Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 366 posts

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#101

Post by Tao3300 »

Animats wrote: post #7

Oh, no. They had feeder funds. Stablegain [1] was feeding money into them: You can now earn up to 15% APY interest on your cash with Stablegains. This is 30x higher than in your traditional bank. You can deposit and withdraw using your preferred methods (ACH, wire transfer, USDC) with the help of our partner Circle. There are no long-term lock-up periods. Earn passive income every day We take care of all technical as…

> There are people hit by this who didn't even know they had exposure.

Reminds me of CZ's wild attempt to make clear that if Binance was effected, it was totally not his fault or even his business to know about it.

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=cz-admits-binance-held-luna...

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#102

Post by gruez »

KMag wrote: post #56
jmyeet wrote: post #31

I occasionally get asked by relatives and friends of what to invest in. Now I'm no expert but I guess in the valley of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Thing is what I tell them seems to bore them because, well, it's boring. My advice is basically this: Put your money in a broad index fund and don't look at it for 10 years. In giving this advice you start to realize it's not what people want to hear. It's not that…

In my experience, it seems that a lot of people have an un-stated gut feeling that "doing something" must out-perform passive dollar cost averaging a broad low-fee index ETF. If we came up with some obfuscated mathematical dance that, if un-obfuscated, were obviously dollar cost averaging in a broad-based low-fee index ETF, I think it would be more popular. Edit: There are also lots of investment strategies where peo…

>Edit: There are also lots of investment strategies where people are short tail-risk and don't realize it or properly account for it. For instance, my dad is a pretty smart guy (practicing medical doctor who never got his undergrad degree because he crushed the MCATs and got into med school after 3 years of undergrad, back in the 1970s when med school was less competitive) but he's convinced that his gut-feeling covered calls out-perform a simple buy-and-hold (on a non-risk-adjusted basis).

Nice to see that's still around

https://old.reddit.com/r/thetagang/wiki/index

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#103

Post by WalterGR »

gruez wrote: post #95
jmyeet wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, which is why everyone who lives off an income rather than assets (which is ~99.5% of us) should be a leftist and support labor organization as that is the only thing that'll actually improve their material conditions. And I mean leftist in the actual sense, not a feckless liberal in the US Democratic Party sense who still ultimately exist to defend the capital-owning class. The so-called Great Resignation an…

>I agree, which is why everyone who lives off an income rather than assets (which is ~99.5% of us) I think you're greatly underestimating how many people can "live off [...] assets". This page shows household net worth by percentile[1]. Based off that, you can probably live off investments starting at around the 90th percentile ($61k annual income with 5% withdraw rate), if you live modestly in a low CoL state. Once…

> Based off that, you can probably live off investments starting at around the 90th percentile ($61k annual income with 5% withdraw rate), if you live modestly in a low CoL state.

I don't understand how that math works. Could you break it down for me?

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#104

Post by plorkyeran »

dubswithus wrote: post #29
jrmg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes you are able to hold a short position for the indefinitely long irrational period in which the bubble can grow unpredictably large and your gains increasingly negative. It’s therefore also irrational to take a short position. The sensible thing to do was to stay away - and I think it’s perfectly fine for people who did so to smugly say ‘I told you so,’ presuming they did indeed do that.

Surely if you believe crypto is coming to an end in the next few years there is some way to profit.

I have been consistently wrong about when various scams have exploded, both thinking that they would explode earlier than they did and that it would take longer. If I'd tried to short the crypto crashes so far I probably would have lost money overall even with just the ones where I was correct about them going to zero.

