Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains • Hacker News Board

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#291

Post by clavigne » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 11:17 AM UTC

mojuba wrote: post #273

scatters wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the evidence shows that a rate of inflation around 2% averaged over the business cycle is beneficial and necessary for the economy. Trying to adopt a deflationary currency is akin to refusing to drink water because people drown in lakes.

> All the evidence shows... There is no such evidence. There are those who benefit from inflation (and only if it's predictable for them) but the majority of people don't. Unless you define economy as something only the wealthy can benefit from - no, inflation is not good.

The majority of people have wealth in real estate and generate income from wages, both of which are inflation neutral.

In contrast, the rich are much more likely to have bonds or cash holdings. They are the ones for whom inflation is a real problem. Why else would all this political pressure for a 2% inflation target exist? It's because that's low enough for the rich, not because it's high.

Printing money and redistributing it would severely impact capital holders, like it did in the post WWII boom which created the middle class.

Here is an entire book on this topic :

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_...

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#292

Post by nly » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 11:22 AM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #262

beefield wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some professional backround in finance and still have literally no clue what "route liquidity for direct asset swapping" means. Can you ELI5 what uniswap does that current financial system does not? (Orher than "decentralization")

Uniswap is an exchange without an order book. A Uniswap pair has two assets in quantities X and Y, and a constant k such that X*Y=k. If you give some X to the contract, then it will give you back enough Y so that k is still constant. Effectively the ratio between the two assets' quantities is equal to their relative prices. By giving the contract both X and Y, you're providing liquidity. You get a new token Z, specif…

It seems that you can currently exchange $20M of USDC (Coinbase USD stablecoin) to Ethereum, or visa-versa, on Uniswap, with only ~3% slippage off the spot price.

I'm not sure if this is impressive, but the US government must be glad that USDC is controlled by an American company (Coinbase) and an Irish one (Circle).

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#293

Post by mojuba » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 11:38 AM UTC

clavigne wrote: post #291

mojuba wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the evidence shows... There is no such evidence. There are those who benefit from inflation (and only if it's predictable for them) but the majority of people don't. Unless you define economy as something only the wealthy can benefit from - no, inflation is not good.

The majority of people have wealth in real estate and generate income from wages, both of which are inflation neutral. In contrast, the rich are much more likely to have bonds or cash holdings. They are the ones for whom inflation is a real problem. Why else would all this political pressure for a 2% inflation target exist? It's because that's low enough for the rich, not because it's high. Printing money and redistr…

That's a great book, one of my favorites.

The wealth redistribution post-WW2 had more to do with the war itself than inflation though.

So back to the 21st century: what makes you think that those who have excess capital don't invest wisely? Compare that to lack of any excess capital for the majority.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#294

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 11:44 AM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #90

Fake seems like a strange choice of words here. These things arent attempting to deceive anyone into believing they are the real thing. They clearly label themselves as derivatives. We don't call corn futures fake corn, we don't call derivatives of other types fake those things and we shouldn't call these fake stocks. I'm really not defending or not defending whatever these platforms are. I wouldn't be surprised if t…

As always there is a buzzword associated and here instead of fake the preferred terminology is… synthetic.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#295

Post by lxgr » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 11:50 AM UTC

delaaxe wrote: post #288

lxgr wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it, though? One quite essential feature of a clearinghouse is the ability to correct the books in case of operational errors, in response to court orders etc. People lose their passwords, get scammed, go bankrupt, die and leave their possessions to their next of kin... It's very hard to achieve the desired/expected outcome for any of these situations on a blockchain.

It has worked well enough for trading of physical items with dollar bills for quite some time

Until we've found better alternatives.

Cash doesn't have a built-in paper trail and dispute resolution mechanism, all of which are highly desirable when doing business with unknown/not yet trustworthy entities.

