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Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

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Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#91
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waiting for Tether

Unfortunately, Tether now operates as one of the single greatest businesses of all time and is probably (from now) operating completely legitimately. No one is happy to hear this except for Tether themselves.

Highly improbable.

While in theory they could be earning billions in interest just sitting on all that cash, there’s very little reason to believe the billions they claim to have exist. Do they seriously expect people to believe that they have more assets under management than at peak crypto in 2021, with billions more pouring in regularly?

Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#92
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be one of those things that works well in the short term but may also have severe tail risks. I heard a similar story about an algorithmic stablecoin called Luna (I think). The analogue of difficulty adjustments there worked fine until one day it didn't.

They can ultimately change the code if needed. Luna also tried that IIRC.

Indeed, one can "change the code" to do anything... including things like increasing the bitcoin supply arbitrarily. Bitcoin's scarcity is a social construct that will be changed when the people who control the nodes want to change it.

Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#93
post #57
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difficulty is adjusted automatically depending on how many miners there are, so it can go down.

That might be one of those things that works well in the short term but may also have severe tail risks. I heard a similar story about an algorithmic stablecoin called Luna (I think). The analogue of difficulty adjustments there worked fine until one day it didn't.

Luna was a very different situation, it was nothing to do with difficulty adjustments.

Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#94
post #5

SBF down, Do Kwon down, Su Zhu down, many many more to go... I've been amazed at how slow the law seems to be in apprehending the most egregious scammers from that era.

“The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind finely”

And then, sentence all the criminals who've been long dead. Justice: served.

Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#95
post #91
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Tether now operates as one of the single greatest businesses of all time and is probably (from now) operating completely legitimately. No one is happy to hear this except for Tether themselves.

Highly improbable. While in theory they could be earning billions in interest just sitting on all that cash, there’s very little reason to believe the billions they claim to have exist. Do they seriously expect people to believe that they have more assets under management than at peak crypto in 2021, with billions more pouring in regularly?

Yeah there’s tons of demand for offshore dollars. It’s a great product.

Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#96
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a shame if this keeps happening, like: (2013) Bitcoin and its clones failed at all their stated purposes, (2017) the ICO craze left nothing of value, (2021) the DeFi/NFT bubble also left nothing but rubble. This stuff is zero sum, shuffling money without creating new things of enduring value.

Every claim in your comment is factually false.

Bitcoin did factually fail at its stated goal, as laid out in the original whitepaper. Bitcoin has not succeeded at being a peer-to-peer currency, because the "peer-to-peer" part went out the window when users stopped hosting their own nodes, and the currency part was abandoned when people realized that transaction throughput is fatally low.

Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#97
post #82
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not going to just vanish because crypto has become the tool of choice for online scams and crime. Here’s just one recent example, a small Kansas bank that collapsed entirely because its CEO got involved in a crypto scam: “The chief executive officer of Heartland Tri-State Bank asked if the client would lend him $12 million so he could get his money out of a cryptocurrency investment. He promised he’d pay him bac…

Stablecoins came close to moving as much value as visa in 2022 [1]. The use case for crypto has always been clear. There is a lot of demand for digital cash, some from people who operate outside of the law, but also from people who lack access to good banking and payments infrastructure (think activists, sex workers, citizens of nations with unreliable monetary systems). Now that the speculative mania finally seems t…

Visa has at least 343 million cardholders worldwide.

Of course trying to determine crypto "users" is essentially impossible but even the most bloated and inflated estimates (users unique per chain, address = user) put the number somewhere around 300 million. Personally I think it's more like 50-100 million by the time you factor in users on different chains, different wallets, etc. I've spent a lot of time analyzing chains to come to that number, it's not difficult. Nearly every crypto user participates on more than one chain and often uses at least two addresses (hot and cold wallet, for example).

Sure enough, the quote is right there in the report:

"over 25 million blockchain addresses held over $1 in stablecoins"

25 million addresses, which absolutely don't equal users. Even if they did, that's .05% of global internet users (5.2 billion). With the threshold for inclusion at $1...

