Live data from Hacker News

Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

fragileequilibrium.substack.com

51–60 of 264 posts

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#51
post #46
post #37

This doesn't go far enough. The only thing that maintains the value of any asset (or currency) is the collective belief in that asset or currency. Put another way: there is an inescapable component of trust in every asset. Crypto in any form doesn't solve the trust problem other than a very narrow slice because as soon as you interact with anything outside of the blockchain, you're adding trust. Even on the blockchai…

> The only thing that maintains the value of any asset (or currency) is the collective belief in that asset or currency. Put another way: there is an inescapable component of trust in every asset Most non currency assets are cash flow generating financial instruments. If analysts don't believe a company is worth a dime, it can show them wrong by being profitable and paying dividends. Edit: I think my point is - even…

Have to agree an asset is not a currency, in some case one can consider labor an assets and by extension an asset that can produce value. Labor might be unique in that regard but property seems to be similar you can derive value from nothing by putting property to use and since you can always change what the property produces. However, without any property, you physically cannot produce anything.

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not recursion because the earth is not a closed system. Farmers don't have to pay for the energy used to grow wheat. The Sun provides that for free. Same with the oxygen, and much of the water. Value is created, it's not a zero-sum game (except from the perspective of universal entropy.) In a healthy economy, most of the value should be created rather than extracted from others. But ownership of fixed resources…

I need to pay the farmer indirectly through supermarket food, the electricity company, the water company, the gas company, my phone manufacturer, my computer manufacturer, my rent for my landlord or my mortgage to the bank. The farmer doesn't pay the sun but they still have to pay other costs ad infinitum. There is no last cost. Each of those people also have the same problem I'm not arguing for zero sum. I'm just sa…

There are several issues with that. The largest one is that you assert that the costs can only inflate. They cannot.

TL;DR – Yes, but the added value gets smaller each recursion, such that even if you add on an infinite amount of these costs it will only come out to a finite value. The productivity of a single person, which in today's industrial world is immense, makes these costs so small they might as well be cents on the final product.

Let's say a farmer farms a square field with 100 metre sides, or exactly 1 ha of land. This is a size which it is perfectly reasonable for one person to farm, even entirely by hand, and which is woefully small considering modern farming equipment. On it they grow wheat, with a production of 0.25 kg/m² annually, or 2 500 kg when you do the calculation. This is a perfectly reasonable yield. Taking into account milling yield, we end up with only about 70% of that, or 1 750 kg of flour. A loaf takes roughly half a kilo of flour so, assuming water and yeast are effectively free, so selling this to a baker, they produce 3 500 loaves in the end.

So far, so easy. Then we take into account the losses that are going to be accrued for the loaf of a single customer in this very small thought experiment economy, in which exist only the farmer and the baker. Each, we say, might eat 2 entire half-kilogram loaves in a week, so 8 in a month and 96 in a year. The baker prices one loaf at (flour cost + 96·loaf cost)/3 500. The farmer prices his flour at 96·loaf cost/1 750 kg, but as the farmer buys everything, we can ignore the division. The price of one loaf is now (96·loaf cost + 96·loaf cost)/3 500, or 192·loaf cost/3500, or, rounding a bit, 0.05·loaf cost. Propagating it down, we have 0.05²·loaf cost, then 0.05³·loaf cost, and when you recurse to infinity, we have 0. The further you get from the producer, the smaller the added cost becomes in reality, such that even if you add up all the costs you eventually reach not an infinite value but a finite one.

If we say that each take a profit of $100 annually in addition to what they need to live, we get that the farmer prices their flour at ($100 + 96·loaf cost)/1 750 kg and the baker their bread at ($200 + 192·loaf cost)/3 500. Propagating it down, the price becomes ($200 + 192·($0.06 + 0.05·loaf cost))/3500 = ($210 + 0.05·loaf cost)/3 500. Going further, it will be ($210 + 0.05·($0.06 + 1.4·10⁻⁵·loaf cost))/3 500 where we entirely lose precision and the added cost from profits appears to stay at $210/3 500, while the rest of the calculation becomes so small it disappears off to 0 at infinity once again.

While this example is only very simple, and I won't prove here that it applies in larger or more complex cycles, it is nevertheless fairly obvious that this disappearing off applies to everything. Whereas your recursive argument about costs only being able to inflate is correct, they can only inflate up to a finite value at the limit due to the inflation added at each level of recursion being smaller than the last.

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those wealth creators go elsewhere or stop doing a business if isn't lucrative. I think they're called Laffer curves. Tax more and people do less as it doesn't pay to do more labour and get less of it back.

The Laffer Curve argued that revenue from taxation might represent an inverted U shape with tax rate. If you were above the revenue-optimizing tax rate, then lowering the tax rate could increase revenue. But that revenue-optimizing tax rate, which is the subject to much debate, is probably somewhere around 65% to 70%, far higher than the tax rates in the United States. We could surely increase taxes on high income in…

My understanding is every time a "Laffer curve inspired" tax cut has happened in practise, tax revenues have indeed gone down.[1]

The thing about the Laffer curve idea that I don't understand is the curve doesn't need to be continuous. Say we accept at a tax rate of 100% you get no marginal benefit from working so no-one will work and the tax take will go to zero, at a tax rate of 100%-epsilon you still get (small) additional marginal utility for each additional dollar earned, so it's still in your interests to work. So it's literally only at a tax rate of 100% that the Laffer concept would make the tax take go to zero.

