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The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

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Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#131

Post by marcinjachymiak »

marcinjachymiak wrote: post #117
vesinisa wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead of actually debunking his arguments you published a handwavy reply? I very much think that if someone is offering insanely high ROIs but does not divulge how the value is created, you can safely assume it's a scam, and simply pointing out the disparity suffices as proof to me at least.

I don't know what happens behind the scenes at Celsius. I do know there are many ways to get those high ROIs in DeFi. With zero evidence suggesting they are lying about returns, the charitable guess I can make is that they are getting high DeFi returns and giving their customers slightly lower ones after taking a cut.

There are also other ways to get these returns outside of DeFi, like by staking ETH, selling covered calls, or various other strategies on centralized services

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#132

Post by pjc50 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #95
usehackernews wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people on HN assume that if they don’t find something valuable, others shouldn’t either. I think of NFTs like car titles. Having the car title in your name is the only way to prove you own a car. Someone can burrow your car, and have it in their possession but that doesn’t make them the owner - the title does. When you buy a car, what you’re really buying is a little paper that says you’re the owner - without…

No - when you buy a house - you also are "buying a title". That's not why people buy houses or cars. They buy them to use & own them. Maybe Ultra High Net Worth Individuals who collect cars and $10M lakefront mansions across the world don't buy cars and houses to "use" them. But >99% of cars and houses are bought for use - not for a piece of paper to prove ownership. Sure - the people buying $1M NFTs are probably Ult…

People definitely buy real estate for the resale value.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#133

Post by Alex3917 »

marcinjachymiak wrote: post #77

I'm not a fan or user of Celsius, but this is an incredibly inflammatory title with very little evidence to back it up. Claims like that demand greater proof. This is an incredibly lazy article The author pretty much failed to do any research on DeFi investments (point 3 in the OP). Compound and Aave are just 2 of many places investors place their assets, and are definitely near the lower end of APYs. Badger, which C…

> Where do these high APYs come from

The promise of DeFi is that it's supposed to reduce risk for lenders by letting them see the assets of borrowers in real time. If the risk to lenders is lower but interest rates are higher then how can it not be a Ponzi scheme? There's literally no other possible explanation.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#134

Post by selestify »

moron4hire wrote: post #85
tomp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is spending $1 000 000 on a "virtual image" (NFT) any different than spending it on a Picasso? There are equivalent/superior copies of both readily available, but some people value provenance ...

NFTs only prove the first derivative of ownership. There is no mechanism within the blockchain that can prove that the person who minted the NFT owned the media associated with the NFT, e.g. there's nothing stopping you from minting an NFT claiming ownership of an actual Picasso. Which means that we have to fall back to the traditional system of legal contracts and physical possession to prove the ownership, at which…

All of what you mentioned was never meant to be the value-add of NFTs, which is namely that there's a trustless, verifiable record of transfer from the original creator (which yes, you have to verify is actually the person you think it is) to the current holder. When tied to physical possessions, it's one additional piece of evidence that the thing before you is likely genuine. When tied to digital entities, it's an unforgeable piece of bragging rights.

There are a lot of fools in this market that don't understand the tech or its specific guarantees and non-guarantees, sure, but that doesn't mean NFTs aren't bringing anything new at all to the table.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#135

Post by thr0wawayf00 »

vesinisa wrote: post #94
marcinjachymiak wrote: post #77

I'm not a fan or user of Celsius, but this is an incredibly inflammatory title with very little evidence to back it up. Claims like that demand greater proof. This is an incredibly lazy article The author pretty much failed to do any research on DeFi investments (point 3 in the OP). Compound and Aave are just 2 of many places investors place their assets, and are definitely near the lower end of APYs. Badger, which C…

So instead of actually debunking his arguments you published a handwavy reply? I very much think that if someone is offering insanely high ROIs but does not divulge how the value is created, you can safely assume it's a scam, and simply pointing out the disparity suffices as proof to me at least.

Agreed. And once the irrational optimism leaves the market, we'll see just how stable this whole system is. It mirrors the irrational, misplaced confidence in the housing market back in 2007.

Tether feels like the most likely POF based purely on the attention they're getting now, but nobody knows exactly how it will bust.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#136

Post by ripe »

agleason wrote: post #39
criddell wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will remain a very useful medium of exchange? Are you saying that today it is a very useful medium of exchange? Are you using it that way?

If I need to move money between countries, it certainly is by far the easiest. Traveling in India trying to get my friend money has been an awful headache. With cryptocurrency, it's quite simple

Have you looked into Hawala systems? Unofficial, trust-based money transfer agents can transfer money with a phone call. Have been doing it for decades in India, for sure, since before computers were common. Still works, and no need to risk volatile crypto coins or trust exchanges.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hawala.asp

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#137

Post by ceejayoz »

aketchum wrote: post #63

what about blockfi, with similar interest rates but audited by state of new york regularly?

Can you explain what "audited by state of new york" means? I'm not aware of NY offering such services outside the realm of "we're investigating you for financial crimes"; https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ablockfi.com+audit is not promising.

Tether claimed audits for years, too, and it was bullshit.

https://help.blockfi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049344531-Why-... ("Unfortunately we're unable to offer the interest account in NY") and https://blockfi.com/licenses/ don't look too promising for this claim, either.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#138

Post by roywiggins »

popol12 wrote: post #114
marcinjachymiak wrote: post #77

I'm not a fan or user of Celsius, but this is an incredibly inflammatory title with very little evidence to back it up. Claims like that demand greater proof. This is an incredibly lazy article The author pretty much failed to do any research on DeFi investments (point 3 in the OP). Compound and Aave are just 2 of many places investors place their assets, and are definitely near the lower end of APYs. Badger, which C…

This. Plus, if you deposit Eth on Aave, it's not for the 1% returns but because it then allows you to borrow other coins which you can use somewhere else in DeFi, where it can bring you much higher returns (convex/curve for instance). I'm amazed that this guy wrote such a big article on a topic he obviously doesn't fully understand.

The problem is that every Ponzi insists that their critics just don't understand their special sauce that generates their phony returns.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#139

Post by Tangokat »

Clickbait title and no proof at all. HN hates all things crypto so much this gets upvotes even though the quality is less than Buzzfeed.

Rates like these are absolutely possible to get using Defi, futures and so on. One example of doing it risk free (staying delta neutral) is by selling crypto futures contracts and buying the underlying asset to hedge.

With that said, lenders like Celsius, Nexo, Crypto.com etc. should have transparent audits for sure. Same goes for stablecoin providers. Everyone pretty much agrees on this.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#140

Post by anonymoushn »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #112
tomp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is spending $1 000 000 on a "virtual image" (NFT) any different than spending it on a Picasso? There are equivalent/superior copies of both readily available, but some people value provenance ...

The Picasso is truly scarce. The NFT is artificially scarce.

idk there are 50,000 Picassos and only 100 stupid pictures of rocks from the first such collection of stupid pictures of rocks on ethereum
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