Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

blog.stablegains.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 388 posts

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#241

Post by ceeplusplus »

puranjay wrote: post #88
TheDudeMan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the collapse of an algorithmic stablecoin is no surprise ;)

I can tell you right now that there is absolutely no safe yield in crypto currently that goes beyond 4% on a “safe” stablecoin like USDC. For truly safe (as in, huge value locked, never been hacked), the yield is more like 1.5-2% All the high yield is in algoponzis or new protocols that carry massive protocol risk

Eh, there are CeFi lenders like BlockFi/Gemini offering 7%. It's not zero risk, but the loans are partly collateralized and the borrowers are institutional entities who aren't your everyday scammer. It's better than unsecured corporate bonds in my view.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#242

Post by JumpCrisscross »

downandout wrote: post #238
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's more than possible to achieve above-market gains in DeFi without overexposing yourself to insane risks "Insane" is subjective. The point is nothing safe yields ten or 20%. Someone saying "you will not lose your funds" [1] when paying above-market yields is lying. [1] https://stablegains.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402680425...

I run arb and loan liquidation bots, and have for over a year now. These are atomic transactions almost always using flash swaps/loans that exist only exist for the life of the transaction. I am only exposed to potential losses on transaction fees, but have never had a losing day while running production code. My yield on my investment (mostly infrastructure costs) is closer to 5,000%...per month. I will not lose my…

> I will not lose my funds, whether the market is good or bad

Is your counterparty risk always zero (between you and the chain)? Custody? What if a chain is halted or amended?

These systems run on novel rails. You couldn’t honestly tell an investor “you will not lose your funds,” and you’d refrain from using the word “deposit.” Because you’re trying to honestly communicate an opportunity, not to defraud.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#243

Post by nrmitchi »

charcircuit wrote: post #215
nrmitchi wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Further little notes from their documentation that, lets just say, "downplay the risk": - "You will not lose your funds because all loans are 100% asset-backed." ( https://stablegains.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402680425... ) - "Regardless if crypto markets are soaring or crashing, the value of assets under our management remains stable." ( https://stablegains.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402687671... ) It's ki…

The statements are kind of true if treat funds as the UST in your account. While the UST has remained safe, the value of UST hasn't.

“No honey, I did not lose the house in a poker game. I know exactly where it is, the only difference is that Bob owns it now”.

The statement is kind of true if you want to be very disingenuous to what people actually care about.

Also, As far as I know, no one deposited UST with stablegains. Stablegains took funds in other formats and converted it themselves.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#244

Post by gabereiser »

dubswithus wrote: post #219
gabereiser wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I buy a share of a company, I own it. Buy enough of it, I can control it. Same can not be said for crypto. If I buy a token of BTC it guarantees me no voting rights, no shareholder rights, no FDIC insurance, no insurance whatsoever. When comparing investment instruments, crypto is the worst of all of them, including timeshares.

Aren't most people pretty powerless when it comes to their investments? I can't think of any investments I've ever owned where I felt I had any power.

A lot of companies will restrict voting rights to the top % of investors. Some may even sit on the board.

Yes, the general public retail stockholder doesn’t have a whole lot of power. I was just making a point about ownership and securities. If you own enough stock in a company, your vote Carrie’s weight.

Downvoted I’m sure by the hodl gang.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#245

Post by downandout »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #242
downandout wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run arb and loan liquidation bots, and have for over a year now. These are atomic transactions almost always using flash swaps/loans that exist only exist for the life of the transaction. I am only exposed to potential losses on transaction fees, but have never had a losing day while running production code. My yield on my investment (mostly infrastructure costs) is closer to 5,000%...per month. I will not lose my…

> I will not lose my funds, whether the market is good or bad Is your counterparty risk always zero (between you and the chain)? Custody? What if a chain is halted or amended? These systems run on novel rails. You couldn’t honestly tell an investor “you will not lose your funds,” and you’d refrain from using the word “deposit.” Because you’re trying to honestly communicate an opportunity, not to defraud.

Is your counterparty risk zero? Custody risk?

In the case of flash loans/swaps, the answer is yes. It's 0. Further, I never have any capital at risk, all of my bots use flash loans/swaps. These transactions are atomic, which means that either all parts of it succeed or they all fail (it's a "revert" in blockchain parlance). So I can borrow $200 million without any prior permission and do an arb/liquidation or anything else I want with it for the life of my transaction, with the only requirement being that I must return it by the end. If my arb/liquidation/whatever succeeds and I return the loan, I keep the profits. If not, it's as if the whole thing never happened. The only risk is the transaction fee, which on the chains I do this on are miniscule.

