> > These three functions — bringing together securities orders for buyers and sellers, trading securities on behalf of others, and intermediating trades — are typically required to be separate due to conflicts of interest that emerge when one entity controls all of them.
and...
> The previous HN thread seemed to mainly be of the opinion that Coinbase wasn't registering the non-Bitcoin crypto, but that the problem was the SEC wasn't giving clear guidance on whether they needed to be.
See, this is why we need regulation. It's to deal with people like the HN crowd who will go up to the limit of the law with no consideration for ethics whatsoever.
A normal, ethical person would never run into the problem Coinbase has here. They'd see that the differing parts of their business had conflicts of interest which were pitting them against their own customers, and they'd do the right thing by splitting them up so that their customers are served. The law never has to get involved, because good people don't need the law to tell them to do the right thing.
But contrary to the end-stage capitalist beliefs of HN, corporations are not good people. Capitalism doesn't result in the best service for the lowest cost. If there's any way at all that corporations can make a profit by screwing over other people and getting away with it, they will, or someone else will. Without regulation to limit this, bad people bubble to the top. Coinbase has plenty of smart people who could have noticed the ethical problems here, but they didn't, because they didn't care. Coinbase has been successful monetarily because when they had a choice to do what's right or what's profitable, they chose to do what's profitable.
And as is typical of HN, the top comment identifies with the bad guys. The problem, in your eyes, isn't that what Coinbase did caused conflicts of interest which harm consumers. The problem, in your eyes, is that regulation wasn't clear enough for Coinbase to know exactly which conflicts of interest they could get away with. Like Coinbase, you're unconcerned with ethics, instead blaming regulators for getting in the way of the only thing you care about: profits.
and...
> The previous HN thread seemed to mainly be of the opinion that Coinbase wasn't registering the non-Bitcoin crypto, but that the problem was the SEC wasn't giving clear guidance on whether they needed to be.
See, this is why we need regulation. It's to deal with people like the HN crowd who will go up to the limit of the law with no consideration for ethics whatsoever.
A normal, ethical person would never run into the problem Coinbase has here. They'd see that the differing parts of their business had conflicts of interest which were pitting them against their own customers, and they'd do the right thing by splitting them up so that their customers are served. The law never has to get involved, because good people don't need the law to tell them to do the right thing.
But contrary to the end-stage capitalist beliefs of HN, corporations are not good people. Capitalism doesn't result in the best service for the lowest cost. If there's any way at all that corporations can make a profit by screwing over other people and getting away with it, they will, or someone else will. Without regulation to limit this, bad people bubble to the top. Coinbase has plenty of smart people who could have noticed the ethical problems here, but they didn't, because they didn't care. Coinbase has been successful monetarily because when they had a choice to do what's right or what's profitable, they chose to do what's profitable.
And as is typical of HN, the top comment identifies with the bad guys. The problem, in your eyes, isn't that what Coinbase did caused conflicts of interest which harm consumers. The problem, in your eyes, is that regulation wasn't clear enough for Coinbase to know exactly which conflicts of interest they could get away with. Like Coinbase, you're unconcerned with ethics, instead blaming regulators for getting in the way of the only thing you care about: profits.
This place has a serious problem.