In many (definitely not all!) cases, transaction finality is a bug, not a feature.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#296

Post by clavigne » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 12:01 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #274

lilyball wrote: post #165

> Users can trade the tokens anonymously 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere, unhindered by capital controls, “know your client” rules imposed on broker-dealers, and other frictions of the traditional financial system. I find it really weird how crypto folks keep pretending that financial regulation is an obviously bad thing, as opposed to restrictions put in place in response to real problems

You're seeing this from a western, first world perspective. If you're in a third world country, you likely don't have access to robust, transparent local stock markets. Whatever exchanges might exist tend to be rife with scammy companies, insider trading and poor regulation. If you want to invest in, say, the US stock market, you'd have to jump through a ton of hoops or have a ton of money, essentially locking out al…

So first, investing in DEFI is not exactly simple. If I am reading it properly, you lose 20% in fees at least if you buy bitcoin with Madagascar dollars on paxful,

https://paxful.com/buy/bitcoin/madagascar

How many more hoops do you then have to jump through to acquire fake stocks?

Second, you then have to make sure you avoid pyramid schemes (like OneCoin), rug pulls, exit scams, bad exchanges and bad "smart" contracts (like the Parity bug).

This is not easy even for highly informed tech workers in the Global North. Now if you happen to speak another language (as I do) I recommend you go and Google "how to invest in Defi" or whatever in it. In my case (French), you get just articles after articles that are sponsored content from very dubious sounding wallet and exchanges, especially if you add "Madagascar" or "Congo" or whatever to your search.

So frankly, I think the idea that "crypto markets are great for the Global South" is more of a convenient story.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#297

Post by grey-area » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 12:02 PM UTC

cinquemb wrote: post #227

grey-area wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh you mean it is backed by those unaudited, unregulated, unredeemable opaque tokens like USDT which are also a scam. What could possibly go wrong!

> unaudited, unregulated, unredeemable opaque tokens like Federal Reserve Notes Would be nice if every single FRBNY operation were able to be queried by anyone in the public in real time, had a fixed set of rules all holders of notes could see and vote on, and was redeemable for gold like they used to be before the rules changed underneath holders who couldn't take part of governance (foreign holders)… > What could p…

There are plenty of reasons to complain about fiat currencies like USD and the rights that states claim to control all transactions or control the value of our money.

That doesn’t make using unregulated stable coins from terrible terrible people like those behind bitfinex a good idea, or mean that trustless distributed consensus is worth the massive downsides of a decentralised system like bitcoin, or that we should trust projects without the most basic financial controls.

We have laws and regulators controlling money supply and financial transactions for good reasons, most of the unregulated experiments ‘defi’ is trying have already been run in fiat and banned for good reasons, including massive leverage, unregulated banks and exchanges, money printing etc etc.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#298

Post by puranjay » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 12:20 PM UTC

clavigne wrote: post #296

puranjay wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seeing this from a western, first world perspective. If you're in a third world country, you likely don't have access to robust, transparent local stock markets. Whatever exchanges might exist tend to be rife with scammy companies, insider trading and poor regulation. If you want to invest in, say, the US stock market, you'd have to jump through a ton of hoops or have a ton of money, essentially locking out al…

So first, investing in DEFI is not exactly simple. If I am reading it properly, you lose 20% in fees at least if you buy bitcoin with Madagascar dollars on paxful, https://paxful.com/buy/bitcoin/madagascar How many more hoops do you then have to jump through to acquire fake stocks? Second, you then have to make sure you avoid pyramid schemes (like OneCoin), rug pulls, exit scams, bad exchanges and bad "smart" contrac…

Complex onboarding is still better than not having access to the markets at all.

I don't really understand the resistance about this - an imperfect process is always better than no process.

Could things be improved? 100% yes. But that doesn't mean this truly global, permissionless market is somehow a scam.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#299

Post by clavigne » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 12:40 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #298

clavigne wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So first, investing in DEFI is not exactly simple. If I am reading it properly, you lose 20% in fees at least if you buy bitcoin with Madagascar dollars on paxful, https://paxful.com/buy/bitcoin/madagascar How many more hoops do you then have to jump through to acquire fake stocks? Second, you then have to make sure you avoid pyramid schemes (like OneCoin), rug pulls, exit scams, bad exchanges and bad "smart" contrac…

Complex onboarding is still better than not having access to the markets at all. I don't really understand the resistance about this - an imperfect process is always better than no process. Could things be improved? 100% yes. But that doesn't mean this truly global, permissionless market is somehow a scam.

I guess it comes down to whether one does the cost benefit analysis for society as a whole or for individuals.

While decentralized permissionless markets can (and have) helped some individuals escape economic restrictions (capital controls, sanctions, etc.) it's not at all clear to me that they have had an overall positive effect, or ever will.

At the end of the day, the rise in the price of bitcoin, scams like AfriCrypt and OneCoin, the new Salvador laws etc are all just new means of extracting capital from the Global South. I'm of the opinion that the benefits to individuals are not balancing the overall societal harms, but I could see how someone with a more individualistic ideology would disagree.

Re: Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

#300

Post by cinquemb » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 12:57 PM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #297

cinquemb wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unaudited, unregulated, unredeemable opaque tokens like Federal Reserve Notes Would be nice if every single FRBNY operation were able to be queried by anyone in the public in real time, had a fixed set of rules all holders of notes could see and vote on, and was redeemable for gold like they used to be before the rules changed underneath holders who couldn't take part of governance (foreign holders)… > What could p…

There are plenty of reasons to complain about fiat currencies like USD and the rights that states claim to control all transactions or control the value of our money. That doesn’t make using unregulated stable coins from terrible terrible people like those behind bitfinex a good idea, or mean that trustless distributed consensus is worth the massive downsides of a decentralised system like bitcoin, or that we should…

> That doesn’t make using unregulated stable coins from terrible terrible people like those behind bitfinex a good idea…

Good thing is, you personally don't have to, but others will, and you have no say over that. Heaven forbid a decentralized uncollateralized stable coin comes into existence, where its mechanisms for inflation and deflation are purely market driven, that won't be controlled by any single entity, used by people from all over the world without your (or regulators) approval… not like existing interbank eurodollar transactions have much of that approval anyways (than the same transactions, junk rated rehypothicated collateral backing that entities like bitfinex engage in, yet with lower cashflows; can't seriously sit here and tell me that regulators are in control of dollar denominated liabilities being swapped offshore everyday in non local currencies and usd deposits created from that are 1:1 backed and have FDIC coverage…).

Hell, we know more about bitfinex operations than we do of the a typical tradfi bank engaging in the same transactions overseas… what a joke lol

> or mean that trustless distributed consensus is worth the massive downsides of a decentralised system like bitcoin

Let's not pretend that there aren't any better trustless distributed consensuses systems out there that people are actively using because you would like to dismiss something you don't like/use.

> or that we should trust projects without the most basic financial controls.

Not too hard to use/build protocols that implement controls you wish and stay away from those that don't. Not everyone has to ape into shitcoins and shitchains with no research. Not everyone has to follow the whims of someone else.

> We have laws and regulators controlling money supply and financial transactions for good reasons…

That routinely fail to address (and as well as regulators failing to comprehend [at best])

> …massive leverage…

In the forms of ever novel derivatives cropping up in tradfi

> …unregulated banks and exchanges, money printing etc etc.

After talking with people who had to trade lehman positions out of administration and all the shit that went down behind the scenes… TBTF might as well be unregulated, when their positions are routinely bailed out at expense of others in many different ways and leads to people having

> … plenty of reasons to complain about fiat currencies…

That have long gone unaddressed because of the existing incentives that stand in the way. Plenty of kabuki theatre about it though from "regulators", worth about as much as the latest shitcoins cropping up.