I realize that it sounds unbelievable, but it exists. My code does thousands of these daily. I am not the only one doing this. See https://eigenphi.io/ . With the exception of sandwich transactions, every one of the bots you see on there is making profits without any capital at risk.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#246

Post by SpectralTheory »

jmyeet wrote: post #100

What's funny about this is that I can recall discussions here and elsewhere from only a few months ago questioning the "guaranteed" super-high returns. I forget who said this but someone awhile ago said in finance said that if someone is promising you consistent above-market returns it's either a scam or there is unknown or undisclosed risk. And the Crypto Andys were all like "you just don't understand DeFi!" to whic…

> Finance is the way it is for many reasons. There are thousands of years of lessons that have made the system the way it is. I get the innovator mentality of sweeping away the old but there seems to be a fine line between innovation and ignorance.

I feel like the only benefit of all this is being able to see posttrade services rewritten with some sane API instead of crazy legacy garbage riddled with CSVs.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#247

Post by giantrobot »

jdasdf wrote: post #145
chx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All crypto is a scam and it's so simple to see, it's astonishing anyone fell for this. Look. Imagine an otherwise empty room with a table and a few chairs. A couple people come in with some money in their pockets and cards. They play a few round of a card game, some lose, some win. When they leave, the room as it was before so it is crystal clear the sum of their money couldn't change. Some won, some lost but overall…

> All crypto is a scam and it's so simple to see, it's astonishing anyone fell for this. No, it is not. Please try to set aside your hatred for all things crypto and understand that there is actual legitimate value in many of the crypto projects, and that the core proposition, that of decentralized peer to peer value transfer, is a legitimate and useful use case.

There's no transfer of "value". There's a transfer of a ledger entry saying wallet 0xBA11C0CS has 1 unit of fantasy money. That ledger entry only has value to other people playing the fantasy money game.

Unless someone with vast capital assets is willing to accept units of fantasy money in trade for those assets, it has no real value besides hucksters finding Greater Fools.

Worse than cryptocurrency being fantasy money, it literally wastes an Argentina worth of power (and growing) every year. I doubt the entire global financial industry, including all mainframes, office buildings, corporate jets, and commuting workers uses even one Argentina with of power in a year. And the global financial industry is doing billions upon billions of transactions for trillions upon trillions of dollars.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#248

Post by JumpCrisscross »

downandout wrote: post #245
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will not lose my funds, whether the market is good or bad Is your counterparty risk always zero (between you and the chain)? Custody? What if a chain is halted or amended? These systems run on novel rails. You couldn’t honestly tell an investor “you will not lose your funds,” and you’d refrain from using the word “deposit.” Because you’re trying to honestly communicate an opportunity, not to defraud.

Is your counterparty risk zero? Custody risk? In the case of flash loans/swaps, the answer is yes. It's 0. Further, I never have any capital at risk, all of my bots use flash loans/swaps. These transactions are atomic, which means that either all parts of it succeed or they all fail (it's a "revert" in blockchain parlance). So I can borrow $200 million without any prior permission and do an arb/liquidation or anythin…

> it’s 0

The risk of the trade on chain defaulting is virtually non-existent, agreed. Custody risk is never zero. Dollar in / dollar out returns involve lots of counterparties.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#249

Post by rspeele »

downandout wrote: post #238
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's more than possible to achieve above-market gains in DeFi without overexposing yourself to insane risks "Insane" is subjective. The point is nothing safe yields ten or 20%. Someone saying "you will not lose your funds" [1] when paying above-market yields is lying. [1] https://stablegains.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4402680425...

I run arb and loan liquidation bots, and have for over a year now. These are atomic transactions almost always using flash swaps/loans that exist only exist for the life of the transaction. I am only exposed to potential losses on transaction fees, but have never had a losing day while running production code. My yield on my investment (mostly infrastructure costs) is closer to 5,000%...per month. I will not lose my…

> My yield on my investment (mostly infrastructure costs) is closer to 5,000%...per month.

As in, $100 in January becomes $500 in February, $2,500 in March, ... $976,562,500 in December?

Edit: actually I read that wrong, that would only be 500%. 5,000% per month (money x 50) would turn the $100 into $9,765,625,000,000,000,000 by December.

Unless by 5,000% yield you mean you get 50x your original investment on top of the original investment, like how 5% yield on a dollar gets me $1.05. In that case it would be more. But I think the 9.8 billion billion would be good enough for me.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#250

Post by giantrobot »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #123
capableweb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, by that definition, even AAPL is a pyramid schema. How about we leave the definition for pyramid scheme where it's already at? > Pyramid scheme: making money based on recruiting an ever-increasing number of "investors." > Oh well. We'll see, it might bounce back as these things do. No, it won't. It won't regain the trust of the community and the project is dead in the water now, no way it'll recover from this.

> Pyramid scheme: making money based on recruiting an ever-increasing number of "investors." This is correct. While looking into this for a friend I came across: "for a full year, you'll earn 0.5% APY on what each person you refer deposits" [1]. Still not a pyramid scheme, since 0.5% is a small fraction of the total yield paid out, but pyramidesque. [1] https://stablegains.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409440197...

It's not a pyramid, it's an inverted funnel.
Post reply on HN