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TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

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Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#211

Post by artdigital »

worik wrote: post #153

What were they thinking? 20% yield?

I can explain my thinking about why I put money into anchor.

I never expected it to last long and had a clear date set in my calendar when I would cash out, but to me it sounded like their decision to pump VC money into rewards. Lots of companies do that, see PayPay in Japan which used to give you 20% cashback on EVERY PURCHASE you made, with every 10th purchase in the system getting a 100% caschback, just so they can grow faster than others. It was bonkers and burned so much money, but now they are the dominant payment app in Japan.

So for me, put money in, ride some of that 20% while VC money is still around, then bail.

I also regularly monitored the reserve dashboard how much reward money was left, the ongoing proposals, and how the APR was supposed to change month by month until it reaches a fully self-sustainable rate. In fact, when reserves for anchor dry out, it was supposed to automatically reduce the rate to the sustainable rate which was like 4-5% or something.

I also put money into UST on Binance to reduce my exposure to onchain Terra, because I trusted Binance more than I trusted the protocols.

Well, long-story-short, about a week before my cash-out date Terra collapsed and I lost 90% of my investment. That was a lot of money for me and it will take a long long time to re-save that.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#212

Post by merek »

gonehome wrote: post #176

Lots of noise in the crypto space and the HN comments are always bad. BTC and ETH are the interesting and worth putting a small percentage of your holdings into (BTC [0] as an international store of value that has benefits over gold, ETH as the core programmable token that backs anything that stores stuff on chain to manage decentralized state). Vitalik is earnest and his writing is pretty great. Everything else I'd…

> BTC and ETH are the interesting and worth putting a small percentage of your holdings into

At what price?

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#213

Post by ddorian43 »

gonehome wrote: post #176

Lots of noise in the crypto space and the HN comments are always bad. BTC and ETH are the interesting and worth putting a small percentage of your holdings into (BTC [0] as an international store of value that has benefits over gold, ETH as the core programmable token that backs anything that stores stuff on chain to manage decentralized state). Vitalik is earnest and his writing is pretty great. Everything else I'd…

> BTC and ETH are the interesting and worth putting a small percentage of your holdings into

Extremely no. It's FOMO and no real value all the way down.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#214

Post by pastacacioepepe »

SilverBirch wrote: post #205

I think we really need to start talking about the broader "why" of why crypto. There's a good reason that we're seeing /r/antiwork and people throwing their last pennies into crypto. People have seen that those with assets got rich and those that work get poorer. There's no point aspiring to a better life through work. In reality what has happened is inflation that we don't measure. Assets are inflated by easy money…

I've been working real hard for the past 10+ years and I have very little to show for it yet.

In the meantime a couple of friends who never worked got rich(er) just because they bought a few thousands $ (money borrowed...from their family) worth of crypto at the right moment.

What is this bullshit? Why am I even busting my ass trying to create value, when I could just buy shitcoins and become a millionaire?

I don't think this is healthy for any society. I don't even want to get rich with a fucking lottery. I want to earn it, to provide something to others and get something in return. No, I don't consider "making a market more efficient with my investments" as providing value. It's just speculation.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#215

Post by trhway »

KMag wrote: post #114
dustyharddrive wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth mentioning USDC (Circle) reserves have never been audited, and they don’t even claim to hold dollars anymore ( https://archive.today/2021.07.12-223553/https://www.ft.com/c... ): > Until March 2020, the attestations said USDC was backed by dollars, held in government-backed US depository institutions. After that, they said the reserves were held at institutions and in “approved investments”, but did not giv…

The thing I never understood was why they didn't just invest in treasuries. Yield on the US 10-year is currently north of 3.3%, closer to 2% for a while. That's under inflation, but if you're a small start-up holding 100s of millions or billions of other people's money, that's enough to hit screw-it money in a few years without the constant fear of things going terribly wrong.

