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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

#391

Post by NicoJuicy »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #374
_xnmw wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto is an open protocol for financial services/transactions running on decentralised hardware. Except it's not. "Open" and "decentralized" are the false promises of crypto. The entire crypto market is dominated by centralized exchanges, criminal enterprises like Tether and Binance.

How is it not open when anybody can interact with it and look at the source code, state of the chain and smart contracts? The chain is decentralized as no company is hosting the servers and can pull a google on short notice. But sure, many chains have serious problems with centralization of assets, control by a single person group..... This things, in combination with regulation, have to work itself out and the situa…

You're talking as a developer.

None of the exchanges influencing crypto is actually open about their business. Eg. They even try to fake audits as much as possible. Ponzi schemes, pump and dumps, fake code-audits that reveal 0day exploits at launch and other (sometimes insider) hacks everywhere! It really is a daily wild wild west show - https://rekt.news

I will never trust a currency, where malicious insiders can walk away anonymously with my money and blame it on a hack.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#392

Post by not2b »

delabay wrote: post #330
codebolt wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, and wiring money overseas has also never been easier. I regularly send money from Norway to family in Africa using online remittance services (there's quite a few to pick from) and it usually takes less than 15 minutes for the money to go through (and they get a pick up notice from their bank). Because of competition, the FX rates are very good. No crypto involved.

You have a comfortable life. Many don't. Side note: what appears to be instantaneous settlement in fact, is not.

Someone who is not comfortable should stay far away from cryptocurrencies, because they may not survive the loss of all their money to a hack.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#393

Post by TimJRobinson »

adam_arthur wrote: post #128
marcinjachymiak wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you explain some of the ways then? Not the user facing side, but the backend/underlying part that generates the returns necessary to sustain those yields.

Most of the high yields come day traders paying trading fees. For example on sushiswap on Polygon there are pools of ETH/USDC that people trade back and forth with trying to play the market. Every time they do a trade they pay a 0.3% fee. If you provide liquidity to these pools there is so much trading going on that the returns are currently 20% - 30% per year.

You can earn even more if you provide liquidity for riskier assets that have a higher chance of dropping in value.

The risks are impermanent loss and that the token you're providing liquidity for drops in value.

Yearn is a decentralized automated tool to find the platform that is giving the best returns and moving all the money they manage into it.

All of this is open source and on the blockchain.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#394

Post by TimJRobinson »

_xnmw wrote: post #202

For those who believe "crypto is too big to fail", or the genie is out of the bottle, or that crypto concepts have become so engrained and popular that it's not possible to stop, I'd like to point out that Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scam lasted for 30+ years. People built entire lives on his very professional-seeming "business". Scams can go on for a very long time, and very large numbers of people can build their whole l…

How are you so confident in something you clearly don't understand.

Celsius is not decentralized finance and does not represent crypto, it is a centralized opaque company which is literally the opposite.

Decentralized Finance is all open source and transparent, everything is written to a public blockchain and almost every piece of infrastructure you can go and look at the source code yourself.

It's a far better system than anything we've built so far because it's available for all to see the inner workings.

I'm surprised hacker news, a place that's supposed to be about intellectual curiosity, has been so ignorant and dismissive of this revolution underfoot for so long.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#395

Post by TimJRobinson »

_xnmw wrote: post #349
Paradigma11 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is an open protocol for financial services/transactions running on decentralised hardware. Thats pretty cool and useful. Naturally the first thing that happened was that all the scammers and get rich idiots moved in like with any powerful new technology. It will surely take some time to get the real world usage up and the portion of moon boys/scammers down but it will happen nevertheless.

> Crypto is an open protocol for financial services/transactions running on decentralised hardware. Except it's not. "Open" and "decentralized" are the false promises of crypto. The entire crypto market is dominated by centralized exchanges, criminal enterprises like Tether and Binance.

"Open" and "decentralized" are the false promises of computing. The entire market is dominated by centralized companies like Microsoft and Apple.

