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Fintech dystopia

fintechdystopia.com

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Re: Fintech dystopia

#61

Post by ipdashc »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #39
duskwuff wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've tried reading a few "yellow papers" for crypto projects and they are so abstract and full of jargon that I never come away knowing more than when I started reading. In some cases, this is by design. The project is nonsensical and/or a scam, and the white paper is an obfuscatory smokescreen to provide an illusion of sophistication.

I feel like this describes so much of the tech industry. A lot of what we do might be sophisticated in some far corners, but at the end of the day the end results can be trivially explained. "Taxi ordered from a phone app, "Sleep in other people's homes", "Restaurant delivery service with GPS tracking", "Exercise bike with a screen showing workout videos", "Someone else shops for you", etc. Unfortunately with crypto,…

> "Taxi ordered from a phone app, "Sleep in other people's homes", "Restaurant delivery service with GPS tracking", "Exercise bike with a screen showing workout videos", "Someone else shops for you", etc.

I don't think anyone ever claimed these were complicated or sophisticated, though? They're straightforward user-facing apps. A more comparable example might be cloud services or a good chunk of security products.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#62

Post by barumrho »

neumann wrote: post #32

This is a really fun well-written and on point set of articles. Thank you for sharing. I feel like at this point there isn't anybody defending stablecoins who isn't using them primarily speculative investment/trading. There has yet to be a usecase for distributed ledger that isn't solved better by a centralised ledger other than niche counter-culture solutions whose users are typically blinkered to the fact that they…

This seems to misunderstand stablecoins since it is useless for investing/speculation as the value is just $1 if it's successful in its goal.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#63

Post by BobbyJo »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #54

I think people here on HN keep underestimating the relevance of crypto for four reasons: What crypto is already useful for is not to replace the cash in your pocket and your savings account. It is useful to replace SWIFT and Fort Knox. What crypto will be useful for in the future is uncertain. But uncertainty does not mean pie in the sky. How the internet would be used was uncertain in the 70s. Yes, nerds were alread…

Bitcoin was created 17 years ago. The "the use cases are coming" argument doesn't work anymore.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#64

Post by skybrian »

From a brief skim, this series seems too much "let me tell you my opinions" and not enough "let me tell you a story." I recommend reading Matt Levine and Patrick McKenzie instead.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#65

Post by cactusfrog »

I think the biggest problem with fintech is that the financial system is already decentralized, and full of tech. It really just seems like it involves using unregulated technology, which allows the skipping of restrictive regulations. This might actually be a good thing, but once a path has been proven to be non destructive the banks can just take over the market by begging the government for deregulation.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#66

Post by pjc50 »

wmf wrote: post #49
neumann wrote: post #32

This is a really fun well-written and on point set of articles. Thank you for sharing. I feel like at this point there isn't anybody defending stablecoins who isn't using them primarily speculative investment/trading. There has yet to be a usecase for distributed ledger that isn't solved better by a centralised ledger other than niche counter-culture solutions whose users are typically blinkered to the fact that they…

The other legit use for stablecoins is allowing people in Venezuela, Argentina, etc. to hold US dollars while the US government pretends they don't know this is happening. (Officially the US does not encourage dollarization of other economies against their will.) I agree that a centralized US dollar CBDC that isn't run by scammers would be a simpler way to do this.

This is basically the valid use case, yes. It turns the bitcoin goldbug inflation paranoia on its head: the stable currency is defined to be the US dollar, and an elaborate proxy system allows people to access that stability when their local government doesn't want them to. Circumventing exchange controls and so on.

Although the current government is having a good go at reducing the value of the currency, it's barely budged on the chart.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#67

Post by yieldcrv »

TheCowboy wrote: post #52
yieldcrv wrote: post #31

I love automated market making and the varying research there I think this is successful in its goals Liquidity providing on concentrated liquidity pools is something I would like to see in the high volume US equities market But will realistically only exist on tokenized platforms that trade their surrogates It’s extremely lucrative and was only in the domain of market making firms before this technology

One problem with this is crypto AMM (automated market making) works best with stability and low volatility. For example, it's terrible in the context of prediction markets. Market makers get hosed due to real life, and traders (me) can profit at their expense. It's a big part of why prediction market traders encouraged Polymarket to develop orderbooks. And if crypto is viewed as disruptive, then it's likely inducing…

Every market has a use case, and AMMs are not solving event markets, event markets tried to use AMMs and successfully pivoted to order books. I think Polymarket's implementation still has liquidity challenges, as they still have to centrally bribe people to participate. Honestly I don't like Polymarket's contract at all, but it is fast and low cost. Bribes in the solidly AMM model I think were more efficient at attracting liquidity. Slight tangent, the oracle in Polymarket is a bigger issue, people need to convince them to lower the weight of UMA.

back to what I'm a fan of: CLMMs (Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker) is a very competitive field. The level of profits depends solely on volume and amount of capital participating. You are counting on other capital getting bored and moving away, as well as volume rising. Thats the game, it will always be the game. Its already "lucrative until its not" so its not really a gotcha or that insightful for those passing by. I'm glad you have some experience with it.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#68

Post by whateveracct »

cactusfrog wrote: post #65

I think the biggest problem with fintech is that the financial system is already decentralized, and full of tech. It really just seems like it involves using unregulated technology, which allows the skipping of restrictive regulations. This might actually be a good thing, but once a path has been proven to be non destructive the banks can just take over the market by begging the government for deregulation.

> It really just seems like it involves using unregulated technology, which allows the skipping of restrictive regulations. This might actually be a good thing

Yeah, it's basically Uber for finance/banking/etc. Reap the free real estate created by rules and regulation by..skirting the rules and regulations.

It also adds indirection, which in turn allows all the parties involved to point fingers at each other Spiderman-style. "Oh I thought $X was responsible for $COMPLIANCE." Eventually, y'all get audited and shape up but that's a years-long process. And in that time you've grown and grown and finance/banking/etc is pretty sticky. Kaching :)

Re: Fintech dystopia

#69

Post by ChadNauseam »

neumann wrote: post #32

This is a really fun well-written and on point set of articles. Thank you for sharing. I feel like at this point there isn't anybody defending stablecoins who isn't using them primarily speculative investment/trading. There has yet to be a usecase for distributed ledger that isn't solved better by a centralised ledger other than niche counter-culture solutions whose users are typically blinkered to the fact that they…

> There has yet to be a usecase for distributed ledger that isn't solved better by a centralised ledger

what about situations where centralized ledgers won't serve you? e.g. someone who wants to buy drugs, or sex workers want to get paid. And you mention "niche counter-culture solutions" but I don't think it's so niche - in 2002, the government of Argentina stole 2/3rds of everyone's savings by forcibly converting their dollar-denominated bank accounts into pesos at a terrible exchange rate. Not having to worry about this because you have a trustworthy government is nice, but it puts you into an elite class of your own.

Re: Fintech dystopia

#70

Post by CaptainFever »

johncole wrote: post #45
neumann wrote: post #32

This is a really fun well-written and on point set of articles. Thank you for sharing. I feel like at this point there isn't anybody defending stablecoins who isn't using them primarily speculative investment/trading. There has yet to be a usecase for distributed ledger that isn't solved better by a centralised ledger other than niche counter-culture solutions whose users are typically blinkered to the fact that they…

I agree, I see very few (none) use cases for crypto that aren’t human misery trafficking. This article seems to explain that well.

Buying NSFW things.
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