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Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

home.treasury.gov

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Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#81

Post by nostrademons »

panic wrote: post #54
nostrademons wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm value-neutral in this comment thread, I'm just describing a.) how things are and b.) how the authors of this report are making assumptions about how things are. I can see plusses and minuses for both people-centric and code-centric approaches. I get that it's pretty natural that people would consider it a bad thing for people to hand over power to computer code. It makes perfect sense if you consider yourself not…

Why are you so committed to erasing the difference between humans and computers in order to place humans below computers?

Realistically I don't have the power to put humans either above or below computers. That'll depend upon the independent choices of billions of humans and hundreds of billions of microprocessors.

I've found that having an accurate model of the world - one that can generate likely predictions - is very important for profit now and potentially for survival in the near future. Knowing that people are frequently blind to changes in the world that do not place them at the center of the universe, it's worth correcting for that bias in myself and envisioning a world where humans are not necessarily on top. What would that look like, and what's my best chance for survival in such a world, given that I am human?

Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#82

Post by lottin »

sputknick wrote: post #23
svachalek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would make them illegal. As it probably should, I'm not aware of any that are not an elaborate scam.

Do you have any thoughts on how you would do that? Isn't that as practical as outlawing Bitcoin?

They can make it illegal to buy and sell these stablecoins. The exchanges where the stablecoins are bought and sold would have to delist these coins or face criminal action.

Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#83

Post by swamp40 »

svachalek wrote: post #51
sputknick wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any thoughts on how you would do that? Isn't that as practical as outlawing Bitcoin?

I'm not the government or even a lawyer. But I'd imagine they'd block companies from trading Bitcoins for dollars or mining Bitcoin. Turn off all the ETFs and options trading. Say Tesla and MicroStrategy can't hold it in their treasury. I doubt they can make it disappear but that would certainly put a dent in US adoption.

I'm sure they could ask for China's help with that. Maybe the US Gov could even get a copy of their Great Firewall? Good times.

Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#84

Post by andred14 »

agotterer wrote: post #72
Animats wrote: post #47

This is good. The backing of stablecoins is a very real issue. As the Treasury points out, there's a very real possibility of a run. Two stablecoins have crashed so far, SafeDollar SDO, and $TITAN. They went all the way to zero. Can Tether survive a net outflow? Probably not. They don't have the collateral. Dai is really a derivative of Etherium. Dai is backed by Etherium at 150%. So value in Dai is at risk if the pr…

This is why I'm excited about Djed ( https://djed.xyz ). Input Output Global (creator of Cardano) has been researching stable coins and drafted a pretty extensive white paper on their solution ( https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1069.pdf ). The white paper also include a mentions for how they will prevent bank runs.

Djed is garbage Coti, Cardano and friends are all about CBDCs, KYC and tracking people.

No thanks.

Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#85

Post by mailbag »

okareaman wrote: post #64

Historically, we've had major bubbles and crashes in all kinds of financial markets, from stocks and bonds, to property and dotcom stocks. Is there any reason to believe that cryptocurrency is more stable and we won't have a catastrophic crash?

Arguably, we've already seen multiple catastrophic crashes in cryptocurrencies.

Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#86

Post by mrandish »

dragontamer wrote: post #62
dexwiz wrote: post #49

All these coins are proven to be worthless. When speculation is making everyone money, the money isn't worth much. Edit: Love the immediate fear downvote. No one wants to hear their gold is really just shiny dirt.

The downvotes are because "worthless" is hyperbolic and unhelpful. Clearly, the coins have value because someone out there feels like paying money for them. More importantly: we _HAVE_ to understand the market dynamics here. What's going on is very human and very important to realize. Matt Levine from Bloomberg has a very simple explanation: the cryptocoin world has discovered "senior debt vs junior debt", and are us…

Your post makes a lot of sense to me from a fundamental econ perspective, however, I know I don't know enough about the topic of crypto-currencies in general to trust my opinion much. I'd love to see the strongest possible counter-argument to yours to help me understand why so many people seem to disagree.

Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#87

Post by NikolaNovak »

silentsea90 wrote: post #75
dexwiz wrote: post #49

All these coins are proven to be worthless. When speculation is making everyone money, the money isn't worth much. Edit: Love the immediate fear downvote. No one wants to hear their gold is really just shiny dirt.

There's a canonical toxic response to this = HFSP. I don't like that because we're all still learning. I hope you see how the money printer is making scarce assets outside of Govt manipulation more valuable. The Bitcoin rabbit hole goes deep. You're right in that stablecoins might actually be worthless in the long run since they're backed by USD which might be worthless in due course of time. Zoom out of the day to d…

>>There's a canonical toxic response to this = HFSP.

I don't feel this was your actual response, but I still need to address it because I don't understand how anybody ever can have that as a remotely legitimate, thought-out response.

How can any financial instrument/currency make everybody "rich", in any real terms?

If you gave everybody million USD tomorrow, it'd crash so bad that we'd be right back where we came from.

Is there anybody that believes that we could all invest fiat money into X.coin, and after some period of time, we'd all be rich? If so, how? What wonderful value does it produce, what mechanism would magically elevate all without disruption?

From where I'm sitting, any currency or investment is a re-distribution of wealth/money/value. A person who bought X.coin yesterday can only derive/extract value tomorrow if somebody else buys it for more. We didn't gain/extract/create value out of thin air by virtua of fintech, it's a simple exchange.

So what if everybody DID get some X.coin, so that nobody did "HFSP"? What'd happen then?

Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#88

Post by nostrademons »

nightpool wrote: post #56
nostrademons wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm value-neutral in this comment thread, I'm just describing a.) how things are and b.) how the authors of this report are making assumptions about how things are. I can see plusses and minuses for both people-centric and code-centric approaches. I get that it's pretty natural that people would consider it a bad thing for people to hand over power to computer code. It makes perfect sense if you consider yourself not…

Computers are a tool built to improve the lives of people. It does not make sense to consider them an end in-and-of-themselves.

So is capitalism, and yet capitalism has seemingly taken over human behavior in a way that many people find is not an improvement, and yet are powerless to stop.

Complex systems often exhibit complex emergent behavior. Humans are part of that system. Humans are not the only part of that system, and it makes sense that agents interacting at speeds millions of times greater than us might eventually come to dominate the system.

Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#89

Post by andred14 »

Animats wrote: post #47

This is good. The backing of stablecoins is a very real issue. As the Treasury points out, there's a very real possibility of a run. Two stablecoins have crashed so far, SafeDollar SDO, and $TITAN. They went all the way to zero. Can Tether survive a net outflow? Probably not. They don't have the collateral. Dai is really a derivative of Etherium. Dai is backed by Etherium at 150%. So value in Dai is at risk if the pr…

You are out of it when has the government actually something good for you?

It should be obvious now, with thousands dead from the 1nject1ons and no end in sight:

All your leaders want is to hurt and control you.

If used properly, ie. use Monero and other private solutions, cryptocurrencies can provide us with freedom but if we allow the government to force THEIR crypto verions down our throats then freedom as we knew it will truly be over for us.

Re: Report on Stablecoins [pdf]

#90

Post by satellite2 »

dexwiz wrote: post #49

All these coins are proven to be worthless. When speculation is making everyone money, the money isn't worth much. Edit: Love the immediate fear downvote. No one wants to hear their gold is really just shiny dirt.

You have to be careful with your choice of words. Especially on an engineering / science forum. The word "proven" implies a definitive certainty backed by solid theoretical foundation and a massive body of evidence. Very few things are proven in social science and economics. And most of them are simply definition.

You are free to express your opinion though, but please mark it as such and make at least a small effort to explain how you reached it as otherwise your post is not adding value to the conversation.

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