With a lot more research I perhaps could be net positive, but I don't actually want to spend a lot more time digging into something that I consider stupid bullshit.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#105

Post by ano88888 »

MBCook wrote: post #55

Ok I’ve never tried to look into TerraUSD or other stablecoins before. So I have $100. I use that to buy $100 worth of Terra because it’s pegged to USD. Then I can.. sell it for $100? What’s the point? If they promise returns where are they supposed to come from? If my coins are pegged to USD how do they appreciate? Or is the idea they just give me more for holding? But if the coins are pegged where do they get the m…

the biggest utility is moving money across borders. Not sure about TerraUSD but USDT is very valuable in a lot of countries like Dubai and others. It is the heaven for money laundering or avoiding tax and the demand and transaction volume is hugeee. For example, in south east asia , all the casinos, digital frauds, drug sales are using USDT as a way to move money or transact.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#106

Post by Tao3300 »

superb-owl wrote: post #66
MBCook wrote: post #55

Ok I’ve never tried to look into TerraUSD or other stablecoins before. So I have $100. I use that to buy $100 worth of Terra because it’s pegged to USD. Then I can.. sell it for $100? What’s the point? If they promise returns where are they supposed to come from? If my coins are pegged to USD how do they appreciate? Or is the idea they just give me more for holding? But if the coins are pegged where do they get the m…

Stablecoins are useful, because they let you set prices on the blockchain that aren't denominated in BTC or ETH or another currency that fluctuates wildly. A good stablecoin is pretty boring in terms of gains/profits, but can generate a modest stream of fees. Terra had a sister coin called Luna which it planned to use to keep Terra stable. Luna had the price dynamics of ETH or BTC, where it's value depended solely on…

> The whole thing was a perpetual motion machine that failed very predictably.

At the very least, similarly structured algorithmic stablecoin schemes should be identified as a species of scam and made illegal. Knowingly trying to pull this kind of thing on people who are going to be left holding the bag and wondering when their Luna2 airdrop is going to show up in some piece of tech that they don't understand... it takes malice.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#107

Post by Tao3300 »

gowld wrote: post #65
dubswithus wrote: post #54

> Keith Baldwin, a 44-year-old surgeon who lives outside New Bedford, Mass., saved $177,000 during the past decade. Last year he took his savings and bought USD Coin, putting it in a crypto account that paid a 9% annual yield. A surgeon saved 177k over 10 years? Something else might be going on here.

He also bought a mansion and a few cars and divorced and gambled a lot in Vegas and online casinos and hot stock tips? What's amazing is that this person put his name in the WSJ as a gullible fool who can now be targeted by spearphishing scams (including that Crypto Recovery scam that has was even spamming HN recently) and shunned by his peers and potential clients.

Yeah I would not want this guy getting near me with anything sharp if I could avoid it.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#108

Post by tootie »

MBCook wrote: post #55

Ok I’ve never tried to look into TerraUSD or other stablecoins before. So I have $100. I use that to buy $100 worth of Terra because it’s pegged to USD. Then I can.. sell it for $100? What’s the point? If they promise returns where are they supposed to come from? If my coins are pegged to USD how do they appreciate? Or is the idea they just give me more for holding? But if the coins are pegged where do they get the m…

It says in the article that buying Terra was the way to get access to Anchor Protocol which sounds like a textbook pyramid scheme. I think the stablecoin branding gave this facade of being foolproof while it was an absolute scam.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#109

Post by bradleybuda »

MBCook wrote: post #55

Ok I’ve never tried to look into TerraUSD or other stablecoins before. So I have $100. I use that to buy $100 worth of Terra because it’s pegged to USD. Then I can.. sell it for $100? What’s the point? If they promise returns where are they supposed to come from? If my coins are pegged to USD how do they appreciate? Or is the idea they just give me more for holding? But if the coins are pegged where do they get the m…

> What’s the point?

Tax evasion and money laundering

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#110

Post by [deleted] »

gruez wrote: post #102
KMag wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it seems that a lot of people have an un-stated gut feeling that "doing something" must out-perform passive dollar cost averaging a broad low-fee index ETF. If we came up with some obfuscated mathematical dance that, if un-obfuscated, were obviously dollar cost averaging in a broad-based low-fee index ETF, I think it would be more popular. Edit: There are also lots of investment strategies where peo…

>Edit: There are also lots of investment strategies where people are short tail-risk and don't realize it or properly account for it. For instance, my dad is a pretty smart guy (practicing medical doctor who never got his undergrad degree because he crushed the MCATs and got into med school after 3 years of undergrad, back in the 1970s when med school was less competitive) but he's convinced that his gut-feeling cove…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN