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Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

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Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#821

Post by jeroenhd »

kqr wrote: post #433
austhrow743 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial speculation is a zero sum game. These "victims" were hoping to gain from the loss of others just like the supposed crypto VCs that have made out well. They're not victims just the losers.

I think the people who we would describe as victims here don't have a sophisticated mental model enough to understand that financial speculation is a zero sum game. (Or indeed that in a liquid enough market, the risk-adjusted expectation of any deal is zero.)

This is why I think we'll see some extensive crypto regulation soon enough, forcing companies that turn real money into crypto to filter out people who don't understand that crypto is a speculative market first and a payment platform second. You can't realistically prevent people from mining or trading shitcoins but you can put regulatory pressure on the ways people access them.

Thr only way to do this effectively is blanket regulation on all cryptocurrency, as otherwise you'd end up with an endless cat and mouse game chasing new coins people use to trick people into entering the market and exchanging entrycoins for the latest scamcoins.

This is all pretty terrible in my opinion, because cryptocurrency could've been so much better. Sadly, the idealists who wanted an independent currency were drowned out by the ruthless speculators who are only in it for their personal profits.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#822

Post by wyre »

eric_cc wrote: post #781
ethbr0 wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking umbrage on behalf of others, in a matter that should be personal choice, is equally questionable. Half of this thread believes we should protect people from themselves. The other half believes people should have the freedom to screw themselves over. Not sure there's much ground for compromise, given the contradictory nature of those positions.

> Half of this thread believes we should protect people from themselves. > The other half believes people should have the freedom to screw themselves over. Nailed it. It comes down to principles. Do you believe in personal freedom? Or do you prefer authoritarian governments?

As long as there is government and capitalism we can only hope to be somewhere in between.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#823

Post by graeme »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #255
fastball wrote: post #35

Watch the sell orders rack up in real time: https://ftx.com/trade/USDT/USD

Interesting, from watching the feed it seems most BUY orders are in the range of 100-1000 USD (i.e. small investors) whereas there are some really large SELL orders in the range of 100.000-1.000.000 USD. My naive take would be that crypto enthusiasts still believe in Tether whereas larger investors leave the ship. I mean it makes sense, if you have many millions invested in Tether you're probably better off selling n…

Some speculation this is a short at work. You’d expect larger sales in that case no?

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#824

Post by xmprt »

whimsicalism wrote: post #746
lxgr wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Dai crypto-backed? That would give it a risk profile, but also not make it risk-free: Counterparty risk (Tether) vs. exchange rate risk of the backing assets (Dai).

It's multi-collateralized, so backed by crypto, but also backed by crypto that is backed by actual paper (ie. USDC counterparty risk) and is overcollateralized (so the backing is more than how much $ DAI there is by a substantial margin - ~166%). It has a number of additional clever tricks to keep the peg (burning MKR, etc.), but unlike Terra is not only clever tricks.

How is it overcollateralized? If someone buys on Dai token for $1 then where do the backers of Dai get the extra $0.66?

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#825

Post by alangibson »

jkepler wrote: post #324
alangibson wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Bitcoin is essentially the USD + US stock market in 1922. Hard money and unregulated securities markets already broke the world once. The crypto wizards somehow managed to forget a century of hard won lessons.

It was hardly "hard money" in 1922, as the Fed was created in 1913, and the dollar started plummeting. If you want to see what a hard money world looks like, look at the 40 years or so prior to 1913, when most civilized nations were on a gold standard.

US left the gold standard in 1933. Whether you like the Fed or not, it was a hard money world until then.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#828

Post by shkkmo »

vmception wrote: post #801
shkkmo wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meaning that at one point and subsequently, Tether did match their leel of review, and at one point was backed 100%. Tether has had skepticism from the day it was created nearly 10 years ago, and a US authority got all the information was like "well that one time in 2018 we didn't like that". Tether is not 100% backed by dollars, it mostly is though. This is some serious spin and misinformation. I can't believe you…

CFTC, DOJ, and NY OAG Yes, I was referring to the NY one, and I'm referring to how they were like "okay you went unbacked in 2018 and didn't disclose that to our standard, but at least disclose that its not USD". So now they paid a fine and disclose that. So at one point they were 1:1 USD, which is actually a major revelation because from 2014-2018 the same Tether FUD existed the same as now. In any case, now they ar…

> So at one point they were 1:1 USD, which is actually a major revelation

Is it a revelation or something you made up? NY OAG was confident they were able to prove that that Tether lied about backing in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Just because they don't have sufficient proof that Tether lied prior to 2017, doesn't make it a revelation that Tether was telling the truth. Indeed, given the trend, it seems quite reasonable to think that Tether was lying about backing at some point in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Who knows how much, they certainly aren't trustworthy.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#829

Post by alangibson »

ekianjo wrote: post #481
DebtDeflation wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>look at the 40 years or so prior to 1913 Constant booms, busts, and panics. The period of the most financial instability in history occurred under the gold standard.

Lol then what do we have now?

Booms and busts that we can manage, and prevent from tanking the world economy, largely due to not having hard money.

Re: Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did

#830

Post by oneoff786 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #803
HWR_14 wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be pointed out that casinos are only required to post odds for perfect play in games that have skill (e.g. poker, blackjack). Therefore, your poker odds would be based on the rake.

Black Jack is playing against the house and you can calculate perfect play. Poker is played against peers and perfect play does not exist. I think poker is a lot closer to speculating on crypto or stocks. Companies can disclose their transaction fees but it is impossible to calculate your expected return on investment. This is why there's almost always terms of service or disclosure to that extent

The best poker ai, as far as I’m aware based on things shown on hn, don’t consider past opponent behavior when making decisions. It’s effectively just a lookup table of hands and bets. Not perfect play but generally better than humans.
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