Sound stupid? That's how your statement looks to people who understand the space.

Linux and open source software started slow but every year run more of the world because they are a better way of building things

Crypto and decentralized finance is doing the same for the finance industry. There are already $250B in DeFi protocols (see http://defillama.com) all of which are open source, transparent and decentralized.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#396

Post by delabay »

not2b wrote: post #392
delabay wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a comfortable life. Many don't. Side note: what appears to be instantaneous settlement in fact, is not.

Someone who is not comfortable should stay far away from cryptocurrencies, because they may not survive the loss of all their money to a hack.

Someone who's not comfortable is probably facing the decimation of their native currency already, as what's happening in several "modern" countries at the moment.

What would you pick? Sketchy native currency with a near guaranteed loss of 80%+ or a volatile crypto asset?

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#397

Post by [deleted] »

prepend wrote: post #389
anonymoushn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no actual mechanism that matches capital to risk-adjusted returns. Reasoning as if there is reliably leads to incorrect conclusions. Celsius is probably a scam, but the reasoning above is not why.

The invisible hands do a pretty good job of matching. Any true market inefficiencies get discovered and fixed really quickly as it’s like a giant big bounty. When something seems too good to be true, it could be that I know something that they rest of the world doesn’t. Or it could also be that it’s bullshit.

[deleted]

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#398

Post by anonymoushn »

prepend wrote: post #389
anonymoushn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no actual mechanism that matches capital to risk-adjusted returns. Reasoning as if there is reliably leads to incorrect conclusions. Celsius is probably a scam, but the reasoning above is not why.

The invisible hands do a pretty good job of matching. Any true market inefficiencies get discovered and fixed really quickly as it’s like a giant big bounty. When something seems too good to be true, it could be that I know something that they rest of the world doesn’t. Or it could also be that it’s bullshit.

An example of a conclusion that follows from your claim is that all VCs have been equally profitable over the past three decades and that they are just as profitable as any other style of investing restricted to accredited investors over the same period. Any difference in outcomes between Stripe equity and Juicero equity is just noise. Do you seriously think these things?

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#399

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

asdfsd234234444 wrote: post #216
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What does that even mean? You can produce a copy of Picasso that is indistinguishable from an original. You can produce counterfeits of most "real world" items that are indistinguishable.

The scarcity comes from Picasso painting it. There are also great paintings Picasso did not paint which are worthless.

It is not artificially scarce. Picasso could've painted a Guernica every month for the rest of his life. Even then, he would've only painted a few thousand paintings. Instead of doing that, he painted the other thousands of paintings...

Any NFT could have infinite copies. You simply decide how artificially scarce you want it to be. Picasso could not have painted infinite Guernicas if he so chose.

You can buy a print of Picasso's works. The value doesn't come from the art. It comes from the fact that Picasso painted it.

It's the same way for collector guitars. People want guitars famous musicians played. There are plenty other versions of that exact guitar. But they weren't played by the famous musician. That's what makes it truly scarce.

Re: The biggest crypto lending company is a ponzi scheme

#400

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

selestify wrote: post #213
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think just because you're rich you can't have any taste in art? Look - MBS bought that fake Da Vinci for $450M or whatever. I don't think the majority of people buying $50M+ paintings are complete morons. Maybe they are.

When did I say the rich don't have taste in art? I said the rich won't know whether they bought an original or a fake, because the fakes are high quality enough to pass as the real thing to the untrained eye. The art is worth that much not because of the aesthetics qualities, but because of the provenance and the high-status signaling and bragging rights that come with said provenance. > Look - MBS bought that fake D…

No - it's worth that much because of who painted it. There are shitty drafts of Guernica that Picasso did that sell for hundreds of thousands. There are infinitely better drawings that one could not sell for a single penny. The artist is what gives it value. It's truly scarce because only so much work came from that artist - who people are obsessed with.

I will 100% grant that it's mostly about signaling and bragging rights. But NFTs are artificially scarce. Original work from Picasso is truly scarce.

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