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Comment by fallat | Hacker News Reader

To everyone: 2017 had the exact same pattern. Coinbase is suffering this time because they didn't learn at all the lessons that happened to the companies in 2017. For example, you will not see this happen with Kraken.

This is normal, nothing to see here.

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Coinbase has survived something like 4 downturns before, the previous ones on the same strategy that they are employing now. So not sure what lessons they are not applying, that others are?

In which prior downturn did the valuation of Coinbase (and other unicorns) get nuked -90%?

Coinbase is the only publicly traded exchange that I know of? Coinbase wasn't public until early '21. So sure, VCs might have piled more money into Coinbase at higher valuations, but all of that VC activity and valuation is an inexact science without a liquid market.

At any rate, off the top of my head, the dot com era had a similar vibe. And several tech firms are down 75+% this year so far (Netflix included).

In which prior downturn were they even listed?

Does it really matter? It's almost assured that private valuations will get written down with a lag (already underway). Favorable public markets are what allowed VCs to foist the turd on the greater fool for a decade.

Coinbase has not, however, been through a bear market. Nor has crypto

That's true. But that still makes me wonder, what could Coinbase do in this case, that other companies are already doing? Do other companies not perform layoffs when there is a bear market?

Why won't one see the same thing with Kraken?

It's already happened to them in 2017 and during my interview with them (after the 2017 crash), the interview was basically me interviewing them asking them what they're doing and it all checked out. Their biggest mistake was growing too fast and too much liquidity in crypto. All fixed now as far I can see from the public eye now

Anyone thinking this is like 2017 and hodling or investing on that basis needs to pay a lot more attention the global economy.

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