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Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

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Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#21
post #11

What are people holding all those stable coins for? In contrast to other crypto currencies, nobody is holding it for speculation. I doubt anybody expects stable coins to be a better store of "dollar value" than the dollar itself. Yet, someone holds those $150B worth of stable coins. Who and why?

Provided you trust the stablecoin, it's a lot safer to keep e.g. USDC in a wallet you control rather than hold USD fiat balance on an exchange or some other shady crypto service.

Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#22

I don't get all the bandwagon hate of crypto on this site.. Sure 99% of crypto schemes are b.s and ponzi. But I like to think in terms of use cases. Currently there is no way to send "money" to someone in another country on the other side of the world, in a decentralized way, and without transaction fees. Can this problem be solved without crypto? Probably, but currently crypto is looking like the best way to be able…

I'm guessing the scorn is a reaction to the religious fervor that permeates the crypto space and that bleeds into the "mainstream" like the front page of HN and parts of Twitter. Based off the explosion of "told ya so" articles that have followed the Terra/UST scandal and sentiment among friends, anyway.

Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#23

I don't get all the bandwagon hate of crypto on this site.. Sure 99% of crypto schemes are b.s and ponzi. But I like to think in terms of use cases. Currently there is no way to send "money" to someone in another country on the other side of the world, in a decentralized way, and without transaction fees. Can this problem be solved without crypto? Probably, but currently crypto is looking like the best way to be able…

I don't need to send money to the other side of the world in a decentralized way. There's a good chance I never will and similarly 99% of people do not and never will have this problem.

I hate crypto as much as the average HNer, but "I don't need it so therefore nobody does" is a stupid and short-sighted reply.

There are at least a dozen countries that I can think of that have massive restrictions on how many flows in and out of the country, preventing people from being able to keep their money safe from raging dictators or changing rulers.

It's a lot more than 1%.

Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#24

It seems we have a serious problem with the first generation of cryptocurrencies being mainly a vehicle for scams and otherwise extracting value from gullible people. From what I've seen so far in most cases "stable-" isn't really stable and currency definitely doesn't work like one. Or am I just biased by sourcing my information from HN and only seeing the cases where crypto crashes and burns instead of all the succ…

USDC and DAI are both collateralized and doing fine at the moment and can operate as a decentralized currency and payment rail.

It is never 100% risk free, though. The best way to maintain peg to dollar is just to hold the dollar. Many stablecoin holders are taking on this higher risk as they seek yield in protocols like Aave and dYdX, or to have ready liquidity to deploy this in the crypto investment market.

Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#25
The big question with Tether has been, if they are holding commercial paper, whose commercial paper? Traders who deal in commercial paper of real companies that do real stuff don't see Tether present in that market. The dollar amounts are too big to hide. The suspicion is that their "commercial paper" is high-interest loans to other cryptocurrency companies. With the whole crypto sector in decline, those loans are at risk.

This is how you get a 2008-type crash - loans which seem to be unrelated but are tied to a common market.

About 11% of Tether has been cashed out in the last month.

The real problem for Tether is simple. Why would anyone buy Tether at this point? There's zero upside potential, after all. And the competition, USDC and GUSD, looks better backed. So a steady outflow is to be expected. We're going to find out how strong their backing is.

Watch out for heavily promoted Tether-based "staking" schemes designed to prevent cash-out.

Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#26
post #20

The moment I learned that people want to buy crypto as a means to get rich in (evil ;)) fiat money, I knew I had a ponzi scheme in front of me. The interesting idea behind crypto once was to have a totally different system. Yet in reality, with greedy apes on a spacerock, it was an unreachable Utopia

different systems historically come about by extreme violence, genocides and migrations of peoples, a little icky shills and ponzis is a very low price

Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#27
post #20

The moment I learned that people want to buy crypto as a means to get rich in (evil ;)) fiat money, I knew I had a ponzi scheme in front of me. The interesting idea behind crypto once was to have a totally different system. Yet in reality, with greedy apes on a spacerock, it was an unreachable Utopia

> The interesting idea behind crypto once was to have a totally different system.

the problem with this idea is that this idea of a "different" system is just merely going to evolve back into what we have today. The fundamental needs of a financial system doesn't change much, and what we have today is fit for purpose (mostly - there's efficiency to be had and red tape to cut).

Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#28

I don't get all the bandwagon hate of crypto on this site.. Sure 99% of crypto schemes are b.s and ponzi. But I like to think in terms of use cases. Currently there is no way to send "money" to someone in another country on the other side of the world, in a decentralized way, and without transaction fees. Can this problem be solved without crypto? Probably, but currently crypto is looking like the best way to be able…

I was able to send funds from US directly to a bank account of my friend in Ukraine near instantly for low single digit percent and I could do the same using western union(to my surprise). All without a fear that my currency will drop 10-20% in a day.

Now about decentralization, I believe that most people hold their transactional crypto funds in a handful of exchanges and thus the dream of decentralized crypto transactions is rarely realized.

But most importantly why does the end user care if the transaction was decentralized or went through a series of transactions through one or more centralized intermediaries.

All people care is have funds that left place A showed up in place B

Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#29
post #16
post #11

What are people holding all those stable coins for? In contrast to other crypto currencies, nobody is holding it for speculation. I doubt anybody expects stable coins to be a better store of "dollar value" than the dollar itself. Yet, someone holds those $150B worth of stable coins. Who and why?

Easier to trade, no issues with tax&bank issues, and a lot of crypto exchanges charge to convert from crypto -> cash, whereas crypto -> crypto(stablecoin) is usually just exchange fees, less than the USD charge.

Ok, I understand that a stablecoin it is easier to handle than the dollar.

But who is doing it? What is the use case?

Re: Top stablecoins shed $7B in May as traders redeem tokens en masse

#30
post #11

What are people holding all those stable coins for? In contrast to other crypto currencies, nobody is holding it for speculation. I doubt anybody expects stable coins to be a better store of "dollar value" than the dollar itself. Yet, someone holds those $150B worth of stable coins. Who and why?

> Who and why? IIUC: a) exchanges for short-term liquidity b) traders for whom going in and out of actual USD is a giant PITN Or to put it differently: when you want to trade on e.g. Binance, it's a lot easier to trade in and out of Binance's stablecoin than in an out of actual USD.

I associate the term "short-term liquidity" with money that can be used to pay employees and suppliers.

Are exchanges really holding stablecoins for this purpose?

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