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DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion

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31–40 of 140 posts

Re: DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion

#31
It's real plank-in-your-own-eye stuff that all the crypto-huggers will dismiss the BLS analysis so readily at the line about banks acting as a risk buffer. Yes, to be sure! Banks present risks, massive risks, risks which should have been and still should be much better managed, at both bank and government levels — but boy howdy, are you in for a treat, you should see what happened to a financial system in the bad old days, when there were banks but no deposit insurance, and there would sometimes be a run on the banks, and they lose all their customers' cash, and the shock waves ripple through the whole economy.

Now let's do the exact same thing in the crypto-verse, except with even dodgier loans, even more pathetic capital buffers, and, by the way, rampant fraud and bank robberies. It is only by the grace of obscurity and irrelevance to anything that matters that crypto-finance as a whole doesn't suffer widespread derision and fear a hundred times worse than the banking crisis.

Re: DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion

#32

It's real plank-in-your-own-eye stuff that all the crypto-huggers will dismiss the BLS analysis so readily at the line about banks acting as a risk buffer. Yes, to be sure! Banks present risks, massive risks, risks which should have been and still should be much better managed, at both bank and government levels — but boy howdy, are you in for a treat, you should see what happened to a financial system in the bad old…

Crypto: Capital buffers? What's that.

We didn't see it in our due diligence list.

Here is a summary of that list:

Re: DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion

#33
post #27

> it is impossible to write code spelling out what actions to take in all contingencies It sounds like two economists are struggling with the concept of software and systems engineering.

It sounds like economists are much more realistic about the feasibility of bug-free immutable software.

Re: DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion

#34
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the "smart contract" keeps it. The point is the borrower doesn't get to keep the collateral. This makes DeFi loans unsuitable for a large number of purposes.

What's an example of something you'd want to "do" with your crypto asset while using it as collateral? Obviously you can't spend it, give it away, use it as collateral for another loan etc as that would conflict with the first loan. But you can do other stuff. For example you could covert ETH to one of the many tokens that represent staked ETH (rocketpool rETH for example) and use that as collateral. Now you are have…

Well, that's the point, 1) you need 100% collateral, 2) the collateral needs to be in the form of digital tokens and 3) it needs to be kept in custody by a third party (the "smart contract"). Yes, you can still do useful things despite these limitations, but at the same time be aware that 99% of the borrowing/lending activity that goes on in the real world is not possible with this technology.

Re: DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion

#36
post #33
post #27

> it is impossible to write code spelling out what actions to take in all contingencies It sounds like two economists are struggling with the concept of software and systems engineering.

It sounds like economists are much more realistic about the feasibility of bug-free immutable software.

If their argument was about the insanity of no-one doing model checking, I'd be on board. But that's not their argument.

Re: DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion

#38
post #5

The decentralisation illusion argument seems weak. One could have claimed the same about the early internet: Early internet wasn't truly decentralized as there were still ISPs, and you still need to register your domain with a centralized entity. This misses that the big change is one of access. Content creators were able to reach a large audience without playing ball with the big publishers or newspapers. With defi,…

And it turns out the only people wanting to make novel financial instruments on crypto currency are scammers.

Re: DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion

#39
post #33
post #27

> it is impossible to write code spelling out what actions to take in all contingencies It sounds like two economists are struggling with the concept of software and systems engineering.

It sounds like economists are much more realistic about the feasibility of bug-free immutable software.

it's not fair to say that all economic transactions are going to have unaccounted contingencies. There are plenty of transactions which are just dead-simple, and when automated they don't need a middleman

Re: DeFi risks and the decentralisation illusion

#40
post #5

The decentralisation illusion argument seems weak. One could have claimed the same about the early internet: Early internet wasn't truly decentralized as there were still ISPs, and you still need to register your domain with a centralized entity. This misses that the big change is one of access. Content creators were able to reach a large audience without playing ball with the big publishers or newspapers. With defi,…

And it turns out the only people wanting to make novel financial instruments on crypto currency are scammers.

Most of the "novel" crypto financial instruments aren't necessarily "novel" so much as "made illegal in a century ago because of fraud and scams".

Or at the very least "things with clear risks that crypto plebs are oblivious to"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-05-11/money-...

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