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Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

phrack.org

211–220 of 262 posts

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#211
I was disappointed this wasn't about how money itself works - instead it's about various financial arrangements you can use to scam people.

There's a lot of stuff to talk about with how money works! Like, when I use my Visa card issued by a New Zealand branch of an Australian bank to buy something in Europe, there are zillions of moving parts there.

The fact that money doesn't actually move internationally but yet appears to, and the fact that currency exchange can be done despite that. And that 60% of everything is backed by US dollars (rapidly dropping now). How bank transfers work with and without a common central bank; the different mechanisms countries set up to streamline them.

And, the fact that it's not really centrally controlled, and anyone (like Satoshi Nakamoto) can make a currency and there's not really anything a government can do to prevent currencies it doesn't like, and despite that we do mostly have one government-issued currency per country.

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#212
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a CPA by training originally, but have spent most of my time in operational finance roles for PE-backed technology companies. While my work is all finance and accounting related, I mostly work with SQL and Python day to day creating internal applications for things like ARR etc. I agree completely on your "thorough grounding" comment. I spend a lot of time explaining to finance people how tools like python, SQL,…

That sounds like it would make one hell of a tech talk. I have a gut feeling many readers (especially lurkers) of this very thread would gladly watch the recording. Common and/or various ways the two groups misunderstand each other, and how you help them to anchor to the underlying base concepts? Yes please. For example, we know that interest accrues over time, but we still use shorthand for the annual interest as a…

There isn't a short cut. You just have to understand both topics.

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters because it screams "I don't actually know what I'm talking about". And it's not just a bookkeeping error. It's a conceptual error. It's a complete misunderstanding of the time value of money. As such, it's a self indulgent piece of writing, not a helpful one.

Seems a little harsh and unkind over what's just a fun article. It's not a news publication or a textbook, it's Phrack, lol. I thought it was neat.

It's a blog post. And the criticism is on a message board... It's par for the course.

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a little harsh and unkind over what's just a fun article. It's not a news publication or a textbook, it's Phrack, lol. I thought it was neat.

It's a blog post. And the criticism is on a message board... It's par for the course.

Classifying Phrack as a blog is about as accurate as classifying future interest payments as liabilities.

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#215
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conversation was not about banks when the comparison came up, and when I talk about long term value I'm not talking about bank reserves. (And even if you argue a stablecoin is like a bank, it's one with an utterly massive reserve ratio.) If you're worried about short term value then you can use shorter term bonds if you want, whatever. It doesn't make a difference to the reason I brought it up in the first place…

What do you mean by long term value? The current market value is typically the best estimate we have for their long term value. No one is talking about bank reserves. I'm talking about assets.

> The current market value is typically the best estimate we have for their long term value.

It's not. The EMH has been empirically disproven in the 80s.

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#216
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently discovered narrow banking ( https://www.narrowbanking.org/ ) which basically states the idea of narrow banking which can only make it so that the bank doesn't have the issues with fractional reserve banking if you are worried about it Stablecoins feel the most practical way I suppose for narrow banking although there is this UK bank and this Danish bank as well which are the two examples of narrow banking.…

You are mixing up a lot of different ideas and concepts. Historically, the combination of fractional reserve banking and the classic gold standard was very successful. Just because your bank uses grams of gold as the unit of accounting (or something that's effectively equivalent to grams of gold), doesn't mean they need to have that much of gold in their vaults. Similar to how today a bank will give you dollar bills…

Thank you for your detailed response. I find the idea of wise's being able to store even liquid cash into stocks.

How does the taxation aspect of it work? Would I have to pay short term capital gains on each transaction that I then make?

They also provide daily interests which seem interesting and about on par with treasury rates so it technically sort of can act as the end result of narrow banking for what I wanted (instead of banks borrowing and spending and containing huge chunks of profit in between, it invests into a safe investment)

> In what sense would America benefit? On an inflation adjusted basis, foreigners often get a negative real interest payment, ie they lose money, for the privilege of lending to the US. That seems like an extremely good deal for America.

Ah it seems that you are right but also that there are some inflation protected treasury but you might be right and I thought about it and doesn't it also bring a new set of problems that America faces.

Basically US can get real goods by giving debts and the real value of what US pays actually lessens over time because of inflation so in a sense, US is able to offset some costs by debt itself but it still has a vicious loop where you start borrowing money just to pay your debt and this starts cutting into your infrastructure hurting the poor the most but also reducing the ability of care etc. effectively making things private if govt cant fund it for many (healthcare) which would impact the poor the most

And this is really tricky as the current model really favours overconsumption and that makes more goods be easily sold and this is why other countries are willing to do this in the first place.

From what I could observe, the biggest winners would be corporations as US pays corporations get funding or the stock market looks more lucrative etc. Low real rates inflate asset values and this would disproportionately benefit the rich

It also starts to overconsume from other countries and just make it financially unable to operate at the same level combined with globalization to compete globally at everything but the software (doubtful, we will see what happens in the near future) and at the financial level.

So basically from my understanding, it increases inequality, increases overconsumption, benefits the rich and hurts the poor.

Also, basically US loses all major exports for this financial hack of sorts. Doesn't it fundamentally weaken the reality of US?

Another aspect is that since it favours the stock market or overvaluates them, these help vc funds and these vc funds trickle down to startups who can only compete at the software level so they end up subsidizing all costs (mostly human software engineering) plus hardware costs and make them able to offset/run at losses.

