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SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

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Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#201
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had to create USDC to keep it pegged during the crash before that, though. So actually it's USDC that's stable, that makes Maker stable.

Who is "they"? Maker has nothing to do with USDC. USDC is a Coinbase product.

Your seem uninformed. Dai is backed by USDC.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#202
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that the world does not run algorithmically Sure it does: moving gold and commodities between countries in non-mutually-friendly regimes, very much resembles crypto. Fiat finance is a system of contract law built on top of a de-facto "state of nature" of irreversible no-arbitrator commodity transfers. It exists in places where people can agree on who the arbitrating party should be. It does not exist outside of tho…

At least to me, and possibly others, any system which I have my money invested and I can lose everything I own with no recourse due to some exploit is completely laughable and something I will never ever touch. There's a reason folks keep their life savings in a Chase bank account, because if something like this happens you have recourse to recover your money.

Then don't put your money in a newly created contract?

You yourself say you keep it in a Chase bank account, you sure as hell wouldn't put your life savings in a newly created bank and trust everything to them would you?

Look at what you put your money into, has it had any audits done (this applies to both tax / financial audits for brick and morter stores, and code audits to smart contracts).

I will never ever invest my money with HSBC, they have shown time and time again to willfully break the law and soley gain monetarily from it, the governments or financial institutions don't do anything about it. Just like I will never ever invest my money into USDT, I think it's a massive scam and don't touch it in the slightest, doesn't stop millions of others investing though.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the world literally does run algorithmically. Literally every day you trust your life, privacy and money to algorithms that make decisions without human intervention. The financial system trades trillions of dollars in automated systems that make split-second decisions in a way that precludes human supervision. Hedge funds and banks already trust algorithms that if broken could lose billions. The existence of…

> Literally every day you trust your life, privacy and money to algorithms that make decisions without human intervention. The financial system trades trillions of dollars in automated systems that make split-second decisions in a way that precludes human supervision. ... but when that stuff goes wrong, which it does, we don't just say "geez that's too bad, the code is the code". Look at the 2010 flash crash: somethi…

Knight lost half a billion dollars in 30 seconds and not a single trade was reversed. If anything similar happened to any major hedge fund or market maker, nothing would get reversed.

Every hedge fund and market maker knows that if their algorithms break, their money is gone. Period. No backsies. The point is billions in capital is already completely trusted to algorithms with no human fail safe.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#204
post #80
post #31

A point that most crypto heads miss is that the world does not run algorithmically. Legal contracts do not work like a software program and that characteristic is a feature not a bug. Not being able to reverse transactions that were part of an exploit is in infact a bug. Businesses need that tolerance for error. You need an oracle in your system. The oracle can maintain transparency of the attestations carried out if…

> that the world does not run algorithmically Sure it does: moving gold and commodities between countries in non-mutually-friendly regimes, very much resembles crypto. Fiat finance is a system of contract law built on top of a de-facto "state of nature" of irreversible no-arbitrator commodity transfers. It exists in places where people can agree on who the arbitrating party should be. It does not exist outside of tho…

I think your position is essentially at odds with parent.

> Sure it does: moving gold and commodities between countries in non-mutually-friendly regimes, very much resembles crypto.

Parent is talking about a legal framework and yet your counter-example is a transaction between two jurisdictions/parties/legal entities that are in less-than-legal agreement with each other. Apples to oranges.

Also, I'm quite certain you and parent interpret "the world" differently. You seem to interpret it in the sense of a pre-formalized economic framework society. Whereas parent (with whom I side with), use the term "the world" to refer to that sector of society with a codified economic framework.

> Many crypto platforms also have the mechanisms within them to build fiat finance systems atop them. (The keyword to search here is "security tokens".)

That might very well be the case but parent's argument is that our legal economic system is not purely algorithmic. Crypto might have features that are analogous to our current fiat systems but those features do not describe the whole fiat system; it misses some features (or "bugs", depending on how you look at it).

