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Fake Tesla, Apple stocks have started trading on blockchains

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

#351

Post by davidkohcw »

grey-area wrote: post #220
davidkohcw wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a synthetic stock which is overcollateralized by stablecoins. So for example, if $100 dollars worth of the stock is issued, someone else had to lock up $150 dollars worth of USD to issue it. And when the price rises (and hence collateralization ratio drops), the issuer has to constantly top up collateral or run the risk of them being liquidated. How do they get price to track the real stock? By simple incentives…

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!

Not sure why you have to be so snarky about this. Yes, USDT has dubious backgrounds/origins... but there are lots of other reputable proejcts out there.

You can take a look at USDC (https://www.circle.com/en/usdc) which is a Goldman Sachs backed start up. They publish reserve attestations very regularly (https://f.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/6778953/USDCAttesta...) and its very easy to redeem the USDC (stablecoin) for actual USD dollars in your fiat banking systems.

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

#352

Post by lilyball »

mojuba wrote: post #293
clavigne wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lack of excess capital means inflation doesn't affect them as they have no capital to depreciate, as long as wages keep pace with inflation. The fact that the minimum wage doesn't keep pace with inflation is a huge problem, but the solution is to raise the minimum wage, not to throw out inflation.

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

#353

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

lottin wrote: post #306
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe no one wants non-custodial financial services?

I already explained why non-custody is a dumb anti-feature that only appeals to a small number of conspiracy theorists who haven't really thought things through.

Explaining something doesn't make it so and usually it doesn't do much to convince people of it especially when you are so clearly condescending.

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

#354

Post by lottin »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #353
lottin wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already explained why non-custody is a dumb anti-feature that only appeals to a small number of conspiracy theorists who haven't really thought things through.

Explaining something doesn't make it so and usually it doesn't do much to convince people of it especially when you are so clearly condescending.

I explained my point of view, and you haven't, so if you ask me what I think without adding anything new to the conversation, what do you expect me to do other than pointing out that I already explained my position? It seems that you don't understand how conversations work.

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

#355

Post by lottin »

MathYouF wrote: post #346
lottin wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does my knowledge come from? It comes from studying. I studied economic theory, economic history, the history of the international monetary system, and the economies of many of these countries. I read the reports from reputable organisations such as the IMF and the UN, and the regular news sources. So I'm well-informed and therefore I don't need to invent made-up Venezuelan friends like every Bitcoin propagandi…

And if I were to go through the effort of providing proof of my Venezuelan best friend and his accounts of life in Venezuela, since my hacker news profile is the same name as my real identity profiles, I'm sure you'd capitulate and appologize for assuming anyone who disagrees with you is arguing in bad faith? For posterity, I have a github profile of this same name, and my venezuelan friend and I are doing a hackatho…

Assuming that your story about your Venezuelan friend is made-up is just normal. Even if you did have a Venezuelan friend, how is that a source of authority on anything? It's just anecdotal evidence and irrelevant to the discussion. Like someone here, the other day, who claimed to be a business owner who made international payments with bitcoin on a regular basis... absolutely unbelievable.

If you're really arguing in good faith you should start by disclosing your conflicts of interest. You didn't mention you were involved in a bitcoin project. You probably own bitcoin as well. For the record, I don't have conflicts of interest. I don't have any financial stake in bitcoin or in other crypto-currencies.

To summarise, and going back to the topic of the conversation... your entire claim is that a number of Venezuelans (don't know how many) invest their savings in bitcoin and this improves their quality of life because they're able to combat the effects of hyperinflation in this way.

Okay, so what? Does that contradict my original point? No, it doesn't. My point is that, considering the situation as a whole, having the opportunity to avoid the effects of hyperinflation by using a foreign currency, for example, is only a marginal improvement for these people. Even assuming that bitcoin can fulfil the role of an actual solid currency, which in my opinion it can't.

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

#356

Post by lxgr »

delaaxe wrote: post #333
lxgr wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You make good points on paper, but in practice (in my own life at least) I’ve almost never needed to reverse a transaction where the merchant couldn’t do it himself. And the one time I had a dispute, Visa claimed that the transaction was out of policy somehow (timeframe, region, etc) So no, that better alternative doesn’t favor the customer

The existence of a dispute resolution system is usually enough to keep the vast majority of participants in a system honest.

In the case of card payments, merchants incur a fee for every transaction reversed through the card scheme, whereas voluntary refunds are essentially free. They are accordingly incentivized to understand and follow the scheme rules.

> And the one time I had a dispute, Visa claimed that the transaction was out of policy somehow (timeframe, region, etc)

That's unfortunate, and mistakes or seemingly unfair decisions do happen – just like in a public legal system. But you are essentially basing your opinion on a sample size of one.

Practically, some banks just seem to be better (i.e. more consumer friendly) at dispute resolution than others. As an example, in the case of a high profile airline bankruptcy in my country, some banks have proactively reached out to their customers, letting them know they're happy to pursue disputes for them, while others were declining them outright due to a – likely wrong – understanding of scheme rules and bankruptcy law.

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

#357

Post by puranjay »

clavigne wrote: post #299
puranjay wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 AfriC…

You do have a point there. Crypto does have a massive fraud problem. And I'll admit that so far, it's been a net negative for society.

I'm hoping this will change as the ecosystem matures.

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

#358

Post by thebean11 »

KirillPanov wrote: post #347
thebean11 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price is pegged to the dollar, not the quantity in circulation. My point is that if the price is over a dollar, you mint more of them to pull the price down. To me, DAI going over USD just indicates supply not meeting demand.

> you mint more of them to pull the price down No, in order to pull the price down you need to mint more of them and sell those new DAI into the market . Doing this saddles the minter-seller with a long USD/ETH position: they have to lock up a bunch of collateral in order to mint new DAI, and if USD/ETH drops enough their collateral will be vaporized. If no sellers believe that USD/ETH is going to rise, none will be…

Who is the mint seller, the minter or the one buying the minted coin?

It wouldn't be any entity minting these new DAI, it would be the Maker smart contract giving out new DAI loans for collateral (ETH, WBTC, WhateverTokens).

If DAI is trading at $2, and I believe it will hit the peg again in the future, I'm very highly incentivized to borrow it and sell it for $2, pulling the price down! I then pay back my loan with DAI I buy for $1.

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

#359

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

lottin wrote: post #354
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explaining something doesn't make it so and usually it doesn't do much to convince people of it especially when you are so clearly condescending.

I explained my point of view, and you haven't, so if you ask me what I think without adding anything new to the conversation, what do you expect me to do other than pointing out that I already explained my position? It seems that you don't understand how conversations work.

You made the unsubstantiated assertion that no one wants non-custodial financial services.

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

#360

Post by rebuilder »

ENGNR wrote: post #336
rebuilder wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there, you could buy real shares, sell synthetic ones, and then sell the real shares, too. Or just sell synthetic shares without having any real shares in the first place. This seems like a case where a blockhain doesn't really do much good.

Selling the real shares as well as the synthetic is really just going naked short. Lots of risk/leverage. You have to put up collateral so that you have something to lose if it goes bad

I'm looking at it from the buyer's perspective. The big selling point of blockhain transactions is zero trust and no counterparty risk. There is clear counterparty risk in synthetic shares sold on a blockhain.

IOW, the buyer is still stuck relying on the issuer of the "real" shares to honour the blockhain sale, or on the seller not defaulting.

Edit: just to expound further on something I think most people miss: The primary innovation of Bitcoin was that it is provably scarce without relying on any legal framework. That's it, and it's pretty radical. If you start relying on the law to provide value, the blockhain idea tends to become extraneous.

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