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https://archive.ph/0tsZR "The platform, Vauld, said Monday that it froze the operations after users pulled almost $200 million over the last three weeks."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real estate is an outlier in your examples due to there being limited supply and people need shelter.
> Real estate is an outlier in your examples due to there being limited supply and people need shelter People need lots of things. The principal constraints on real estate are political. (The entire concept of real estate is a social construct.) Not physical space.
Even if (the amount of) physical space isn't one of the main constraints on real estate, any particular location may be more desirable relative to others, e.g. a gorgeous view, away from factories or highways.
> A cryptocurrency lender backed by Peter Thiel and Coinbase Global Inc. suspended withdrawals, trading and deposits on its platform, citing volatile market conditions and financial difficulties facing key business partners. > The platform, Vauld, said Monday that it froze the operations after users pulled almost $200 million over the last three weeks. A sharp decline in cryptocurrency prices that began with the coll…
> this bank has no FDIC insurance, no backstop, nothing This was partly true in the S&L crisis [1]. And for depositors in e.g. Cyprus or Iceland in '08. The difference, however, was depositors in S&Ls and Cypriot and Icelandic banks were legally depositors. The banks' assets were insufficiently liquid to accommodate them en masse . But those assets had value. And that value went, almost first and foremost, to the dep…
The intention of your comment is to paint coinbase debt as worthless, but after doing some research I came to a different conclusion: that russian debt isn't as worthless as I thought. Right now 10 year russian bond yields are at 9.15%[1], which is only a little over 6 percentage points above the "risk free" rate of 2.96%[2] for US treasuries. For reference that's about the rate for B rated US corporate bonds[3].
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/government-bond-yield
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/US10Y
[3] https://data.nasdaq.com/data/ML/BEY-us-b-rated-corporate-bon...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Real estate is an outlier in your examples due to there being limited supply and people need shelter People need lots of things. The principal constraints on real estate are political. (The entire concept of real estate is a social construct.) Not physical space.
> People need lots of things. The principal constraints on real estate are political. (The entire concept of real estate is a social construct.) Not physical space. Even if (the amount of) physical space isn't one of the main constraints on real estate, any particular location may be more desirable relative to others, e.g. a gorgeous view, away from factories or highways.
> A cryptocurrency lender backed by Peter Thiel and Coinbase Global Inc. suspended withdrawals, trading and deposits on its platform, citing volatile market conditions and financial difficulties facing key business partners. > The platform, Vauld, said Monday that it froze the operations after users pulled almost $200 million over the last three weeks. A sharp decline in cryptocurrency prices that began with the coll…
Matt Levine always likes to say that cryptocurrencies are relearning hundreds of years of financial lessons in just a few short years. He describes the current crypto crisis as a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. Every single problem that cryptocurrencies face are extremely well known and studied phenomena in traditional economics. It is all very predictable.
Thiel is a smart investor but even smart investors lose money on some investments. "backed" can have many meanings. I would imagine he has some kind of stop-loss on his exposure to risk here. And indeed, its "Valar Ventures" which has invested, an indirect vehicle. Note: I dislike the guys politics, but that has nothing to do with an objective assessment of his financial investment chops. Same with Andreessen, he doe…
Thiel has a sputtering of good ideas, and he was in the right place to invest in some successful ventures, but he’s not some once in a life time visionary.
As of now, it looks like he’s nothing but a hypocritical selfish vindictive rich asshole with a blood boy (every adjective here being something you can substantiate with actual facts).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> this bank has no FDIC insurance, no backstop, nothing This was partly true in the S&L crisis [1]. And for depositors in e.g. Cyprus or Iceland in '08. The difference, however, was depositors in S&Ls and Cypriot and Icelandic banks were legally depositors. The banks' assets were insufficiently liquid to accommodate them en masse . But those assets had value. And that value went, almost first and foremost, to the dep…
>(Given Coinbase's debt trades comparably to Russia's [2], the smart money is betting users will get nothing in a failure.) The intention of your comment is to paint coinbase debt as worthless, but after doing some research I came to a different conclusion: that russian debt isn't as worthless as I thought. Right now 10 year russian bond yields are at 9.15%[1], which is only a little over 6 percentage points above th…
That was not my intention. Coinbase's debt is viewed as risky. That has implications for the risk junior creditors (e.g. users) are taking.
Furthermore, the bonds' 10% yield is comparable to the 13% Vauld was offering [1]. Except the Coinbase debt is senior to its users claims. Assuming Vauld and Coinbase are comparable, which I think is generous to Vauld, that gives you a sense for how misplaced the risk/reward was for Vauld users.
> 10 year russian bond yields are at 9.15%
Russian debt is trading weirdly. There are various domestic and offshore quotes, since the reason it's trading down is because of sanctions, not Russia's creditworthiness. Still: risky.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/04/crypto-lending-platform-va...