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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

#261

This made me think... back in 2012, a startup called Kueski (now a very successful BNPL in Mexico) applied for YC (twice in 2 years). The founders were rejected, even though the business model was sound and the economics were pretty well laid out (I know the CEO and ge is a really meticulous person). The reason YC gave for the rejection was that Mexico was an unknown market, and they felt lending in there was too ris…

YC is just a VC firm. They avoid known risks and embrace unknown ones: that’s the whole point. They don’t “understand” Mexico and are scared that their investment will get Pemex’d or something - and since that’s a known financial risk their backers would be like “wtf you doing?” But “unknown” risks (even if actually quite easy to see) don’t have the same pushback from their investors. In fact, their investors may be…

Great answer, thanks!

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

#262
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that precisely a ponzi scheme?

Generated tokens were different than what you had to deposit to get them. Deposited funds were (almost always) completely safe.

If you were doing this though (using funds to mint other tokens to sell), the principle was clearly not in USD, so there was still a risk of the bottom falling out on whatever you were holding funds in.

You also can't really add "almost always" to "completely safe". It's either "completely safe", or it's not. This statement is just "it works 100% of the time 65% of the time", but with words rather than numbers.

"It's 'completely safe', until it's not" which is exactly the point that I and others in this thread started with.

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

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how stablecoins are fundamentally a ponzi scheme, it's really not hard to imagine a sustainable stablecoin business model - reinvest what people pay into the stablecoin, keep risk low so you don't lose your principal and end up unable to repay debtors, keep enough in reserves that the stablecoin doesn't collapse in a bank run, and cross your fingers. Now, you certainly COULD turn this entire scheme into a…

UST wasn't a stablecoin, it was a ponzi scheme along with Luna. The invention here is obfuscation - move the exponential ponzi growth part into a separate token. In a very straightforward ponzi $2M coming after $1M would allow initial owners to cash out with a 2x gain. Which is too obvious. UST instead would transfer all $2M to Luna sellers (real wealth) while printing just enough UST to provide 20% APR to previous d…

To add some info, USDC is 100% collateralised with USD and DAI is 165%+ collateralised with ETH.

Due to their actual stability (relative to other stablecoins), they're more likely to trade at a premium than at a discount.

About a year ago I traded 10,000 USDC for 12,100 USDT during a run on a certain DeFi bridge, only to trade it back to 12,080 USDC a couple hours later.

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

#264
post #4

I imagine (and hope) those 5k where mostly crypto bros who knew what they were getting into. Who else expects 15% returns from a "safe" investment?

You would certainly think so ... I did. But I'm sorry to say that you are strongly overestimating the general population here.

My friends know I'm the local crypto-geek[0] so Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and tokens are brought up to me all the time by people who's knowledge of what any of it is begins and ends with "Last year X coin was $7.00 and this year it's $100.00, and all of the other ones have had gains like nothing else I can invest in."

I can think of at least 6 members of my extended family who are presently invested in cryptocurrency trading (many just say "Bitcoin" and don't actually have any) who are -- in every way -- technologically obliviously ignorant[1]. Half of them, however, are not otherwise uneducated people (one guy is a very well paid VP at a company everyone in my state has heard of and has an MBA from a major university ... he's just not in finance or tech). They're not thinking "well, 15% APY is insane/impossible to provide over the short term/impossible to ever guarantee unless they've invented a time machine or are breaking the law." They're looking at the percentage gains on Bitcoin or Ethereum (depending on when you acquired it, of course -- Lord knows it's taken a hit lately) and thinking "15% sounds easy for a company to pull off in this space."

Everyone in my family who invested in some crypto used some company to hold their crypto. Almost all of them used services/companies that had enough of a strong scent of "scam" that I would have dismissed them without further research. Some used more mainstream crypto-sort-of-banks. Sort-of-banks because none of the companies that my family members chose for crypto trading were FDIC or otherwise insured in a manner that made sure the numbers they see on their page could be turned into dollars in a bank account somewhere else. The surprising thing is that none of them had any idea this was the case! A few family members thought they were buying Bitcoin because they were investing in "cryptocurrency" and it turned out they were buying some strange token running on the Ethereum network.

I'll grant it's a small sample size, but in every way it's consistent ... it's a "gold rush" kind of frenzy filled, unfortunately, with a lot of fraudsters riding the wave of news around the crazy gains of crypto.