> holding 100s of millions or billions of other people's money, that's enough to hit screw-it money in a few years without the constant fear of things going terribly wrong.

so, you can have that honest 2% per year for several years or you can just take it all almost immediately. History as well as crypto today is pretty clear about what humans prefer. Absent the "take it all immediately" option people do though go for the 2% option. So if you see that they can go for such an option and yet haven't - i.e. they think they have a much better option than to earn easy 2% off somebody's billions (what can be better than that?) - that is a clear sign what option they really chose :)

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#216

Post by alangibson »

SilverBirch wrote: post #205

I think we really need to start talking about the broader "why" of why crypto. There's a good reason that we're seeing /r/antiwork and people throwing their last pennies into crypto. People have seen that those with assets got rich and those that work get poorer. There's no point aspiring to a better life through work. In reality what has happened is inflation that we don't measure. Assets are inflated by easy money…

> This is not a sustainable economic settlement.

Unfortunately it is. For most of human history the rich got richer and the poor just stayed poor. It's truly sad to say, but people will suffer along at a subsistence level pretty much indefinitely.

Without a wartime boom or the threat of an organized Left to force concessions, which were the two major drivers of wealth moving to the lower 90% in the 20th century as far as I can tell, we will continue on our current path.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#217

Post by yreg »

joshjdr wrote: post #9
ntoskrnl wrote: post #5

> TerraUSD was touted as a blue-chip cryptocurrency. Let me stop you right there. Terra was a barely 2 year old shitcoin. I don't think you know what "blue-chip" means.

In the defense of WSJ: >was touted as To quote another HN comment: >I mean, we did tell 'em. /s /shrug /eye roll

/headbang

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/2007scape/images/7/74/Head...

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#218

Post by rofo1 »

markmark wrote: post #83
twoodfin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re getting 15% returns you better realize you’re exposed to something !

I have a friend who lost about $5k in the Terra crash. So not a lot, but he'd rather have $5k than zero. And when he was telling me about it before putting money in he was talking about the 15% thing and that it seemed like easy money, and I said something like "well unless the whole thing just goes to zero". And you could tell he just didn't see that as a possibility. Like he's not completely blind, he knew he could…

People are not sufficiently educated about the value of things, vs. pricing, appreciation and so on.

Just the fact that anybody can think that you can get 15% "risk free" over long periods of time means that they are out of touch with reality.

Not to mention people thinking they will get 10x on their investments, without ludicrous amount of risk.

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#219

Post by biztos »

SilverBirch wrote: post #205

I think we really need to start talking about the broader "why" of why crypto. There's a good reason that we're seeing /r/antiwork and people throwing their last pennies into crypto. People have seen that those with assets got rich and those that work get poorer. There's no point aspiring to a better life through work. In reality what has happened is inflation that we don't measure. Assets are inflated by easy money…

> those with assets got rich and those that work get poorer

I think this is the take-away of the modern world economy.

If you can somehow get enough money to join the asset-holding class you have a chance, otherwise you have no chance. And even if you can, you're fighting a serious uphill battle against the people who got there earlier and got to that sweet free number-go-up zone while you were still toiling.

Right now a friend of mine is trying to buy a modest house in the Bay Area (not SF) -- and he's worried that the $1.5M he can afford is not going to be enough (for things listed at $1.3M) because people with generational wealth, or people who won the tech lottery, are going to come in with $1.6M cash offers.

It's not that insane yet in most of the world but I see no reason to believe this is not the direction.

So, if you don't have a path from work-work into assets, what are you supposed to do?

Re: TerraUSD crash led to vanished savings, shattered dreams

#220

Post by pastacacioepepe »

markmark wrote: post #83
twoodfin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re getting 15% returns you better realize you’re exposed to something !

I have a friend who lost about $5k in the Terra crash. So not a lot, but he'd rather have $5k than zero. And when he was telling me about it before putting money in he was talking about the 15% thing and that it seemed like easy money, and I said something like "well unless the whole thing just goes to zero". And you could tell he just didn't see that as a possibility. Like he's not completely blind, he knew he could…

If your friend only had $5k in total and threw them all in Terra then I guess the lesson he got in the crash is way more valuable than any savings he might have kept. He would have lost them anyway on the next shitcoin.
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