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We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

blog.stablegains.com

311–320 of 388 posts

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DeFi isn't a single market, it's millions of micro markets that are accessible through what amounts to a single API. Millions of micro markets that produce what, exactly? Last time I checked there has to be at least something on the other side of the calculation what a coin is worth. You think crypto coins magically make people work harder, better, faster, stronger? That's not how the constraints of the physical wo…

Millions of micro markets that produce what, exactly? You seem to be asking me to defend the merits of crypto, which is beyond the scope of this conversation. But generally speaking, most of the coins people actually buy are tied to protocols that are attempting to do things that interesting to at least some part of the population. But, the ability to prove the provenance and ownership of any asset, whether physical…

> In a world where so much has been made of fake news, imagine if you could know with absolute certainty that a given quote you read from someone in an article is authentic and given to the specific outlet you are reading it at, not taken from somewhere else, perhaps out of context. Imagine if Google integrated such information/quote verification into its search results, and could use it to prioritize sites with real quotes or information. SERPs wouldn’t be full of trash, and small sites that manage to scoop large ones could get instant #1 rankings. Authenticity verification has value.

This assumes that 100% of the ecosystem is already some form of blockchain.

And guess what: It isn't and it never will be due to the democratic nature of the proposed system architecture.

The flaws of every coin I've seen is that there are too many assumptions about markets, and dependencies of the markets in the sense of goods and/or services that are just "assumed" to migrate to their blockchain at some point. That's not how incentive proposals should work, as they will (logically) lead to exit scams because a couple of people cannot write and reinvent an ecosystem from scratch.

Look at how long IPFS took to mature. Look at how long DAT was refactored in a backwards-incompatible manner. Look at how long it took to write the hypercore protocol stack.

Systems like this and - especially markets like this - need time to evolve, which means that the proposed DeFi assumptions about rapid growth bullshit are anti-market proposals, and literally the same way hyped and unverified bonds in the legacy financial systems lead to market crashes.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#312
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The VC drive to jump into the crypto world was startling to me. People hold varying opinions on various crypto products, but so many of the ones getting investment are making claims that should gather extreme scrutiny from a crowd that should be familiar with finance and returns. "We expect 10%+ returns for a long time"? Folks investing in companies instead of banks should know firsthand that guaranteed market-beatin…

VC has always been about getting in really early and getting out early. This is their bread and butter.

The industry terms are: angel and seed investors -> venture capital (A,B,C round) -> private equity. Yeah, there are grey areas. First Google hit says: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/careers/jobs...

VC doesn’t want to get out early #386. What drives their decisions is far more complex than your pithy summary.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#313
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Physics is a science. Math is. Or Biology. Finance is not. Because it deals with the madness of crowds. If you follow the scientific method, it's science. If you write an observational essay, it's not. You can build theories around falsifiable, replicable experiments pertaining to the madness of crowds. The error bars are longer. But they are not infinite.

Re: "The error bars are not infinite." I feel like they are infinite? Because, for example, in hyperinflation, there's no upper bound on how long someone is going to keep printing money. Any given instance will stop at a finite number, but you can't bank of that being the high water mark.

Of course that can happen. But it's a low-risk event that falls outside the, say, 99% confidence interval.

It's like the notion of a 100-year flood. Of course there could be a tsunami or a dam failure that completely inundates an entire city, but at some point you've got to accept a small risk and ensure you are covered for it.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#314

people who bet early, made big money. people who came in on the hype lost everything. the definition of pyramid schemes. Oh well. We'll see, it might bounce back as these things do.

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.

So here's the thing, the difference between a pyramid scheme and a business is that in the pyramid scheme, all the wealth gets generated by selling shares to other 'investors', while in a business, all the wealth is generated by selling to customers.

Which is why one's illegal, while the other is publicly traded on the stock market.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VCs promoting this sort of blatant and obvious Ponzi - and there are many VCs getting into ponzinomic crypto enterprises - is a good reason to start making some of the investors more liable.

> is a good reason to start making some of the investors more liable I'm beginning to agree. Piercing the corporate veil is reserved for "serious misconduct" [1]. If you're told someone will sell an unlicensed deposit-like product [2], promise depositors (their words) "will not lose [their] funds" [3] and pay a ten or 20% interest rate, and you give them money to do it, you aided and abetted fraud. (At the very least…

[deleted]

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#316
post #282
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really is a science. Physics is a science. Math is. Or Biology. Finance is not. Because it deals with the madness of crowds. > Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street > And Li's Gaussian copula formula will go down in history as instrumental in causing the unfathomable losses that brought the world financial system to its knees. > Nassim Nicholas Taleb is particularly harsh when it comes to the…

Math is not science. Arithmetic and geometry were two of the original liberal arts (defined by Plato). Math doesn’t follow the scientific method. Math is a foundation for much of science and social science, but it is distinct from them.

I always tell people, Maths isn't a science. It's theoretical philosophy.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should you write exactly?

> What should you write exactly? The facts. Copies of marketing you saw, statements showing what you invested and what you were paid, e-mails and other communication from the company and a statement of loss. There are links in this thread where promises were made that turned out to be lies; I would include those as well if you saw them ex ante .

Here's a sample letter:

Dear government I'm trying to subvert, I complain about the instability of your useful, fiat currency, so I entered into a get rich quick scheme with no intention of reporting gains on my taxes. This obvious scam fell apart. Please punish them with the government system I don't believe in.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#318
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Physics is a science. Math is. Or Biology. Finance is not. Because it deals with the madness of crowds. If you follow the scientific method, it's science. If you write an observational essay, it's not. You can build theories around falsifiable, replicable experiments pertaining to the madness of crowds. The error bars are longer. But they are not infinite.

You are correct. But when people say "finance is science" what they usually mean is "here is the complicated math that proves you can't lose money on this, we've modeled everything". As the joke goes, 6 sigma events happen in finance every week.

This is silly.

This is like saying physics is not science because the nutjobs claiming we will recieve divine revelation by praying to "the quantum energy field" use physics-y terms in their BS.

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#319
post #26

Written as if no mistakes were made on their end. Paraphrasing: "We all thought UST and Anchor were a source of stable >10%/yr gains that you could trust for your corporate treasury. That the yield instead turned out to be -99% is quite disappointing, and makes this a natural time for us to bring our service to an end. It's been a pleasure to serve you."

There's also the part of "by the way, if you want any of the crappy UST we bought into using your money, make sure you claim it before the fork on May 27th or before the end of June! Peace out!"

Re: We’re discontinuing the Stablegains service

#320
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…

Never forget, its always "different this time", even though as you've said its reached the place its in over thousands of years. The mistakes made and mania's are in all the text books and histories so really people should know better, but its seems that nothing is more influential on a person than greed.
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