To paraphrase parent's statement, having someone able to override transactions is a feature of our existing systems, for better and for worse. Conversely, a system without this arbitrator has pros and cons too. You pick your poison.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#205
post #31

A point that most crypto heads miss is that the world does not run algorithmically. Legal contracts do not work like a software program and that characteristic is a feature not a bug. Not being able to reverse transactions that were part of an exploit is in infact a bug. Businesses need that tolerance for error. You need an oracle in your system. The oracle can maintain transparency of the attestations carried out if…

I'm gonna be honest I don't know what the audience is for a product where you risk losing your entire life savings because you typed a wrong word in a smart contract rather than paying a middleman a fraction of a percent. It's almost like a sort of willful ignorance of division of labour and the concept of pooling risk.

[deleted]

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing illegal things, mostly. If you are working a w2 job and paying taxes and paying your mortgage / auto loan... crypto doesn't really help you. Blackmail? Awesome. Buying illegal substances? Awesome. Gambling? You got it...

You can literally say that about cold hard cash. Blackmail? Pay cash. Buying illegal substances? Cash. Gambling? Get your cash out. It's all in how you use it. https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/05/moon-missi... Anything is a store of value, wood, gold, water, dogecoin ect. If people want to accept something for something else this is a way of life. It's just sad that people only see the bad use cases. Ho…

> It's just sad that people only see the bad use cases

Yeah, when 95%+ of the actual things that people use crypto for are those things, it's hard not to. Can you honestly say the "valid" uses for crypto take up more than 5% the total volume in any possible metric you can think of? It's always ransomware, extortion, blackmail, money laundering, drugs, you name it.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#207

The fact that this is trending on HN shows how little hacker news knows about the cryptocurrency space. A relatively unknown, recently launched stablecoin collapsing is not big news in crypto. Now if dai, usdc or usdt had failed, that would be a big deal.

USDT failed a LONG time ago.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#208
post #31

A point that most crypto heads miss is that the world does not run algorithmically. Legal contracts do not work like a software program and that characteristic is a feature not a bug. Not being able to reverse transactions that were part of an exploit is in infact a bug. Businesses need that tolerance for error. You need an oracle in your system. The oracle can maintain transparency of the attestations carried out if…

I'm gonna be honest I don't know what the audience is for a product where you risk losing your entire life savings because you typed a wrong word in a smart contract rather than paying a middleman a fraction of a percent. It's almost like a sort of willful ignorance of division of labour and the concept of pooling risk.

Long term people are going to flock to DeFi services that have centralized discretion to compensate victims of exploit. One way to do this is to have a token that people can lock up and vote for/against a bailout.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#209
post #94
post #31

A point that most crypto heads miss is that the world does not run algorithmically. Legal contracts do not work like a software program and that characteristic is a feature not a bug. Not being able to reverse transactions that were part of an exploit is in infact a bug. Businesses need that tolerance for error. You need an oracle in your system. The oracle can maintain transparency of the attestations carried out if…

I don’t disagree with you, but I think the only fallacy here is that it’s an extremely zero-sum way to look at things. Are we perhaps better off for many — maybe even all — of our status quo legal contracts not working like software programs? Sure. Is there a class of legal contracts — either already in existence, or made possible by crypto — that’d make much more sense if ran like software (with different requiremen…

I agree that it isn't a zero sum game and that there are valid use cases. But I don't see any of these use cases operating over a multi-million dollar business. There has to be a way to override an exploit when a sum like that is at stake.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#210
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When algorithms in the real world create lose-lose outcomes, people override them, which is why when your credit card gets stolen you don't end up paying for stuff. An exploit where I take all your bitcoins isn't a lose-lose outcome, and neither is that. If I steal your credit card and you have to pay for my stuff, you're the only party who loses.

If you steal my credit card and buy things with it, I will call my bank and I won't need to pay for it when I settle my statement balance at the end of the month. The bank will follow up with the merchant and/or law enforcement and, in most cases, the bank will get its money back somehow. In the cases where it doesn't, I'm sure the bank is insured against losses. Banks and insurance companies probably have a complica…

But there is a price to pay for the responsibility you burden off onto the bank. Banks charge fees, pay almost zero interest (at least currently) and are usually very unpleasant to deal with when you want to borrow money.

I’d say it depends. You probably shouldn’t manage your life savings using a crypto wallet. Keep some money at a bank. Keep some money in cryptos.

Cryptos are not a solution to every financial problem out there but they add new and exciting options for us. Don’t think black and white. But embrace more freedom to choose.

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