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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

#361

Post by fragmede »

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 don't get all the bandwagon hate of crypto on this site.

> Sure 99% of crypto schemes are b.s and ponzi.

That second sentence explains the first, really.

Anyway, so the remittance industry is estimated to be USD 15.27 Billion as of 2021 so if you could tap into that market, you'd do pretty well. Or rather, you would, if you charged some sort of fee to use your services, so you need to charge some sort of a fee, which negates that advantage of using crypto. Coinbase makes it easy to get into crypto, but they do charge a fee for that.

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

#362

Post by dmitriid »

exdsq wrote: post #360
dmitriid wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote, emphasis mine: "Something similar to AliPay"

Crypto adoption is rising pretty fast in these places. I know you dislike that, but it’s a fact - the tech does work for those usecases. SMS is factually less useful than crypto, there are cash onramps available in the most obscure places, and it helps remittance payments that something similar to AliPay doesn’t. Almost any company that comes into this space has to follow KYC which is basically impossible for the cas…

> SMS is factually less useful than crypto, there are cash onramps available in the most obscure places

SMS is less useful than a lot of things. It doesn't mean that crypto is the solution, or that it won't get replaced by something more useful.

As for "cash on-ramps", it just shows that there's nothing inherently useful in crypto that can't be solved by other means. These are centralised points that people explicitly trust to handle their money. It's nothing new, and once societies stabilise they inevitably re-discover/re-implement all the rules and regulations you're so dismissive of (such as KYC rules).

> If you look into this, such as the Gates Foundations research on payments and remittance in bankless societies, you’d see that crypto

Let's see what Bill Gates himself says about crypto: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ut7yj0/im_bill_gates_...

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

#363

Post by helloworld11 »

papito wrote: post #208
concordDance wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get locked out of your bank account due to institutional incompetence (happened to a friend of mine in Spain) or due to being on the wrong side of a political argument (e.g. donating to the protesting truckers in Canada). I think there's a lot of value in being slightly harder to oppress by the political classes or arse-covering and uncaring bank managers.

And the solution is? Have a system where I can lose ALL my money by forgetting a password? Or when a crypto exchange goes boom and my life's savings are not FDIC ensured? I am sure your friend could get back in into the bank account. Being a random subject to a dumb banking accident is not the reason to upend the financial lives of billions.

Then exercise some personal responsibility and caution. Keep your passwords carefully and don't trust certain crypto insitutions. The crypto world is indeed loaded with cases of fraud, but underneath that, here is a system of systems that lets people who do indeed get locked out of conventional financial systems send and receive funds without the permission of a central regulatory authority or some dysfunctional, corrupt political control mechanism, It doesn't always work at that, but it offers one strong further alternative. Also, how is it upending the lives of billions of people? The two things you compare at the end are not directly related and definitely not in a causative way. Wanting a further means of avoiding being a victim of dumb banking accidents doesn't make you culpable in whatever defects crypto has.

It's not just the rampantly emotional and repetivie crypto hate on HN that's absurd, it's also the sheer narrow follishness of so many of the arguments that's rather galling.

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

#364

Post by Jamie9912 »

abofh wrote: post #57
Jamie9912 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venmo is USA only. Paypal takes egregious transactio fees. Everything you listed has transaction fees except for biscuits, cash, check and beer. Which will take much longer than 60 seconds to arrive

Ach and bank wires cost me nothing, iBAN costs me nothing, payconiq p2p costs me nothing, all are roughly instantaneous, except ach which is still same day.

iBAN takes days. And they also need a bank account...

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

#365

Post by CTDOCodebases »

dehrmann wrote: post #354
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

So tether could be theoretically backed by...bitcoin?

Possibly somewhat. There is typically a differentiation between commercial paper and asset backed commercial paper so who knows. It might depend on the individual lending USDT.

I believe that these exchanges/crypto funds are borrowing USDT with interest payable in USD and principle payable in USDT. This would incentivise borrowers to buy USDT when the peg breaks to the down side thus keeping USDT pegged to the dollar.

I think it would be more accurate to say that USDT is not backed by anything. The loans are backed by commercial paper but if the borrowers are not fulfilling these debts in USD in reality there is no backing.

