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

blockworks.co

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

#221

Post by whimsicalism »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #98
web4 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the majority of crypto is being held in non custodial wallets, not exchanges. a better way to frame your comment: why does the world use Stripe and PayPal when you can just go to your bank and ask them to setup a multi day long wire process from bank A to B for less fees?

The 'wire process' is not "multi-day-long", plus a huge number of banks now participate in Zelle, which can be used for instantaneous fund transfers with zero fees. The biggest problem with Zelle is that it looks and feels like a circa-2002 web application.

You could Zelle your friend in Ukraine? Doubt it.

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

#222

Post by whimsicalism »

88840-8855 wrote: post #37
vladgur wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 transa…

Wow, what a use-case.. sending money from the main NATO member to a country that the NATO supports and wants to win the war. Now do the same thing with sending money to Russia. I just checked WISE. "We temporarily stopped sending money to Russia". Yeah.. thanks..

Outside of your rhetoric, I do think this is a fair point - with bank transfer ultimately you are constrained by the political people in who you can transfer to.

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

#223

Post by web4 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #196
web4 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not everybody lives in the UK. the point is not to be a system that beats a single service for sending GBP from A to B in the UK. the point is a system that has a variety of uses and applications accessible by anybody, regardless of which country the user resides in. even in countries with good banking like UK, many e-commerce companies will still choose Stripe VISA and PayPal to reach customers outside the UK and in…

You complain about the lack of timeliness with wire and interbank transfers in the regular system, and talk about the 'underdeveloped' economies that don't afford people many luxuries... ... so suggest that they use crypto, which for many, comes with an onerous fee too, to be timely. Your "buy from the shop" example better not be urgent, otherwise you're paying gas for someone to verify it, or it sits in the queue.

ETH fees at time of writing are about $1-3 for a transaction finality of though eventually as these networks scale most users will be transacting and interacting with L2 rather than L1. fees in L2 are in cents on the dollar, transaction finality is often very quick, and security assumptions are typically good enough for most use cases.

https://www.useweb3.xyz/gas?source=ethgas.watch&referrer=eth...

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

#224

Post by whimsicalism »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #65
Jamie9912 wrote: post #9

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…

> without transaction fees You also have to pay transaction fees transferring crypto, it's build into the protocol.

Yes but it doesn't scale with the amount you are transferring.

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

#225

Post by kasey_junk »

taspeotis wrote: post #165

Look I am very ignorant about all this stuff but ... is there any downside to shorting a stablecoin? Please be gentle with me: Like if you short it and the price doesn't move (by design) are you out any money? The price won't go up (by design) because nobody's going to spend too much money from their reserves to support a price over US$1. But it's possible for the reserves to run dry in which case the price goes down…

Don’t forget counterparty risk. What venue are you going to short the stablecoin on? If they go to zero who pays out on your short?

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

#226

Post by whimsicalism »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #50
Jamie9912 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, tell me how I can send money to my friend in Macedonia from Australia without transaction fees.

you can't do that with crypto either (and crypto likely will have higher transaction fees)

> crypto likely will have higher transaction fees

If you are sending a fair bit of money, I very much doubt that.

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

#227

Post by whimsicalism »

jerglingu wrote: post #22
Jamie9912 wrote: post #9

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.

The fervor of the crypto space definitely does not bleed over to the front page of HN.

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

#228

Post by whimsicalism »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #15
Jamie9912 wrote: post #9

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…

Ethereum based stablecoins are hardly the best way to do this. From a user standpoint you have to 1) buy your stablecoin on some exchange 2) transfer it to your own wallet 3) pay a hefty fee to transfer it to the recipient (>$20 when the network is busy) 4) Recipient pays another hefty fee to transfer it to an exchange so they can offramp. If I'm sending a remittance or similar paying $$$$ in fees is absolutely not d…

Just pay lower gas and wait for your transaction to be completed when the network is less busy?

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

#229

Post by xmcqdpt2 »

TekMol wrote: post #137
hestefisk wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they provide nice yield. I can stake USDT on most exchanges and get 5-7% APY. I doubt those yields will hold for much longer though.

Which exchange pays you those 5-7% and why do they do that?

There is even better rates available. The Anchor protocol pays 20% APR! And the principal is protected as described in the white paper,

> Anchor offers a principal-protected stablecoin savings product that pays depositors a stable interest rate. It achieves this by stabilizing the deposit interest rate with block rewards accruing to assets that are used to borrow stablecoins.

source: https://www.anchorprotocol.com/docs/anchor-v1.1.pdf

You literally cannot lose! And the gains are in a stablecoin (UST) so you don't even have to deal with the volitality of crypto

https://www.coindesk.com/price/terrausd/

Tradfi doesn't offer these kind of risk-free rates because they are greedy vampires, unlike your friendly smart defi devs.

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

#230

Post by CTDOCodebases »

wallaBBB wrote: post #47
Animats wrote: post #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…

Oh it’s even worse. For a while now some[0] have suggested part of the backing is in bonds issues by Chinese real estate companies [0] https://twitter.com/thelastbearsta1/status/14690072004965908...

This comes from the rumor that the commercial paper is from China.

What I find more believable is the commercial paper is actually from crypto hedge funds and exchanges incorporated in Hong Kong.[0]

[0] - https://protos.com/tether-papers-crypto-stablecoin-usdt-inve...

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