[1] https://medium.com/junior-economist/the-laffer-curve-6bb2833...

"In practice, the Laffer Curve has not provided the dual benefits of lower taxes and higher revenue. In fact, every US tax cut since 1965 has been followed with a sharp decrease in tax revenue, while every increase in taxes has led to an increase in government tax revenue."

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#54

Let me share my theory that the economy is impossible or paradoxical and that the American dream is impossible and that everything is built on by faith. To buy a loaf of bread, the price needs to pay for the wheat, ovens, energy and the employee costs. This relationship is recursion. The staff of the bread company need to afford bread of their own and shelter and energy and transportation. Everyone is thereby support…

I am having trouble understanding your comment. Farmers and bakers easily produce more food than they need to stay alive themselves.

When people start a business they must borrow money and usually pay interest. That interest forces you to be profitable, you can't just run your company at 0% profit as that would only pay for your salary and the salary of your employees and the materials and machines you bought.

It is impossible for every company to be simultaneously be profitable. After all, if there is a million dollars in the economy, you can't have a 5% profit and reinvest the money as that would require a money supply of 1.05 million dollars. Thus, the money supply must grow endlessly and if the economy can't keep, there must be inflation.

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States is a society of excess. Yet, we still let people starve and go unsheltered. There is an easy solution that doesn't have the unreasonable expectation of the poor relying on the goodness of other people: tax individuals with high incomes at higher rates. The marginal tax rate for the highest income earners has steadily fallen in the past decades. People with those high incomes have the least marginal…

Those wealth creators go elsewhere or stop doing a business if isn't lucrative. I think they're called Laffer curves. Tax more and people do less as it doesn't pay to do more labour and get less of it back.

This is why you would tax land as it does not tax human effort.

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#56

Let me share my theory that the economy is impossible or paradoxical and that the American dream is impossible and that everything is built on by faith. To buy a loaf of bread, the price needs to pay for the wheat, ovens, energy and the employee costs. This relationship is recursion. The staff of the bread company need to afford bread of their own and shelter and energy and transportation. Everyone is thereby support…

fun fact, the sum across x_n of x_{n+1}=1/2*x_n, with x_0=1 is the fixed value 2. Don't blame math for your inability to understand that trade creates value.

If trade creates value why set the system up in a way that it delays trade eternally?

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if there are many that are robust in theory and in practice. MakerDAI is the only one I can think of that might fall into that category.

Any stablecoin that follows the same logic as DAI (i.e. overcollateralized debt-based stablecoins) could also apply (at least in theory). This includes (but is not limited to) sUSD, MIM, LUSD, MAI, agEUR...

The "collateral" is a bunch of useless tokens that can flash crash in an instant. It is the same thing as the luna/Terra system but with minting $2 worth of luna for $1 worth of UST. Any depeg event will only be faster as compared to luna

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#58
post #37

This doesn't go far enough. The only thing that maintains the value of any asset (or currency) is the collective belief in that asset or currency. Put another way: there is an inescapable component of trust in every asset. Crypto in any form doesn't solve the trust problem other than a very narrow slice because as soon as you interact with anything outside of the blockchain, you're adding trust. Even on the blockchai…

Gold standard fetishist forget that if there is a food shortage even tons of gold won't help them.

In scenario where financial system collapses only real currency is skill - if you can make food from something available locally or be helpful like being a medic.

Why would I trade a chicken that I can eat for piece of gold when I can trade chicken for sewing my wounds after being bitten by a stray dog.

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#59
The problem here is the abuse of the word "stable".

It's being conflated with the word "pegged".

Pegging something to something else that is unstable doesn't make it stable.

For as long as monetary policy in fiat continues to ease, you'll have more dollars around, inflating the money supply.

The pegged item will need to match this in the long run to maintain the peg. Which won't be possible without further minting of the so-called stablecoin.

The real solution, which I admit is a long time away, is to just stop using fiat and their "stablecoin" proxies altogether and just use another currency altogether.

Re: Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding

#60
post #37

This doesn't go far enough. The only thing that maintains the value of any asset (or currency) is the collective belief in that asset or currency. Put another way: there is an inescapable component of trust in every asset. Crypto in any form doesn't solve the trust problem other than a very narrow slice because as soon as you interact with anything outside of the blockchain, you're adding trust. Even on the blockchai…

> The only thing that maintains the value of any asset (or currency) is the collective belief in that asset or currency.

The only thing that maintains the value of any asset is the demand for it.

Where that demand comes from may or may not be belief.

Water has value because there is a clear demand for it, not because anyone believes in it.

As long as there is someone who wants an asset, it has value. Belief is but a cog in the machine.

Post reply on HN