Now VC funds end up enshittening most solutions in order to extract maximum profit down the line usually basically impacting the end consumer and thus hurting the reputation of VC companies (and sometimes for good measure)

Theoretically this also subsidizes open source in a very minute way. Software engineers get rich and are able to enjoy the craft and there are subsidies of free storage and server access from basically github aka microsoft and others to basically streamline the whole process as well since these cloud/others also extract some values of open source.

But open source ends up creating better alternatives to VC funded solutions if those solutions exist in the most human-friendly way where profits arent even thought of usually and are run via donations.

Combine this with the fact that in India and China,developers are cheaper and they are having a boom in their VC industry/startup culture as well and they are willing to undercut America because they are simply leaner and usually pick less VC funding overall as well imo

So in a way US's software success can only be relied upon on full monopolies support considering open source and cheaper alternatives and also moral focuses where EU companies would prefer to support EU as US wreckballs into political disaster.

Also in my opinion, most of US software success recently aside from the monopolies or maybe even including them is so reliant on including "AI" and AI fundamentally lacks any moat most of the times and they are actively losing/making 0 profit while spending billions in hopes of beating the competition.

US's export of financial products basically loops this cycle back to probably an over-reliance on AI itself.

So US economy is so damn reliant on AI which is fundamentally unstable partially due to it "earning profit in the middle" or taking this lucrative deal.

Y'know what I feel the issue with this is? that in other countries there is a cap of the amount of destruction/reliance. Usually most countries suffer from the other side of spectrum but America has removed this cap because of it and this weird blend of hyper capitalism just converted into late stage capitalism.

So (when) the AI financial bubble explodes, How would America even rebuild itself?

I don't think there is a free lunch. Not even in this case, what ended up happening was that America took short term profits in long term structural losses and this hyper capitalism lured companies as well to outsource or build factories in china and other countries actively increasing the extent of the loss and there just wasnt any cap.

Something which is lucrative but not sustainable and now its starting to bite back.

A lot of issues I felt that were in America are now starting to feel intentional.

I mean one of my questions is that how can America even be optimistic at this state considering that everyone I talk to admits that AI is an bubble, so yea AI companies still make profits but long term everyone sees an impending doom. It's like a time bomb and I already feel at unease and I observe the same feeling of unease as well from other people.

Another point was that America helped foreigners into the American dream (by exporting a story) or perhaps the silicon valley dream (a lot of S&P companies are built by people who came to america) as it losses even that.

In a way America just incentivized a new form of grifting called financial innovation in this AI bubble era in my opinion by this decision. I am genuinely not sure what America can do at this stage.

I am sorry to say but the future seems bleak. I hope I am wrong but I wish the average american the best of luck and hope in a better future for the whole world combined but being honest, the future doesn't feel good for America.

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some web searching suggests that only about 2% of home mortgages have prepayment penalty clauses. It's clear (to me) that you're talking about the US specifically, but it might not be clear to everyone. Residential mortgages are highly idiosyncratic to the country you're talking about. Try getting a 30 year fixed rate mortgage in the UK.

is there somewhere where a majority or a plurality of mortgages come with a prepayment penalty?

[dead]

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically a tradeoff between wasting your personal life or wasting your professional life. If you get a job that is truly 9-5 (or maybe even a bit less), it leaves a lot of time for forging friendships and relationships and learning hobbies while you're still young, doing sports, seeing the world. Founders usually feel they're missing out on all or most of these. And some of them probably feel like they don't re…

The median income for a college grad is $80K.

My co-founder did not graduate college. I've known several others founders who couldn't quite make it through college.

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#219
post #198
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They don't create wealth out of nothing. Banks loans may not create wealth. But they promise its creation to the society. The value of the money that they lend out comes from that promise. And the people who borrowed from the bank create wealth when they repay their loans. The responsibility of the bank is to track it and ensure that it is created. OR that the money lended out is not spent. Either one should happen…

> But they promise [the creation of wealth] to the society. It feels like you're trying to describe the "social contract" between private banks and the rest of society, but putting the full responsibility of "wealth creation" only on one party in the contract: The bank. The other party, Society, is given access to capital when they borrow. The rate they're charged should be competitive since there is presumably more…

>"wealth creation" only on one party in the contract: The bank.

No, I meant to say that wealth is create by people. Banks are supposed to enforce it.

Re: Calling All Hackers: How money works (2024)

#220
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conversation was not about banks when the comparison came up, and when I talk about long term value I'm not talking about bank reserves. (And even if you argue a stablecoin is like a bank, it's one with an utterly massive reserve ratio.) If you're worried about short term value then you can use shorter term bonds if you want, whatever. It doesn't make a difference to the reason I brought it up in the first place…

What do you mean by long term value? The current market value is typically the best estimate we have for their long term value. No one is talking about bank reserves. I'm talking about assets.

> What do you mean by long term value? The current market value is typically the best estimate we have for their long term value.

In situations where we still care about dollars, so no hyperinflation or total collapse of the United States, the current market value of a Treasury bond can't actually vary that much. And the amount it can reasonably vary is mostly proportional to how many years are left in the bond.

By the time your bonds reach maturity, you always have more dollars than you started with. Long term you always profit. And you get to choose what length of bonds you buy, so if you want to you can guarantee your dollars increase in the medium or short term on top of the long term.

> No one is talking about bank reserves. I'm talking about assets.

I'm saying you're too worried about "withdrawal requests" a normal bank would see.

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