Of course you say "moving as much value" which doesn't necessarily correlate directly to users or their activity but I would venture to guess (if the report is accurate at all) that a substantial portion of that stablecoin "value" volume isn't anything resembling the economic activity of Visa where every swipe is in exchange for a good or service. At best settlement between exchanges but also wash trading and all kinds of weird hijinx that are basically just swapping tokens around with no other meaningful economic activity. Just look at chain analysis breakdowns on the latest crypto heist and watch them tumble it through stablecoins at least once (often many more). I guess that's "value" but I certainly wouldn't be touting it.

The crypto narrative of helping the unbanked is essentially PR damage control spin to try to counter all of the obvious evils that crypto is directly involved in and often responsible for. This volume (if even accurate) has nothing to do with helping regular people, the oppressed, the unbanked, whatever.

Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#98
post #82
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not going to just vanish because crypto has become the tool of choice for online scams and crime. Here’s just one recent example, a small Kansas bank that collapsed entirely because its CEO got involved in a crypto scam: “The chief executive officer of Heartland Tri-State Bank asked if the client would lend him $12 million so he could get his money out of a cryptocurrency investment. He promised he’d pay him bac…

Stablecoins came close to moving as much value as visa in 2022 [1]. The use case for crypto has always been clear. There is a lot of demand for digital cash, some from people who operate outside of the law, but also from people who lack access to good banking and payments infrastructure (think activists, sex workers, citizens of nations with unreliable monetary systems). Now that the speculative mania finally seems t…

> some from people who operate outside of the law... also from people who lack access to good banking and payments infrastructure

What do you suppose that ratio to be in terms of e.g. transaction volume?

Personally I think it's >90 : <10 (scams : sympathetic). Others seem to think the balance is very different, or that it _could_ be different some day and that alone is a reason to "leave it alone".

Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#99
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stablecoins came close to moving as much value as visa in 2022 [1]. The use case for crypto has always been clear. There is a lot of demand for digital cash, some from people who operate outside of the law, but also from people who lack access to good banking and payments infrastructure (think activists, sex workers, citizens of nations with unreliable monetary systems). Now that the speculative mania finally seems t…

Visa has at least 343 million cardholders worldwide. Of course trying to determine crypto "users" is essentially impossible but even the most bloated and inflated estimates (users unique per chain, address = user) put the number somewhere around 300 million. Personally I think it's more like 50-100 million by the time you factor in users on different chains, different wallets, etc. I've spent a lot of time analyzing…

visa very clearly much more users who transact much lower amounts than stablecoins, I never claimed otherwise.

The fact remains that substantial amounts of people are using crypto rails to move very economically significant sums of money.

The fact that something can be used by bad people does not make the thing itself bad. Very similar arguments are often levelled at tools like Tor or Signal, but very few of the hacker news crowd see those viewpoints as valid.

Uncensorable and private digital cash is important in the same way that uncensorable and private digital communications are.

Re: Three Arrows Capital co-founder Zhu arrested in Singapore airport

#100
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stablecoins came close to moving as much value as visa in 2022 [1]. The use case for crypto has always been clear. There is a lot of demand for digital cash, some from people who operate outside of the law, but also from people who lack access to good banking and payments infrastructure (think activists, sex workers, citizens of nations with unreliable monetary systems). Now that the speculative mania finally seems t…

> some from people who operate outside of the law... also from people who lack access to good banking and payments infrastructure What do you suppose that ratio to be in terms of e.g. transaction volume? Personally I think it's >90 : <10 (scams : sympathetic). Others seem to think the balance is very different, or that it _could_ be different some day and that alone is a reason to "leave it alone".

I personally don’t have an opinion on the ratio, but there are many reports estimating that the illicit to legal ratio is much lower than you suspect.

Either way I actually don’t care that much, I think access to the financial system is a human right, and not one that governments or US corporates should be able to arbitrarily remove. Crypto is the only thing we have that is remotely close to preserving the rights that we have with cash in the digital realm, and that makes it OK in my book.

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