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Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

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Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#91

Post by codebolt »

rglullis wrote: post #70
codebolt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculation? You can look at the raw market data right here and see several things that should make any critically minded person go 'hmmm': https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/ How can Tether have a daily trading volume of almost 100 bln on a supply of 'just' 24 bln? Seems rather obvious that the vast majority of crypto trades are done by HFT algos and not people (or worse, that the actual supply of Tether is…

You do know what you are saying may be new to a few naive or ignorant newcomers, but that is already priced in by any reasonable person involved in the space, right? [0] Yes, I completely agree what Tether is doing is criminal and that they will likely be responsible for the next crash. The question is: so what? The important thing about crypto is its anti-fragility. Every crash brought a correction that made the sys…

> already priced in

Nothing can be effectively priced in as long as you have an artificial and illegitimate source of liquidity pushing the price up. Such a market doesn't allow for rational pricing mechanisms to manifest.

Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#92

Post by rglullis »

dsr_ wrote: post #89
rglullis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first airplanes had a clear commercial advantage over other methods of transport: speed. And blockchain enables people to send value without intermediaries around the world in less than a few minutes. Key point: without intermediaries . Any comparison with existing banking systems is moot. > If the "things that need to be worked on before" don't include any of these cases, what do they include? - How to get the…

All of these things except "without intermediaries" are already solved with intermediaries. Intermediaries are desirable: they solve problems so that the end users don't have to do it. It's fundamental to programming, in fact: you don't handwrite machine code, you use a language with libraries that gets interpreted or compiled to run on an operating system that provides lots of useful facilities and abstractions so t…

> intermediaries allow people to fix mistakes. And people make mistakes all the time.

If intermediaries are optional, they are great. The problem is when they are required, or when they are corrupt, or simply inefficient.

Everything else you are writing shows the same privileged worldview that I see in those who hold strong anti-crypto ideas. You don't know how it is to not have reliable and robust institutions, so you don't understand why so many people want to work on a solution that disrupts them.

> Each of these cases is not "we need a blockchain" but "it's good to have a signed, difficult-to-forge journal that can be inspected and verified".

Yes, blockchain is not the end. It's the tool to have a "signed, difficult-to-forge journal that can be inspected and verified". But until you don't understand the importance of being able to do that without intermediaries, we will be talking past one another.

Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#93

Post by riffraff »

pmorici wrote: post #37
arcticbull wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only purpose of this currency is to enrich those who invented it. As is tradition in crypto. It's kind of implicit. [edit] I mean, think about this rationally. You're creating a new token, that doesn't have revenue, a business model, or any way of generating income. And yet it is "100% asset backed, and funded by top Silicon Valley investors." Those investors aren't in it for their health. They don't care about…

I assume these stable coins are making interest off the assets they hold to back the stable coin. Isn’t that the obvious play here?

> making interest off the assets

how? Money market funds have negative returns these days.

Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#94

Post by rglullis »

codebolt wrote: post #91
rglullis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know what you are saying may be new to a few naive or ignorant newcomers, but that is already priced in by any reasonable person involved in the space, right? [0] Yes, I completely agree what Tether is doing is criminal and that they will likely be responsible for the next crash. The question is: so what? The important thing about crypto is its anti-fragility. Every crash brought a correction that made the sys…

> already priced in Nothing can be effectively priced in as long as you have an artificial and illegitimate source of liquidity pushing the price up. Such a market doesn't allow for rational pricing mechanisms to manifest.

You are right, my term was not correct. What perhaps I would say is that those are aware of the issue are already putting Tether in their risk calculations and their exposures.

If it were not for Tether, I'd be way holding way more non-stable crypto that I am now. Right now the only non-stable token that I am buying is BAT, and mostly because their projects has a clear/transparent way to see where their money is coming from.

Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#95

Post by rglullis »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #87
codebolt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove the unconstrained supply of Mickey Mouse money (Tether) and eliminate wash trading, and you will watch Bitcoin descend into the abyss rather quickly.

Personally, I see these issues purely as “buy the dip” investment opportunities. For many speculative investors, the crazy volatility from factors like these is what makes crypto attractive. I see a deeply undervalued long-term value proposition for cryptocurrency, where the big risks for today involve the minefield of manipulation issues that have to be survived to get to the other side where the assets appreciate h…

There is a huge moral issue here. You have a company that is manipulating the market like crazy convincing people to put more and more of their savings in crypto, all of it to be taken away.

This asymmetry in information alone should be reason to have them eliminated from the market as soon as possible.

Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#96

Post by ddon »

bouncycastle wrote: post #46
bastawhiz wrote: post #38

> Crypto-as-money is still young. We have a lot to do. Do you remember Napster? Tether is kinda like Napster – it's taking off, people love it, it's a little sketchy, and it's probably not the design that will last. We don't want to make the equivalent of Kazaa – another blip in the history that ultimately doesn't ultimately work out. The challenge is to build a platform that's as robust as BitTorrent and as great to…

KYC laws essentially treat everyone like a criminal or a terrorist. They turn our financial institutions into surveillance centers. They are also ineffective, see https://www.regulationasia.com/aml-controls-are-ineffective-... . Meanwhile, the real criminals pass through KYC with stolen ID.

totally agree.. once my account on Revolut was blocked, without explaining why, and was kept locked for 6-7 months. during these months they asked all sorts of documents, and then they closed the account and the rest of the money which was on that account were sent to some strangers :) and again, without any explanations. now, copies of my documents are sitting somewhere on their servers waiting to be hacked and distributed to criminals, who will use them to pass through KYC :)

Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#97

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

rglullis wrote: post #95
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I see these issues purely as “buy the dip” investment opportunities. For many speculative investors, the crazy volatility from factors like these is what makes crypto attractive. I see a deeply undervalued long-term value proposition for cryptocurrency, where the big risks for today involve the minefield of manipulation issues that have to be survived to get to the other side where the assets appreciate h…

There is a huge moral issue here. You have a company that is manipulating the market like crazy convincing people to put more and more of their savings in crypto, all of it to be taken away. This asymmetry in information alone should be reason to have them eliminated from the market as soon as possible.

Totally agree. Getting rid of Tether and holding them responsible sounds great.

But that has nothing to do with the long-term valuation of cryptocurrency. The part I object to, which is what many of the earlier comments are trying to say, is some version of “Tether & wash trading is bad, therefore bitcoin is nothing but hype / fake scams.”

Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#98

Post by arcticbull »

rglullis wrote: post #92
dsr_ wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these things except "without intermediaries" are already solved with intermediaries. Intermediaries are desirable: they solve problems so that the end users don't have to do it. It's fundamental to programming, in fact: you don't handwrite machine code, you use a language with libraries that gets interpreted or compiled to run on an operating system that provides lots of useful facilities and abstractions so t…

> intermediaries allow people to fix mistakes. And people make mistakes all the time. If intermediaries are optional , they are great. The problem is when they are required , or when they are corrupt, or simply inefficient. Everything else you are writing shows the same privileged worldview that I see in those who hold strong anti-crypto ideas. You don't know how it is to not have reliable and robust institutions, so…

It’s not fair to write off all criticisms of the blockchain as privilege. The issue isn’t privilege. The issue is that folks who don’t have access to financial services deserve access to financial services and blockchain doesn’t get them that. It gets them a “ruined fresco” [1] of that. A crap approximation if you squint, but if you zoom in all the details are wrong.

Intermediaries are a massive optimization and solve a ton of problems. Pushing a world without them onto these disadvantaged folks, in a very real way, locks them into a second tier moving forward.

[1] https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/03/2-phot...

Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#99

Post by rglullis »

arcticbull wrote: post #98
rglullis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> intermediaries allow people to fix mistakes. And people make mistakes all the time. If intermediaries are optional , they are great. The problem is when they are required , or when they are corrupt, or simply inefficient. Everything else you are writing shows the same privileged worldview that I see in those who hold strong anti-crypto ideas. You don't know how it is to not have reliable and robust institutions, so…

It’s not fair to write off all criticisms of the blockchain as privilege. The issue isn’t privilege. The issue is that folks who don’t have access to financial services deserve access to financial services and blockchain doesn’t get them that. It gets them a “ruined fresco” [1] of that. A crap approximation if you squint, but if you zoom in all the details are wrong. Intermediaries are a massive optimization and solv…

> It’s not fair to write off all criticisms of the blockchain as privilege.

Not all of them. Just the ones that compares the current implementation with some untenable ideal or with the status quo in the developing countries. Saying "I can send one million dollars or 20 dollars easily to anyone without blockchain" is no different than a "Let them have cake" to someone in Argentina who would like to work as a freelancer with European customers. Saying "blockchain is never going to compete with Visa" is a big fuck you to the small business owner in Rio who needs some rotating capital to their shop and the bank is offering "competitive rates" of 2%/month.

> Pushing a world without them onto these disadvantaged folks.

It has very little to do with "disadvantaged folks" or "not having access to financial services". It has more to do with enabling whatever-you-can-call "middle class" to be able to protect their wealth and to do their business without being harassed by corrupt government officials, or having their savings inflated away by government that can not/will not manage their finances and even to enable them to make business with foreign entities without getting ripped off by abusive/unfair taxes.

> Intermediaries are a massive optimization and solve a ton of problems.

No argument there. But again, the problem is when people don't have intermediaries they can rely on. If you show me any non-blockchain alternative where people are free to choose if they want intermediaries or not, then I will gladly support it.

As everything in designing systems, there is no solution free of trade-offs. Forcing people to depend on institutions and to accept centralization is a clear trade-off between performance and robustness. Too much optimizing and not focus on robustness brings you to a system that is so inflexible that becomes dangerous. It works well until it doesn't. When it fails, it fails spectacularly.

Re: Reserve – A flexible pool of stablecoins designed to reduce risk

#100

Post by pmorici »

riffraff wrote: post #93
pmorici wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume these stable coins are making interest off the assets they hold to back the stable coin. Isn’t that the obvious play here?

> making interest off the assets how? Money market funds have negative returns these days.

Buy US treasuries? Those rates are still positive (0.09% - 1.66%). Since the capital is essentially free even if you get a blended rate of return of say 0.2% that is still real money. As an example USDC has $5.1 billion dollars in outstanding tokens issued that's $10 million a year at 0.2% just to sit on it.
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