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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

#321

There are more than $100b of stablecoins — 285x year-over-year growth — with a variety of very interesting and high-quality stablecoins proliferating. And of course, Hacker News focuses on some garbage project nobody in the space even followed. How is there no discussion about FRAX, Maker's DAI, USDC, CRV's 3pool token, Liquity's LUSD, and so many other interesting projects?

The stablecoins that succeed aren't very interesting because they're simply blockchain representations of actual funds held elsewhere. Or at least funds that are claimed to be held somewhere. Those stablecoins are simply a redeemable, tradeable representation of money held somewhere else.

These artificial stablecoins that attempt to get clever with algorithmic finance and smart contracts are interesting because they inevitably collapse when someone pokes the system enough to make it unstable. The strangest part is how it happens over and over again yet people still put money into these flawed algorithmic stablecoins anyway.

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

#322
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum just forked the entire blockchain to undo a transaction they didn't like. I'm not sure if that's reassuring or a complete violation of the entire premise of smart contracts.

As long as everyone agrees i see absolutely no problem. The entire value proposition of decentralized blockchain is to establish consensus without trust. If everyone agrees to undo a transaction, it seems perfectly fine to me, as that would require the consensus the blockchain already establishes

> As long as everyone agrees i see absolutely no problem.

They didn't all agree, though. Now there's Ethereum (the people who agreed with the fork) and Ethereum Classic (the people who didn't agree).

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

#323
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This is an epically terrible argument for why you shouldn't have to pay for things someone else purchased with your stolen credit card. "I shouldn't have to because I don't have to"? Compare tptacek's claim: >>> which is why when your credit card gets sto…

As the holder of the credit card I can't think of a good reason why I would/should pay the debt off for a purchase I didn't make. I did not initiate the sale with the merchant, I did not verify I was the rightful card holder, I did not authorize the funds to be transferred, and I will not send money to that bank to make up for any of that. Banks are in the business of encouraging transactions and my card number could be skimmed from a physical device, or from hacked website on the internet, or I used it at Target https://money.cnn.com/2013/12/18/news/companies/target-credi..., or someone physically stole my wallet.

If they did try to collect then that sounds like a great reason to go back to cash because even if I get mugged, criminals can't spend me tens of thousands of dollars into debt by stealing my cash on hand. They are limited to what's in my wallet.

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

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I think about it in those terms... Why not fund bug bounties that way?

Because you presumably want to find bugs in applications that are not smart contracts.

Wait you don't have a /root/btc_bounty_private_key.txt with 600 permissions in every server?

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

#325

These incidents really illustrate the main flaw of smart contracts: a single bug in your code can lead to incredible losses. I simply don't think it's possible for human beings to write good enough software for smart contracts.

Can there ever be 'bug free' software? As a lifelong programmer, I'm starting to think that it's impossible to write perfect software free from bugs.

It depends on what you mean by bug. Often, requirements change, and now the program doesn't meet requirements; that's not something you can avoid.

Ensuring your requirements are correct is possible, but often hard. Ensuring your software meets the requirements is possible, but often hard, especially if you need to consider hardware failure or defects.

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

#326

There are more than $100b of stablecoins — 285x year-over-year growth — with a variety of very interesting and high-quality stablecoins proliferating. And of course, Hacker News focuses on some garbage project nobody in the space even followed. How is there no discussion about FRAX, Maker's DAI, USDC, CRV's 3pool token, Liquity's LUSD, and so many other interesting projects?

The stablecoins that succeed aren't very interesting because they're simply blockchain representations of actual funds held elsewhere. Or at least funds that are claimed to be held somewhere. Those stablecoins are simply a redeemable, tradeable representation of money held somewhere else. These artificial stablecoins that attempt to get clever with algorithmic finance and smart contracts are interesting because they…

> The stablecoins that succeed aren't very interesting because they're simply blockchain representations of actual funds held elsewhere. Or at least funds that are claimed to be held somewhere.

DAI is not in this category. It is backed by over collateralized loans in multiple currencies, and maintains peg by creating and burning coins in a smart contract.

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

#327
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is uninformed. What do you call USDC, which is directly redeemable for US Dollars by anyone with a Coinbase account? Every USDC is backed by one USD of deposits in a US-based bank. USDC is a stablecoin, and there are plenty of others out there.

You can get Circle to give you USD for USDC? How? Are you talking about selling USDC to another baghholder? Thats not 'redeeming' that's trading.

Yes, Circle or Coinbase will redeem them for you. Similarly you can close a position on DAI and burn the tokens.

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people who had SafeDollar have control over their own money? Did the people whose money got locked in the DAO because of a software bug have control over their own money? > How about if I transact only in crypto (Monolith card), now every purchase I make is via crypto Do you in fact do this? > nothing different to using a bank card with US dollars backing it There certainly is if you read Monolith's fine print, an…

> Do people who had SafeDollar have control over their own money? Did the people whose money got locked in the DAO because of a software bug have control over their own money? Nope, because they didn't do their due diligence. Do you deposit your savings to a new bank that's not had a single audit done? Are there any specific banks that you won't do business with? It's the exact same in the crypto sphere. > Do you in…

Valid points, but the financial future crypto like this paints is not a future that seems better to me, not like a future I want to live in, or work toward.

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

#330

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.

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