost in decades. The problem with the idea of an "index for gambling" is that there are plenty of other assets for gamblers to pick...
Quite often this kind of instruments might be "tradable debt instruments" which can't be converted to actual bitcoins, but can be traded back and forth on the platform to traditional currencies. The issuing company maintains the peg to the bitcoin market value, probably using futures or similar instruments.
Of course they might also enable bitcoin withdrawals/deposits but I somewhat doubt it. There are similar offerings on other traditional platforms and usually they work this way.
Are there any numbers on how much crypto is being used as a currency (i.e. actually buying things) vs. how much is being used as an investment (i.e. buying and holding/trading with the hope it goes up in value)?
I'm curious how each compares to traditional currency and how much this affects the competitiveness of it as a common currency. My initial thought is that so many people look at it as an investment it may limit it's ability to be a good medium for exchange.
Then much of the thing buying is illegal stuff like drugs that doesn't get well reported. Wikipedia has "A reviewed 2013 analysis put the Silk Road grossing $300,000 a day, extrapolating to over $100 million over a year."
Coinmarketcap has daily crypto volume at $43bn a day
so say 5% is real that's $2.1 bn/day trading
and say drugs trade etc is $1m a day, that's a small proportion.
comission on those trades is probably about 0.2%*2.1bn= $4m/day
If you are a legit company with pesky things like bookkeeping and accounting then you do not want Bitcoins on your books. You might accept Bitcoin as a gimmick by utilizing a third party service which buys them and gives you money (like BitPay) but there's no legic economy. How could there be when it is so volatile and it's basically held up by hype? The risks are clear for a business and what's the advantage...?
You’d be a fool to spend your bitcoins. It’s a deflationary currency. That means it’s worth more later than now in the long run. As opposed to dollars, which is inflationary and worth less as time goes on.
Interesting that some companies are still interested in cryptocurrency even though it's still trending downwards. It's more likely that you'll lose money each year than make it, especially with emotion tied into the mix.
Some good technical concepts exist in this space but the financial element has made the entire space corrupt to its core.
As always. The human element left unchecked will turn anything toxic.
I used to lean towards more libertarian ideals but seeing what freedom has done to cryptocurrency has shown me some order and law is needed.
[+] [-] apo|7 years ago|reply
TD Ameritrade has also been rumored to have quietly rolled out Bitcoin trading to some customers:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/td-ameritrade-nasdaq-re...
[+] [-] __ralston3|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whttheuuu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RickS|7 years ago|reply
So this initiative probably started years back.
Is this late-launching residue from bitcoin's 20k days when this would have been, if not less silly, at least less silly looking?
Is this evidence that some big names in finance have been deliberately understating their interest in the space, while scrambling beneath the surface to spin up offerings?
If the rest of the players in this space also support crypto, it starts to be genuinely commoditized, and maybe that could help it. But if you commoditize something that nobody cares about... does it matter? does it help?
[+] [-] coralreef|7 years ago|reply
6 months ago Coinbase raised $300m at $8b valuation.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/30/cryptocurrency-start-up-coin...
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|7 years ago|reply
I think cryptocurrencies are an obvious trash fire. I also think they contain all the elements (flow information asymmetry, bad price transparency and consistency, high technical volatility, and zero capacity for fundamental edge) that make it quite profitable to make markets in, i.e to be the house in respect of. Combine that with the general culture around cryptocurrencies, which I suspect is averse to litigation, and you have a supremely profitable business.
One need not love what they trade. (I do see an ethical issue with selling retail customers such products.)
[+] [-] DennisP|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whttheuuu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wolco|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wickoff|7 years ago|reply
First let's assume that fundamentals remain unchanged. No innovation, no growth in adoption, no major security failures. Let's also assume that the rough percentage of world populations willing to gamble remains roughly the same over the decades. BTC is deflationary, private keys will keep getting lost indefinitely. So wouldn't it make sense for the price of Bitcoin to at least keep up with inflation, forever?
[+] [-] bufferoverflow|7 years ago|reply
There used to be very strong network effects, but now that you can exchange coins easily, it's trivial to move to a new shiny thing.
On the plus side, Bitcoin has a brand name and recognition. An average person has no idea about Ethereum or Monero. In my opinion, its brand is the only thing keeping it afloat. Other coins are clearly superior in functionality (except maybe the hash rate).
[+] [-] notahacker|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerguismi|7 years ago|reply
Of course they might also enable bitcoin withdrawals/deposits but I somewhat doubt it. There are similar offerings on other traditional platforms and usually they work this way.
[+] [-] blazespin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bumby|7 years ago|reply
I'm curious how each compares to traditional currency and how much this affects the competitiveness of it as a common currency. My initial thought is that so many people look at it as an investment it may limit it's ability to be a good medium for exchange.
[+] [-] tim333|7 years ago|reply
Firstly the reported trading volumes are about 95% fake. https://www.forbes.com/sites/cbovaird/2019/03/22/95-of-repor...
Then much of the thing buying is illegal stuff like drugs that doesn't get well reported. Wikipedia has "A reviewed 2013 analysis put the Silk Road grossing $300,000 a day, extrapolating to over $100 million over a year."
Coinmarketcap has daily crypto volume at $43bn a day
so say 5% is real that's $2.1 bn/day trading
and say drugs trade etc is $1m a day, that's a small proportion.
comission on those trades is probably about 0.2%*2.1bn= $4m/day
Regular retail business, not much https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280689
[+] [-] chx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] granaldo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ForHackernews|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgalt212|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dayaz36|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3kw9|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephagoss|7 years ago|reply
Some good technical concepts exist in this space but the financial element has made the entire space corrupt to its core.
As always. The human element left unchecked will turn anything toxic.
I used to lean towards more libertarian ideals but seeing what freedom has done to cryptocurrency has shown me some order and law is needed.
[+] [-] DennisP|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caprese|7 years ago|reply
Nobody complains about cheap gas except speculators on the wrong side of the market
Cryptocurrencies are fuel to write to their respective databases
Get on the right side of the market
[+] [-] rajacombinator|7 years ago|reply