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YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

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Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#91
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were funds that did due diligence and built out models of the Luna/Terra/Anchor ecosystem and realized it was unstable. You can talk to the people who built their models and they have lots of fun things to say about the ordeal.

Do you have any links / references regarding that? I'd like to read more

Not that I can share publicly unfortunately.

Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A poor decision does not equal fraud.

Promising a guaranteed 15% return is fraud. There is no place in reality where you can * guarantee * that kind of return.

Credit cards issue debt on promised 15%-24.99% returns all the time..

Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#93
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the thing we call web3 The thing some call web3.

Sadly the term is poisoned now and we won't be able to use it for anything new in the near future.

Well, we can always use the USB approach to naming. Lets just call the next thing web3 type II superspeed or sth.

Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#94

They’re just one of several shiny fintech apps/websites running the same scam, a modern two-and-twenty on a ponzi — but with really nice UI. Alice (alice.co / @alice_finance) is another prominent one that may have lost customer funds, which was also using the Anchor protocol. It’s unclear how much they lost, but it’s interesting that Do Kwon’s name is still an actual logo listed on their home page. And Vertex Protoco…

I publicly called out LUNA/UST on Twitter a few times a few months before the collapse [0] [1]. Just stating this so it's clear that I don't have any interest defending them.

That being said, calling these platforms "ponzis" isn't correct, the most you can say is that they were front ends for a ponzi. It would be like setting up a front-end to receive investments, and then depositing the money with Madoff. I'm not saying that it is a legitimate business, just not a ponzi.

And I'm not defending these companies either, a very light DD [2] made it obvious that the LUNA-UST mechanism was broken and the collapse was inevitable. It's really messed up that they put clients' money at risk, and that they lost it. I also think that YC is somewhat responsible for this.

What makes the situation even worse is that the collapse didn't happen from one day to the next, they actually had time to pull the money out at a 0.5%-5% loss, but they still decided to wait and see if it would repeg.

[0] https://twitter.com/josusanmartin/status/1478185473499615233

[1] https://twitter.com/josusanmartin/status/1478188494463848448

[2] This DD took me less than 1 hour: https://twitter.com/josusanmartin/status/1524323026942242818

Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#95

The last few weeks (months, really) has highlighted an incredible lack of discernment in the VC-verse wrt the thing we call web3. Now. I have no experience doing what YC does and don’t claim to, but the jig here was so transparent that the smallest drop of “street smart” should’ve been enough to set off some alarms. We’re approaching a point where being passed over for “culture fit” is a compliment. Hopefully the emb…

There were funds that did due diligence and built out models of the Luna/Terra/Anchor ecosystem and realized it was unstable. You can talk to the people who built their models and they have lots of fun things to say about the ordeal.

[deleted]

Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#96
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were funds that did due diligence and built out models of the Luna/Terra/Anchor ecosystem and realized it was unstable. You can talk to the people who built their models and they have lots of fun things to say about the ordeal.

Do you have any links / references regarding that? I'd like to read more

We considered putting some of our treasury in Anchor. I didn't build a model, just one hour of DD was enough to see the risks. Here is the message I shared with my team on Slack with the findings from a very brief DD: https://twitter.com/josusanmartin/status/1524323026942242818

Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#97

The last few weeks (months, really) has highlighted an incredible lack of discernment in the VC-verse wrt the thing we call web3. Now. I have no experience doing what YC does and don’t claim to, but the jig here was so transparent that the smallest drop of “street smart” should’ve been enough to set off some alarms. We’re approaching a point where being passed over for “culture fit” is a compliment. Hopefully the emb…

There were funds that did due diligence and built out models of the Luna/Terra/Anchor ecosystem and realized it was unstable. You can talk to the people who built their models and they have lots of fun things to say about the ordeal.

That raises an interesting ethical problem, really; should there be a duty to report this sort of thing, or is "scheme X is fundamentally flawed/a scam and investors will lose everything" legitimate proprietary information? As I understand it, various analysts were pretty sure at the time that Madoff's scheme was a Ponzi, but in general they didn't tell anyone (in fairness, one attempted to and had trouble getting listened to).

Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#98

They’re just one of several shiny fintech apps/websites running the same scam, a modern two-and-twenty on a ponzi — but with really nice UI. Alice (alice.co / @alice_finance) is another prominent one that may have lost customer funds, which was also using the Anchor protocol. It’s unclear how much they lost, but it’s interesting that Do Kwon’s name is still an actual logo listed on their home page. And Vertex Protoco…

The thing that has shocked me about all of this over the last year or so is how seemingly easy it is to just start issuing debit cards to people.

Maybe there's more regulation than I realise (and the emperor has more layers of clothes than Joey Tribbiani), but I'm not seeing it.

I assumed issuance of payment methods was much more strictly controlled than this due to the risk of contagion if the issuer can't meet it's obligations after the transaction (are card payments instant delivery between institutions these days? I always assumed there was a clearing period in the background).

Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#99

Remembering the early days of bitcoin, and Pirateat40's Bitcoin Savings and Trust ponzi (BTCST) from 2012. That also had a pile of feeder ponzis hanging off the side. They'd claim to be completely uncorrelated with BTCST, but just put their coins into BTCST. Crypto has now gone beyond replaying old scams from the history of finance, and is now just replaying old scams from the history of crypto. But now they're VC-fu…

I like the name “Feeder Ponzi” though! Has a sort of legit-not-legit sound to it.

Re: YC W22 Stablegains is being sued for losing $42M in funds from 4878 customers

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$42 million of real people’s money was lost. That’s a net negative to society whether or not it shows up on a balance sheet.

The money changed hands... from people gambling on financial instruments to other people who are probably also gambling on financial instruments. Significant real value was only destroyed forever if the underlying tech for this is based on proof of work. Mining bitcoin destroys an enormous amount of ~real value, and nobody who cares about the advancement of society should touch it. Proof of work crypto mining is some…

It's a great analogy because:

Banning watering gardens is exactly as dumb as banning proof of work. The vast majority of water wastage occurs irrigating farms supporting crops that are unsuitable for that area.

A solar panel connected to a coin miner is only doing good in the world. Where is the negative? You sure it's the mining that is the bad thing and not the dirty energy?

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