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Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

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Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#61

Post by pessimizer »

motohagiography wrote: post #45
gruez wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it's social constructs all the way down. A location might have gorgeous views, but if it's in a rural area and urbanization intensifies (think pre-pandemic), it will left in the dust as jobs and businesses dry up. Same goes if it's in downtown and it gets hollowed out (eg. white flight).

Do animals have social constructs? Because they have dens and territory that they use to survive as well. Property is a pretty universal value.

A bear's den isn't it's property, it's somewhere the bear lives. If a den were a bear's property, the bear would have paperwork.

Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#62

Post by Justin_K »

gruez wrote: post #34
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

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…

Russian bonds? That's the best investment vehicle you could come up with?

Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#63

Post by cf-d-ycom »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
vecinu wrote: post #13

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.

Is not also the "idea of a social construct" a social construct? And by extension is also arbitrary and meaningless?

And surely then every idea of any category is dissolved as meaningless and arbitrary, and then reason itself is absurd?

Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#64

Post by hindsightbias »

cortesoft wrote: post #18
Barrera wrote: post #3

> 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.

In the ashes of cryptolibertarianism, Krugman is right again.

Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#65

Post by yellowapple »

cellis wrote: post #50
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any particular location may be more desirable relative to others, e.g. a gorgeous view, away from factories or highways It's politics, usually, keeping the factories and highways away. More fundamentally, the notion that a piece of paper (the deed) gives you certain rights (but not others) over some land is totally made up.

This is true. It’s also true that “your body” is just a social construct. The rabbit hole of “property is just an idea” doesn’t end well for humans who seek agency.

Land exists independently of your labor, predating and (hopefully) postdating your existence by billions of years. Your body does not.

Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#66

Post by yellowapple »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46
motohagiography wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do animals have social constructs? Because they have dens and territory that they use to survive as well. Property is a pretty universal value.

> they have dens and territory that they use to survive as well A bear's den isn't its property any more than a park bench slept on becomes the slumberer's own. Property, specifically, the system that relates a person to some land via a bundle of use rights, is a deep human construct. It likely goes back to the dawn of agriculture and civilization [1]. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=f_roIy7ceEsC

> A bear's den isn't its property any more than a park bench slept on becomes the slumberer's own.

A bear, however, will use (and indeed seek to monopolize) violence to defend its den. That makes it property, at least until the bear relinquishes its claim (or something - or someone - else challenges its monopoly on violence).

Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#67

Post by sacrosancty »

ramraj07 wrote: post #38
ggm wrote: post #8

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 is not too smart. He’s smart. As smart as Steve Bannon? In fact I cannot differentiate who’s talking if you play their podcast interviews. 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 adject…

What's the externally visible difference between being in the right place at the right time and being a visionary? He's about the 500th richest person in the world, so he's certainly not insignificant.

I think you're confusing your personal dislike of him (asshole) with his abilities (not a visionary). There's no reason those qualities should be aligned.

Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#68

Post by sacrosancty »

phailhaus wrote: post #37
cortesoft wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's like crypto enthusiasts honestly believe that the problem with the financial system is that the buildings have the word "Bank" on them. Then they turn around and offer to take your money promising absurdly high interest rates. Surprise! The only way to do that is to invest in risky assets, except this time there is no FDIC insurance, no capital requirements, no regulations whatsoever to protect your money.

Crypto enthusiasts will be doing fine having bought in many years ago. The trouble is for the randos who just jumped on the bandwagon and use all the weird risky add-on services.

Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#69

Post by JumpCrisscross »

yellowapple wrote: post #66
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have dens and territory that they use to survive as well A bear's den isn't its property any more than a park bench slept on becomes the slumberer's own. Property, specifically, the system that relates a person to some land via a bundle of use rights, is a deep human construct. It likely goes back to the dawn of agriculture and civilization [1]. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=f_roIy7ceEsC

> A bear's den isn't its property any more than a park bench slept on becomes the slumberer's own. A bear, however, will use (and indeed seek to monopolize) violence to defend its den. That makes it property, at least until the bear relinquishes its claim (or something - or someone - else challenges its monopoly on violence).

> bear, however, will use (and indeed seek to monopolize) violence to defend its den. That makes it property

That makes it territory. The simplest definition of property might be use rights one doesn’t need to use violence to defend. (Countries don’t have property.)

Re: Peter Thiel-Backed Crypto Lender Vauld Suspends Withdrawals

#70

Post by ianbutler »

axg11 wrote: post #55
brentm wrote: post #19

I've been in and out of crypto since 2014 or so but I've never been more bearish than 2021. When the majority of my Twitter feed became visionaries predicting web3 it all seemed destined for pain. There are billions of reasons to embrace the idea of a platform shift but when everyone can see it coming a mile away they're probably either wrong or a deep trough of sorrow away from it working out.

You've never been more bearish than when the highest number of developers and builders are working on crypto?

I don't know why number of people working on an idea has bearing on the quality of the idea. An insane number of people were working on things that didn't pan out during the dotcom bust too.

It's more indicative of the amount of money in the system imo and the reason there's money in the system is because some powerful VCs really would like the transition of power from classical finance to their newly minted financial system. Then the rest hopped on the bandwagon.

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