The thing that scares me the most is that a few of my family members[2] have done very well trading crypto (4x/5x/10x their yearly salary). Some lost a little, the others gained a little. The ones that did well aren't treating it like a short-term gamble, even watching the prices drop ... it's like they're holding on to the stock of a company that they deeply believe in except ... there's no company.

[0] I don't invest, I did mine Ethereum a while back/spent most of it and made a small profit but did it mostly to learn how the miner worked and how to write CUDA software. I worked SecDev for a couple of years at a global telecom and I enjoy the technology behind it all.

[1] One of them -- not elderly -- called for help reconnecting to his 4G modem (their only internet service). The instruction "reboot your computer" was not understood. I fell back to "turn it off, count to ten, turn it on again." Nope, right back where he left it. I had not seen his computer setup so I could provide no more instruction. When I arrived I discovered he was "rebooting" ... the monitor.

[2] Four, precisely, two who are distantly related through a great aunt and are working together, but are among the most irresponsible people with money I've ever known, and two who are quite good with most things financial.

Edit: Realized my tone was harsh in a few places and there was one inaccuracy.

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This was absolutely a thing; most large Ponzi schemes have feeder funds. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pwc-madoff-settlement-idU...

Indirection seems to be very valuable with scams. The 2008 housing crash had a lot of layers: 1. Loan Application (Borrower Lying about income) 2. Mortgage Originator ( Not validating loan application ) 3. Mortgage Back Security Creators ( Obfuscate what is in the security ) 4. Ratings Agencies ( Not being honest that step 3 happened ) 5. Sellers of MBS ( Not being honest that steps 1-4 exist ) I don't know enough ab…

I'd swap 1) and 2). The people writing the mortgages were telling the borrowers to lie, and that the lies wouldn't be checked. It wasn't some oversight.

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

#266
Another negative story about a YC company which has risen to the front page of HN and then seems to be getting a lot of pressure to get ranked down. It has more points and is fresher then a handful of other stories on the frontpage but ranks lower and is falling quickly. And when mentioned in the past, the reason often is the invisible anti-flamewar or similar features. What is it this time?

Elon needs to buy HN and open source the algorithm! /s

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

#267

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…

VCs are unfortunately, on the whole, all too discerning when it comes to Web3. It's a meme now in the community that when a VC and tokens are involved, there's a good chance they are getting preferential treatment and using the end users as their exit liquidity. That's not necessarily the case here but "greed" has become a general theme and the motivations behind otherwise-puzzling investments become clear when viewe…

Thank goodness the SEC is protecting people and their money… by sitting on their hands and doing jack shit.

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

#268
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a 20% better ponzi is better than a 15% one, again, I ask, why not a 1,500% one? There's new shitcoins born every day, promising these kinds of returns.

The part you're missing is that StableGains was simply parking their investors' money on Anchor, collecting the 20% APY, shaving off a quarter of it, and passing the remaining 15% to their investors. Skipping the middleman is necessarily better because it is inherently lower risk for an absolute guarantee of 33% more upside.* Investing in something else with even 16% promised returns, let alone 1500%, is not necessar…

The reason StableGains initially looked compelling to me was for smaller transactions. Being able to deposit & withdraw smaller amounts of money w/o having to pay gas fees looked good. If you need to pull out $100 to cover your half of dinner w/ a friend, StableGains would make that easy. Trying to pull it out of Anchor Protocol would be more work, and you'd have to pay the gas fees.

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

#269
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YCombinator's board? https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stablegains

What is YCombinator’s “board”? Re their directory profile: every public YC company has one, even my defunct 11 year old startup —- it’s definitely not an active endorsement.

The people at YCombinator who decide who to endorse, fund, and provide guidance to.

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

#270
post #266

Another negative story about a YC company which has risen to the front page of HN and then seems to be getting a lot of pressure to get ranked down. It has more points and is fresher then a handful of other stories on the frontpage but ranks lower and is falling quickly. And when mentioned in the past, the reason often is the invisible anti-flamewar or similar features. What is it this time? Elon needs to buy HN and…

> anti-flamewar

This is a story about a company 1) in the crypto space, that 2) lost all of it's users money, and 3) used misleading disclaimers (and potentially trying to change them after the fact)

It has already devolved in multiple threads to discussion about what is-and-is-not technically a ponzi scheme (vs other forms of scams/fraud).

This whole thing is a recipe for a giant flame war.

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