I presume the incentives that stop the peg breaking to the down side will only hold as long as the exchanges/crypto funds stay liquid. If there is a sustained mass exodus out of USDT I predict things will get ugly.

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

#366

Post by Jommi »

lottin wrote: post #359
Jommi wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand how USDC's redempetion works. It's not a website accessible by anyone open for redemptions 24/7. Read on that first before discussing this topic please.

And this matters why? Being an economist, I think I know how a currency peg works, but if you think I'm wrong feel free to explain it to me.

: D

Being an economist does not mean you automatically know how Circle (a payments company based in the US) issues the ERC-20 token that is called "USDC", or how the redemptions for that work.

You can read about it here: https://www.circle.com/en/usdc and here https://www.centre.io/usdc

You can see centralized and decentralized exchanges with USDC liquidity here: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/usd-coin#markets

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

#367

Post by chx »

Jommi wrote: post #340
chx wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works is an interesting choice of word. https://twitter.com/qrs/status/1395784294451265536 > Smart contracts should be considered self-funded bug-bounty platforms.

You share a link to a tweet with a phot of an ATM. What is your point? What do you think it true anti-fragility in a system? Something that is built form the ground-up in a regulatory too-big-to-fail environment, or something that starts from the wilderness, gets beaten down multiple times, yet grows back up stronger than before. That is true antifragility.

I quoted the point. The hubris of Ethereum where software bugs result in the loss of money is just astounding. While obviously banking software can have bugs as well, the regulations make the consequences much, much less severe. With Ethereum, one bug, money is gone and you are done for. And as we learned, often the money is gone to North Korea. That's what hubris and cryptobros brought upon us: they made a funnel of savings of poor people caught in the hype tsunami to North Korea of all places.

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/14/politics/fbi-north-korea-hack...

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

#368

Post by lottin »

Jommi wrote: post #366
lottin wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this matters why? Being an economist, I think I know how a currency peg works, but if you think I'm wrong feel free to explain it to me.

: D Being an economist does not mean you automatically know how Circle (a payments company based in the US) issues the ERC-20 token that is called "USDC", or how the redemptions for that work. You can read about it here: https://www.circle.com/en/usdc and here https://www.centre.io/usdc You can see centralized and decentralized exchanges with USDC liquidity here: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/usd-coin#markets

This is like suggesting that a mechanic should read some car's owner's manual in order to learn how internal combustion engines work.

Look, don't try derail the conversation. Your claim is that in the event that the issuer of USDC would fail to redeem the tokens, you could still redeem them elsewhere. Explain how that would work.

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

#369

Post by dropnerd »

Jommi wrote: post #342
sireat wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am extremely skeptical that it will only cost few cents. (I've sent and received BTC in early 2010s) On ramp and off ramp to fiat will kill you - whether through transaction fees or through slippage. Let's say I am in US with 10k USD cash and I want a family in Ukraine (let's say somewhere safeish like Lviv) to have that 10k USD in hand. Crypto is going to be more expensive than Western Union/Transferwise/SEPA/regu…

I mean there is no way you can get them USD as cash in hand if that's what you mean. Do you mean USD as in a multi-currency bank account like revolut? Onramp via onjuno, convert to USDC, send to your polygon wallet, convert to jEUR on Jarvis, send jEUR to friends wallet, they offramp jEUR with 0 fees to their IBAN bank account in ukraine via mt.Pelerin. You only pay the polygon token transfer fees here. Times have ch…

i wonder if usdc to jeur is more efficient than usd to eur. it could be- many banks are opaque about their conversion rates.

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

#370

Post by Jommi »

dropnerd wrote: post #369
Jommi wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean there is no way you can get them USD as cash in hand if that's what you mean. Do you mean USD as in a multi-currency bank account like revolut? Onramp via onjuno, convert to USDC, send to your polygon wallet, convert to jEUR on Jarvis, send jEUR to friends wallet, they offramp jEUR with 0 fees to their IBAN bank account in ukraine via mt.Pelerin. You only pay the polygon token transfer fees here. Times have ch…

i wonder if usdc to jeur is more efficient than usd to eur. it could be- many banks are opaque about their conversion rates.

Could be. Although USDC to JEUR is using chainlink feeds (which is aggregated data), but they do advertise 0 slippage.
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