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Perpetual futures, explained

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21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#22
post #17

Is there a good resource on how perps actually work? i.e a technical specification on how to implement them?

BitMEX and Hyperliquid have fairly detailed documentation about how they implement perps and there are probably open source projects out there.

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By now crypto-in-practice has violated so many of its supposed founding principles that it's tired and cliche to point it out. It was supposed to be limited in supply unlike fiat, and yet Tether underpins the whole thing and they print that out of thin air all the time. It was supposed to be decentralized, but in practice a few big exchanges control all the transactions and a few big mining pools control all the mint…

> And it turns out nobody cares, because to a first approximation nobody is in crypto for the libertarian principles. It is all about number go up; always has been, always will be. It's not even worth pointing out anymore. I agree 100% - Meme stocks go brrrrrrrr The idea that it's a currency that lives beyond the reach of governments is laughable (as soon as something goes bang a lot of the owners call for... regulat…

People putting their self-interests before maintaining support for more general principles is par for the course.

Even the vast majority of free-market maximalists will support a government bailout of large banks or the auto industry if it will save their investment portfolio.

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By now crypto-in-practice has violated so many of its supposed founding principles that it's tired and cliche to point it out. It was supposed to be limited in supply unlike fiat, and yet Tether underpins the whole thing and they print that out of thin air all the time. It was supposed to be decentralized, but in practice a few big exchanges control all the transactions and a few big mining pools control all the mint…

> It was supposed to be limited in supply unlike fiat, and yet Tether underpins the whole thing and they print that out of thin air all the time. This is a joke right? Tether (USDT) is pegged to the dollar... and there is not really a limit to the USD printing machine, nobody ever claimed a stablecoin would have a limited supply. It's literally the main critique of the fiat system levied by crypto proponents. The onl…

The problem with Tether is that they are tight-lipped about their backing assets. No one knows if the peg is real, it's just "trust me bro"

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#25

Crypto at this point is neither decentralized nor anonymous. It’s a Ponzi scheme wrapped in increasing level of complexity and involving an increasing number of banks, and controlled by a decreasing number of very large players. This crypto octopus is putting tentacles in Fidelity, and major US banks, and pension funds, and 401k accounts, and any other money holder. They are putting debt on banks at leverage levels b…

That's really not true. Sure, there are huge amounts of scams and ponzi schemes and that's what gets attention, but crypto is absolutely used every day by many in a decentralized and effectively anonymous way.

Dark markets are still active and people move large amounts across international borders effortlessly.

As an example of being effectively anonymous, I can easily take some cash, meet up at a cafe nearby with someone from a p2p site to swap it to crypto, and then pay a foreign company for hosting services for years with that crypto, sharing zero personal information.

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#26
post #2

It's striking how much the crypto world depends on trust in other parties. The whole point of crypto was supposed to be that it was "trustless". But it's not set up that way. All these crypto derivatives are not set up as contracts on a blockchain, with assets locked up until the derivatives settle. They're book entries with some weakly regulated exchange in Outer Nowhere.

whats more important to me is that you don't have to ask anybody if you can deploy an entire financial services suite

and not only will other people worldwide use it immediately, they will also pay for all your infrastructure costs as they update the chain state with every transaction fee that they pay

the permissionless nature means you can deploy anything as cenralized or decentralized as you want, and its up to consumers to be discerning and its only their fault if they are not

cost wise this will always be attractive to developers and for them to bring over every audience they can muster, because web 2.0 cloud cannot compete with that cost structure and permissionless nature

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was supposed to be limited in supply unlike fiat, and yet Tether underpins the whole thing and they print that out of thin air all the time. This is a joke right? Tether (USDT) is pegged to the dollar... and there is not really a limit to the USD printing machine, nobody ever claimed a stablecoin would have a limited supply. It's literally the main critique of the fiat system levied by crypto proponents. The onl…

The problem with Tether is that they are tight-lipped about their backing assets. No one knows if the peg is real, it's just "trust me bro"

Well they publish attestations from third-parties, but no full audits, so sure they could be much more transparent.

But the claim about USDT ever claiming that its supply wouldn't increase is pure fantasy. It literally makes no sense if you understand how the peg is maintained (technically by minting and burning tokens).

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#28
post #2

It's striking how much the crypto world depends on trust in other parties. The whole point of crypto was supposed to be that it was "trustless". But it's not set up that way. All these crypto derivatives are not set up as contracts on a blockchain, with assets locked up until the derivatives settle. They're book entries with some weakly regulated exchange in Outer Nowhere.

whats more important to me is that you don't have to ask anybody if you can deploy an entire financial services suite and not only will other people worldwide use it immediately, they will also pay for all your infrastructure costs as they update the chain state with every transaction fee that they pay the permissionless nature means you can deploy anything as cenralized or decentralized as you want, and its up to co…

Isn't basically virtually 100% of the money that isn't crime adjacent web 2.0 implying it can compete?

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#29
I don't think many people on HN realize how globally systemically important public blockchains are on track to become, especially Ethereum.

The understandable hatred of the casino and many scams has blinded most of HN as to the true potential of the technology and its associated new public institutions.

That's what a decentralized public blockchain is, a new kind of public institution.

One small example of this is that the most state-of-the-art perpetual futures market in the world is an Ethereum Layer 2 named Lighter https://app.lighter.xyz/markets/

Re: Perpetual futures, explained

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Tether is that they are tight-lipped about their backing assets. No one knows if the peg is real, it's just "trust me bro"

Well they publish attestations from third-parties, but no full audits, so sure they could be much more transparent. But the claim about USDT ever claiming that its supply wouldn't increase is pure fantasy. It literally makes no sense if you understand how the peg is maintained (technically by minting and burning tokens).

I took their comment to mean that tokens valuations are tied to stablecoins. Sufficiently tied enough as to be de facto properties of tokens themselves.
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